The Pre-9/11 Mindset Is Ridiculous
Political analyst Charles Krauthammer had strong words for Eric Holder’s announcement that the Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into the beheading of James Foley: “It is ridiculous to go back to the pre-9/11 paradigm of treating acts of terror as criminal acts,” Krauthammer said. “They are not. They are acts of war against the United States. And when Holder says we’re going to track down the people who did this, I mean, it’s as if FDR were to announce the day after Pearl Harbor that we’re going to track down the pilots who bombed us in Pearl Harbor. … The idea is not to bring anybody to justice, it is to defeat the army, essentially, the people who are running the operation. That’s what we learned from 9/11 [but] I’m not sure the president has learned it yet.”