7.3.2 The Endangering Self

While it is obvious that the ‘other’ posed a severe ‘threat’, in Obama’s security narrative, the ‘self’ also contributed to the hazards that America faced. In Obama’s framing, the source of the threat was twofold: it emanated from the (largely external) ‘other’, but it had also been produced by America’s violation of its own core principles. As has been demonstrated in the previous chapter, compliance with core values was central to America’s identity in Obama’s discourse, but this compliance was just as much a matter of staying safe:

It is precisely our ideals that give us the strength and the moral high ground to be able to effectively deal with the unthinking violence that we see emanating from the terrorist organizations around the world. (IIP 2009/01/22)

In Obama’s framing, the pursuit of American values determined America’s national security. Following the rule of law was of ultimate importance since it was the key to prevailing: “To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend” (Obama 2009/02/24); if America did so, Obama was confident that “we will defeat our enemies, because we’re on the better side of history” (Obama 2009/04/20). However, Obama viewed America’s national security as having been hampered by a deviation from its core principles, a situation that had also divided the nation (see section 7.1.3). He explicitly stated that American values were linked to American security and that adhering to the rule of law was not only desirable but a prerequisite to America’s safety:

I will do whatever is required to keep the American people safe, but I am absolutely convinced that the best way I can do that is to make sure that we are not taking shortcuts that undermine who we are. (Obama 2009/04/29b)

I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values […]. Together we have a responsibility to enlist our values in the effort to secure our people, and to leave behind the legacy that makes it easier for future Presidents to keep this country safe. (Obama 2009/05/21)

As was the case with the topic of unity, Obama used the metaphor ‘with every fiber of my being’. This metaphor was powerful because it lent certainty to his statement: after all, it was the president – the leader of the nation with all his insight and authority – who was convinced of it. Moreover, and this is related to the former, this metaphor most probably caught people’s attention because Obama used it very rarely and this further accentuated his statement. In the same speech, he pointed out that “time and again, our values have been our best national security asset” (Obama 2009/05/21). These statements were a clear call to refrain from torture, to abide by the rule of law, the constitution, and the Geneva Conventions, and to demonstrate once again that “we have the moral high ground” (Obama 2009/01/07). This clear demonstration, Obama declared, would “make us safer” (Obama 2009/01/07). On numerous occasions, he reiterated that “living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger” (Obama 2009/02/24, cf. 2009/01/07, 2009/04/16, 2009/04/20, 2009/04/29b, 2009/05/21, 2009/06/01b, 2009/06/04). However, due to Bush’s detention and interrogation policies during the ‘War on Terror’, America’s moral authority had been diminished and the consequences in terms of security loss were manifold:

These interrogation techniques […] undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer. (Obama 2009/04/16)

There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world. (Obama 2009/05/21)

Torture […] diminishes the security of those who carry it out, and surrenders the moral authority that must form the basis for just leadership. (Obama 2009/06/26b)

Obviously, noncompliance with America’s core values entailed a high price for the United States. Therefore, the message was that America had to seize the moral high ground again in order to regain and strengthen its reputation and power, as well as its unchallenged leadership position (see section 7.3.3). These clearly defined aspects of America’s security were presented as having been tarnished. In sum, these notions expressed what Obama stated elsewhere in a brief three-word-formula: “right makes might” (Obama 2009/12/01). It is telling that Obama spoke at great length about American values in a speech on national security. In his remarks on May 21, 2009, he elaborated on the profound impact that fidelity to American values could have and enumerated the positive effects that these values have led to throughout American history:

Fidelity to our values

is the reason why the United States of America grew […] to the strongest nation in the world.

It’s the reason why enemy soldiers have surrendered to us in battle […].

It’s the reason why America has benefitted from strong alliances that amplified our power […].

It’s the reason why we’ve been able to overpower the iron fist of fascism and outlast the iron curtain of communism […]. (Obama 2009/05/21)

Again, Obama constructed the link between values and security with the catchy sequence of conditional ‘cause and effect’-sentences, presented in the form of parallelisms. This rhetorical device powerfully demonstrated the positive effects that adherence to the nation’s fundamental values would have on American and world affairs. With regards to content, Obama touched on the glory of the American nation in its most trying times, especially during World War II but also the Cold War, to prove the power of American values. According to this logic, these values were vital for strength, in establishing resilient alliances and making enemies and hostile systems surrender. This also implied that renunciating these values entailed negative effects – and very much so in terms of national security.

With regard to national security and world affairs, Obama also addressed another aspect. He stated the following in front of an international audience during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo:

America – in fact, no nation – can insist that others follow the rules of the road if we refuse to follow them ourselves. For when we don’t, our actions appear arbitrary. (Obama 2009/12/10)

The self-criticism Obama displayed here points to the ‘normative costs’ (Daase 2005) that come with violations of the law: deviation from the established rules, especially by a superpower, severely weakens accepted norms and thus produces new security problems. Obama referred to the international consequences that America’s conduct in the ‘War on Terror’ could have. If other states were to infringe humanitarian and international law, America could hardly confront them for their wrongdoing. Even worse, these countries could point to the action of the United States to justify the fact that they too deviate from the rules. As Obama put it, if America fell short of its ideals, this “can be an excuse for others” (Obama 2009/07/07). In the end, such a process could erode international law on a larger basis and in turn threaten the American people in various ways. For all of these reasons, Obama decisively turned against an ‘either-or’ position on values and security:

We need not sacrifice our security for our values, nor sacrifice our values for our security, so long as we approach difficult questions with honesty and care and a dose of common sense. That, after all, is the unique genius of America. (Obama 2009/05/21)

Obama often spoke in an absolute manner and with urgency on this matter. He announced that America “must reject the false choice between our security and our ideals” (Obama 2009/04/16, cf. 2009/01/20, 2009/04/29a, 2009/04/29b; IIP 2009/01/22). It is indicative that he and his administration did not merely consider the choice to be false; rather, the judgment was delivered that it was false. As Obama made clear, problems occurred the other way round: “When you start sacrificing your values […] then over the long term that will make you less secure” (Obama 2009/04/03). Therefore, the United States did not only have a “moral” interest in binding itself to particular rules of conduct but a “strategic interest” (Obama 2009/12/10) because “our security emanates from the justness of our cause” (Obama 2009/01/20). What Obama indicated here was that America was in danger because its cause was unjust; the U.S. was endangered by its own conduct, that is, its violation of law. According to Obama’s logic, America’s values and security were interdependent, but the nation had stopped living up to this ‘truth’.

This issue certainly constituted one of Obama’s major objections to the policy of his predecessor, since, in Obama’s view, the Bush administration had played off one part of this ‘truth’ against the other. In this respect, Obama accused Dick Cheney, the former vice president under George W. Bush, of having led a movement that believed that it was impossible to reconcile security interests with American values. According to Obama, Cheney had drawn “the […] wrong lesson from history” (Obama 2009/03/22). Obama strongly disagreed with the claim made by the former administration that ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ were an indispensable means of extracting information about future attacks and keeping America safe. Instead, he believed that information could have been gathered legally, even if doing so might have been more difficult (Obama 2009/05/21).

In line with this framing, Obama argued that the violation of rules as observed in Guantanamo had diminished America’s security. One aspect of this reasoning was certainly that the mistreatment of captives “impeded the US effort to win the hearts and minds of the Arab-Islamic world and isolate the jihadists” (Forsythe 2011: 96). This alone lowered the prospects of winning the fight against terrorism as it impaired the willingness of Muslim countries to cooperate and turn in terrorists. What was even more momentous, however, was that according to Obama Guantanamo was a tool with which fighters were actively recruited. This further jeopardized the United States. Obama provided an authoritative statement on the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. He argued that the detention center’s effect on America’s security had been ruinous:

[It] hasn’t made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment. Which means that there is constant effective recruitment of Arab fighters and Muslim fighters against U.S. interests all around the world. (Obama 2009/03/22)

Instead of serving as a tool to counter terrorism, Guantanamo became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause. Indeed, the existence of Guantanamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained. So the record is clear: Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantanamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies. (Obama 2009/05/21)

From this perspective, Guantanamo – established by President Bush to make the United States safer – had done the contrary and instead had multiplied the number of America’s adversaries.136 Guantanamo had accelerated the growth of anti-Americanism in the Islamic world and thus diminished America’s safety. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs underscored this assessment with numbers by pointing out that al Qaeda’s leader had used the example of the Guantanamo Bay detention center to recruit extremists from around the world a total of four times in 2009 and thirty-two times since 2001, including in videos (Gibbs 2009).

It is evident that in contrast to President Bush, who solely framed the ‘other’ as the cause of America’s threat, Obama also pointed to the involvement and responsibility of the ‘self’. Although the ‘other’ was still constituted as ruthless and highly dangerous in Obama’s narrative, the ‘self’ had also diminished America’s security because American detention and interrogation policy had led the ‘self’ to depart from its core principles. The ‘threat’ Obama constructed not only referred to the sheer number of (new) terrorists but also to their determination, and to their character in battle. Speaking of the contested interrogation techniques as applied in Guantanamo, he stated:

They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists, and increase the will of our enemies to fight us […]. They risk the lives of our troops by making it less likely that others will surrender to them in battle, and more likely that Americans will be mistreated if they are captured. In short, they did not advance our war and counterterrorism efforts – they undermined them, and that is why I ended them once and for all. (Obama 2009/05/21)

In following this logic, ending torture and mistreatment would pay off in at least three ways: it would undermine a recruiting tool used by the enemy, it would decrease the enemy’s determination to attack the United States, and it would increase the chances of survival for captured American soldiers. In making his point, Obama also referred to Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi detention facility that had been at the center of international outrage in 2004 after photos were published showing the humiliating treatment of prisoners:

When we saw what happened in Abu Ghraib, that wasn’t good for our security – that was a recruitment tool for terrorism. Humiliating people is never a good strategy to battle terrorism. (Obama 2009/04/03)

Obama’s conclusion was that Abu Ghraib had aggravated the hate against the United States, and so had Guantanamo. The latter had become “a critical recruitment tool that al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have used to try to demonize the United States and justify the killing of civilians” (Obama 2009/04/29b). Since recruitment was said to be a ‘constant’ and ‘effective’ process, it was also a cumulative process. In order to demonstrate this, Obama presented a thought game and put forth a hypothetical argument:

Let’s assume that we didn’t change these practices. How […] long are we going to go? Are we going to just keep on going until […] the entire Muslim world and Arab world despises us? Do we think that’s really going to make us safer?(Obama 2009/03/22)

Clearly, this was a leading question in which the implied answer was that a continuation of these practices would severely undermine America’s security. In an interview, Obama agreed with the host that “a demonization of America” was occurring and that this was “like a new religion” with “new converts” (Obama 2009/01/26). In Obama’s security discourse torture was said to backfire; consequently, ending it would bring about positive results. Therefore, it was imperative for security reasons that Guantanamo would be closed. Another reason for this was that the events at the detention center had alienated America’s allies and thus reduced their willingness to cooperate with the U.S. in the fight against terrorism. This aspect will be examined in the next section.

7.3.3 The Alienated Partners

Like Bush, Obama actively stressed the necessity to work together with the international community to fight against terrorism. In his statements, the ‘we’ in “we have a goal” mostly stood for international cooperation and alliances rather than solely for the American people. In contrast to Bush, however, who had simply expected ‘civilized’ people to support America’s ‘just cause’ and had verbally forced procrastinators to do so by his compelling dualism of ‘you are either for us or against us’, Obama made clear that international cooperation was not a given. Rather, he pointed to the unwillingness of other states to cooperate and constituted this as yet another characteristic of the threat faced by America. The threat was posed by the actual or assumed difficulty of building alliances against terrorism, and this difficulty was based on the alienation of (potential) partners due to America’s conduct in the ‘War on Terror’. According to Obama’s narrative, this was another instance where America’s detention and interrogation policies, which had gone beyond what the law permits, had produced ‘political costs’ (Daase 2005) that affected the security of the United States.

Obama emphasized that the events at Guantanamo had done “incredible damage to our image and position in the world” (Obama 2009/03/22). He argued that America’s moral force had been corrupted, and he stated that America was now viewed with “skepticism and distrust” (Obama 2009/09/23). He spelled out that Guantanamo had become “a symbol for many around the world of us not sticking to our ideals and our traditions and rule of law” (Obama 2009/06/05, cf. 2009/06/26a). Allies and friends were said to have been bewildered by America’s cause of action and they were not convinced that it was just. As Obama put forth, this had weakened security since it prevented other countries from assisting the United States in the fight against terrorism. Obama stressed that the U.S. needed alliances in order to be successful in this fight, but that the will to cooperate had been lost. “We know,” he said, “that America cannot meet the threats of this century alone” (Obama 2009/02/24, cf. 2009/04/03, 2009/04/06, 2009/06/26a, 2009/12/01, 2009/12/10). However, he left no doubt that cooperation would be hard to achieve if the United States maintained its detention and interrogation policies. Obama reiterated that America’s course of action “sets back the willingness of our allies to work with us in fighting an enemy that operates in scores of countries” (Obama 2009/05/21). He asserted that the interrogation techniques “alienate us in the world”, and that they “increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America” (Obama 2009/05/21). This aspect was viewed as even more dangerous because the new threats demanded “even greater effort, even greater cooperation and understanding between nations” (Obama 2009/01/20). Here, Obama described a situation that David Cole (2003: 207f) had predicted in 2003: “When the government relies so heavily on double standards to strike the balance between liberty and security, its loss of legitimacy among […] nations potentially our partners in the struggle against terrorism has its own substantial security costs.” In pointing this out, Obama justified the abandonment of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and argued that doing so “puts us in a much stronger position to work with our allies in the kind of international coordinated intelligence activity that can shut down these [terrorist] networks” (Obama 2009/04/29b). Again, the key to maintaining or rebuilding strong partnerships against terrorism and thus to ensuring national security was that America upheld its own values:

The terrorists can only succeed if they swell their ranks and alienate America from our allies, and they will never be able to do that if we stay true to who we are, if we forge tough and durable approaches to fighting terrorism that are anchored in our timeless ideals. (Obama 2009/05/21)

Here, the audience was once again confronted with the conditional: security can only be created ‘if we stay true to who we are’.

As noted above, Obama admitted mistakes on behalf of the U.S. government, tried to reconcile the United States with those who felt bewildered, and worked to bring about consensus. In his framing, refraining from measures that alienated America’s allies would help the nation to stay safe by maintaining international partnerships. Closing Guantanamo was aimed at restoring the legitimacy of America’s pursuit of national security, which by itself, was declared as “very legitimate” (Obama 2009/06/26a). Therefore, this undertaking was intended to provide “a legacy” for future presidents “that protects the American people and enjoys a broad legitimacy at home and abroad” (Obama 2009/05/21). Obama viewed compliance with humanitarian law as a mechanism for America to regain its reputation and achieve foreign policy goals (Zartner/Ramos 2011). This became particularly clear when he faced international audiences. As the following quote suggests, it was the restoration of America’s legitimacy that would force the international community to cooperate. Before an audience in Strasbourg, Obama stated:

So we are going to conduct our operations in a way that reflect our best selves and make sure that we are proud. And that, in turn, will allow the Europeans, I think, to feel good about our joint efforts, and also not to have excuses not to participate in those joint efforts. (Obama 2009/04/03)

With this announcement, Obama was attempting to renew alliances by compelling other countries to participate in the fight against terrorism. On another instance, he requested their cooperation by pointing out that “those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now stand by and wait for America to solve the world’s problems alone” (Obama 2009/09/23). In his inaugural speech, Obama had pointed out that America had overcome fascism and communism not just through its own military might but through “sturdy alliances” (Obama 2009/01/20). In this context, there is an interesting difference between Bush and Obama in the usage of the set-phrase ‘make no mistake’. Whereas Bush used it to affirm American strength in absolute terms – ‘make no mistake: we will win’, ‘make no mistake: we are determined’, or ‘make no mistake: justice will be done’ – Obama used it as an admonition that U.S. leadership and international cooperation in fighting terror was vital:

Make no mistake: al Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within. It’s important for the American people to understand that Pakistan needs our help in going after al Qaeda. (Obama 2009/03/27)

Make no mistake […]: Iraq, Turkey, and the United States face a common threat from terrorism. (Obama 2009/04/06)

Make no mistake: This cannot solely be America’s endeavor. (Obama 2009/09/23)

Although these statements were declarative in character, they did not convey a promise of strength and victory but rather a warning of failure. It was a means employed by Obama to force the audience to support his course of action and to engage in an international coalition led by the United States. At the same time, it was apt to demonstrate to the American people that the willingness of other countries to cooperate was imperative.

When speaking at the Turkish Parliament, Obama declared that the strength of the two countries’ alliance meant that “the world is more secure” (Obama 2009/04/06). Obama often reiterated the commonalities between the United States and other countries in order to stress common ground for partnership. In fact, regardless of whether he spoke before audiences in Europe, the Arab world or before American journalists after a meeting with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama heavily stressed what they all had in ‘common’ and what needed to be done ‘together’. Again and again he pointed out that people had a “shared interest” (Obama 2009/04/07, 2009/06/05, cf. 2009/06/04), “common hopes” (Obama 2009/01/26, 2009/04/06, 2009/04/07), “common dreams” (Obama 2009/01/26, 2009/04/06, 2009/04/07) and “common values” (Obama 2009/04/03, 2009/04/06). Above all, they had “common humanity” (Obama 2009/01/20, 2009/04/03, 2009/04/07, 2009/06/04). They faced a “common threat” (Obama 2009/04/06), and came together on behalf of a “common security” (Obama 2009/03/27, 2009/04/03, 2009/04/06, 2009/12/01); they should cooperate due to their “common goal” (Obama 2009/04/06, 2009/05/06) to find “common solutions” to “common problems” (Obama 2009/04/03) and to enjoy a better life in a “common future” (Obama 2009/09/23). Obama underlined mutual dependence since terrorism was a matter of common threat and security. Especially in Europe, Obama used historicity to accentuate the meaning of alliances. Speaking in the town hall of Strasbourg, he repeatedly referred to World War II and the Cold War:

This is a mission that tests whether nations can come together in common purpose on behalf of our common security. That’s what we did together in the 20th century. And now we need an alliance that is even stronger than when it brought down a mighty wall in Berlin […]. As it was in the darkest days after World War II, when a continent lay in ruins and an atomic cloud had settled over the world, we must make the journey together. (Obama 2009/04/03)

These references to collective memory were supposed to instruct the audience. As noted before, historical analogies of this kind “offer commentary on the present and generate expectations that the future will rise […] to the level of the past” (Noon 2004: 342). So this was a means of underlining the need for international cooperation. At the same time, in order to renew the partnership with the Muslim world, Obama announced a change in tone towards Muslim countries and a language of respect (Obama 2009/01/26, cf. 2009/04/03). This was probably one of the reasons why his administration abandoned the term ‘War on Terror’, as it was perceived by many Muslims as anti-Arab and Anti-Islam (AP 2009). Like an act of conciliation, Obama acknowledged that he was “deeply committed to rebuilding a relationship between the United States and the people of the Muslim world – one that’s grounded in mutual interest and mutual respect” (Obama 2009/04/07, cf. 2009/01/20, 2009/01/26, 2009/04/06, 2009/05/06, 2009/06/04, 2009/09/23, 2009/12/01). Among his first interviews as president, he spoke to an Arab network and assured that “Americans are not your enemy” (AP 2009). Obama was aware that the reputation of America largely lay in ruins in the Arab world. Parallel to the Orientalist discourse in the West, there was a ‘Western’ discourse in the Orient that reproduced a disastrous image of America. The mistreatment of captives in U.S. detention had “fuelled the deep resentment of US double standards prevalent within Muslim nations and communities” (Scraton 2002b: 226; cf. Chernus 2006: 1f). Thus, reconciliation was vital as the United States needed a partnership with these countries for security reasons. Accordingly, Obama declared:

America will defend itself, respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened. The sooner the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer. (Obama 2009/06/04)

In this statement the ‘partnership with Muslim communities’ linked the announcement that the United States was reverting to international and humanitarian law with the role of the Arab world in the fight against terrorism. The last sentences clearly imply the demand for the latter to take action itself and possibly to close the ‘safe havens’. Whether with regard to Arab, European or other countries, Obama’s security discourse clearly constituted the need to rebuild an alliance with these countries and these parts of the world: The United States was in need of international cooperation. This was a matter of America’s national security and because of that the country had to change course.

7.5.1 Reestablishing the Rule of Law

When President Obama took office in January 2009, he promptly started reversing the interrogation and detention policies that had been implemented by the Bush administration. Within forty-eight hours of being president, Obama had issued an executive order entitled “Ensuring Lawful Interrogations” (Obama 2009/01/22c). This order was to “ensure compliance with the treaty obligations of the United States, including the Geneva Conventions” and declared the standards of Common Article 3 a “minimum baseline” for the treatment of detainees. It stated that people held in U.S. custody:

shall in all circumstances be treated humanely and shall not be subjected to violence to life and person (including murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, and torture), nor to outrages upon personal dignity (including humiliating and degrading treatment). (Obama 2009/01/22c)

In the case of interrogation techniques, the order prohibited prisoners from being subjected to any techniques or treatment that was not authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual, which banned the use of torturous measures by army personnel; this was “effective immediately”. The order continued by stating that “from this day forward”, no interrogator could “rely upon any interpretation of the law governing interrogation” that had been “issued by the Department of Justice between September 11, 2001 and January 20, 2009” (Obama 2009/01/22c), the latter being President Bush’s last day in office. The order thus overturned the various legal memos that had been published by the Bush administration on the status and treatment of prisoners and which had shaped detention and interrogation policy in the years after 9/11. In even broader terms Obama’s order stipulated that:

all executive directives, orders, and regulations […] including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001 to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order. (Obama 2009/01/22c)

Obama used this order to abrogate ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ and end the concept of ‘unlawful enemy combatants’. Whereas President Bush had denied the Guantanamo detainees any protection under the Geneva Conventions, Obama granted them the protection of ‘unprivileged combatants’. As a consequence, detainees were not classified as prisoners of war according to Geneva Convention 3 but as armed civilians under Geneva Convention 4, which at least provided them with coverage by international humanitarian law (Forsythe 2011: 67f). In addition, President Obama ruled that the International Committee of the Red Cross had to be granted “timely access” to “any individual detained in any armed conflict” held in U.S. custody or who was under the control of U.S. personnel (Obama 2009/01/22c). The order also established a task force to oversee interrogations and guarantee that detainees were not being transferred to other countries “to face torture” or for any other reason that would undermine or circumvent “the commitments or obligations of the United States” (Obama 2009/01/22c).

This amounted to the total prohibition of torture and the cruel treatment of detainees, and was an attempt to reestablish legal process and, with it, moral authority. According to Obama, compliance with the law and international treaties was an essential means of protecting the American people. To this end, Obama also announced the closure of confinement facilities. In the same order, he declared that “the CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.” This meant that the CIA had to close black sites that were being used for rendition and the forced disappearances of their suspects (Pfiffner 2010: 163; Forsythe 2011: 67f, 199f).137

In a separate order made on the same day, Obama authorized the closure of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, which had to be executed “as soon as practicable” (Obama 2009/01/22b). Between 2002 and 2009 approximately 800 individuals had been detained at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, some of them had been held there since the beginning of its operation. Obama’s second order explicitly stated that the closure was not only “consistent with” but actually reflected U.S. security interests:

In view of the significant concerns raised by these detentions, both within the United States and internationally, prompt and appropriate disposition of the individuals currently detained at Guantánamo and closure of the facilities in which they are detained would further the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and the interests of justice. (Obama 2009/01/22b)

The order pointed to the “unusual circumstances associated with detentions at Guantánamo” and stated that they would require a comprehensive, prompt and thorough review of both the lawfulness of detention, including possible transfers and releases of detainees, and the prospects of prosecution. In signing this executive order, Obama reiterated that is was “our ideals” that “give us the strength and moral high ground” in the fight against terrorism and that “we are going to win it on our own terms” (Shane et al. 2009). During the implementing of this order, the Obama administration tried to release as many detainees as possible. The administration intensified its efforts to resettle cleared detainees and to find agreement with foreign countries on where to house detainees who could not return to their country of origin. In order to close Guantanamo, the remaining detainees were to be transferred to the United States. In 2009, this led the Obama administration to plan a high-security prison in the state of Illinois. This plan envisaged the purchase and conversion of the Thomson Correctional Center, a prison in Thomson, a town about 130 miles west of Chicago. The plan, however, was thwarted by Congress (see section 7.6.2). With regard to prosecution, the military commissions in Guantanamo were suspended in order to review the procedures they were following and to assess whether and how the commissions should be continued. By the time Obama entered office, these commissions had only convicted a couple of prisoners (Forsythe 2011: 181; cf. Shane et al. 2009; Elsea 2014). President Obama’s intention was to hold trials in civil courts. He believed that the United States judiciary, with its constitution and federal courts, was well-equipped to deal with cases of terrorism. In fact, he stressed that America had to break “this fearful notion that somehow our justice system can’t handle these guys” (Obama 2009/11/18b). After all, past cases such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing had proven the suitability of America’s judicial system. However, the plans to try terrorist suspects on U.S. soil were also rejected by Congress (see section 7.6.2).

During these early weeks of Obama’s presidency, the circumstances in Guantanamo seemed to improve. A U.S. military team reporting from Guantanamo in February 2009 concluded that “the conditions of confinement, in Guantanamo, are in conformity with Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions” (Walsh 2009; cf. Forsythe 2011: 116). This assessment was also confirmed by the media. The Obama administration also induced changes to U.S. detention in Afghanistan and sought to hand over control to Afghan officials and the Afghan court system. Imprisonment conditions were improved as were the possibilities of detainees challenging their custody. In addition, detainees in Afghanistan were kept in a new detention center in Parwan, which had been opened in 2009 to replace the notorious detention facility in Bagram. The latter was associated with lethal abuse and American officials considered it to provide “breeding grounds for Qaeda fighters” (Schmitt 2009; cf. The New York Times 2009/09/20; Rubin 2010; Forsythe 2011: 179).

7.5.2 Challenges and Shortfalls

In its attempt to revert to ‘normal’ proceedings, Obama’s administration soon began to struggle with a complicated dialectic. Although Obama emphasized that restoring the rule of law was necessary to meet America’s security interests, trying terrorist suspects in federal courts was highly problematic due to the use of tainted evidence. In contrast to military commissions at Guantanamo, federal court judges did not permit the use of evidence obtained through coercion. Conviction of the accused was thus hampered by the mistreatment they had undergone during their detention. In this sense, the legacy of the Bush administration posed serious judicial problems. However, even in cases where abuse had not been committed, the work of the intelligence services was considered too sensitive to be laid open in court since doing so would have clearly demonstrated how the security services operate. Furthermore, another problem was posed by the fact that not every Guantanamo detainee had a file.138 This was an indication, as some believed, that the Bush administration had never intended to prosecute those held at Guantanamo (Mayer 2010).

These circumstances led some charges to be dropped, at least in part. Thus, accepting due process implied the potential release of detainees who could not be convicted but who were believed to have been guilty of plotting or even committing terrorist acts, or who were considered dangerous and inclined to (re-)turn to hostilities against the United States as soon as they could. Some detainees did return to the battlefield on release, and this posed new security concerns (Hess 2009; Rosenberg 2012). In sum, the deployment of torture and inhumane treatment during the Bush years undercut the ability of the Obama administration to deal with the accused through the U.S. criminal justice system. This was one of the reasons why advocates of a tougher stance demanded the retention of military commissions, and eventually, the Obama administration also came to view them as a necessity in order to keep the American people safe (Forsythe 2011: 184–188, 213). Moreover, Republicans were applying political pressure as they wanted the military commissions to be used as much as possible. As will be discussed below (see sections 7.6.1 and 7.6.2), large parts of Congress and the public opposed trying terrorist suspects in civil courts.

As a result, the Obama administration did not end the military commissions; instead, it merely reformed them. The Military Commissions Act of 2009, which was enacted by Congress, provided additional procedural safeguards to detainees, now called ‘alien unprivileged enemy belligerents’. This reduced the permissible use of hearsay and statements made under coercion as evidence, granted the detainees access to experienced defense lawyers in capital cases, extended the defendants’ access to witnesses and evidence presented against them, and permitted the defense to appoint its own witnesses. While this was acknowledged as an improvement to the judicial system that had been set up by the Bush administration, it was still criticized as substandard. Moreover, the difficulty in trying the detainees was one of the main reasons why the detention center at Guantanamo Bay remained open, and with it the policy of indefinite detention, at least for suspects who could not be tried. As noted above, it was assumed that these fighters would return to hostilities against the United States on release. Unsurprisingly, the shortfalls in Obama’s course of action proved a great disappointment to liberals and human rights organizations (AI 2009; HRW 2009; Richey 2009; Baker 2010; Forsythe 2011: 184, 213; Elsea 2014). At the same time, it was often difficult to transfer detainees from Guantanamo to other places, even if they had been cleared of the charges made against them. This was due to the fact that either their home countries were politically unstable and considered to be breeding grounds for terrorists, or because the repatriates were likely to be mistreated by their own government, which prohibited a deportation to these countries in the first place. However, despite persistent negotiation, there was very little willingness among third countries around the world to house former Guantanamo inmates. The remaining option – transferring these individuals to the United States – was, as noted before, prohibited by Congress (see section 7.6.2). This situation posed difficult considerations for the Obama administration and contributed to a policy that deviated from what had been announced.

The continued existence of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay certainly was and still is one of the most obvious shortfalls of the Obama administration in this context; and the retention of military commissions and indefinite detentions has certainly continued to impair the image of the United States. However, Obama has also been criticized for dismissing a judicial reworking of the past (Johnston/Savage 2009; Greenwald 2012; Shane 2012) – a critique that arose again in December 2014 when the Senate Intelligence Committee published a report on torture under the Bush administration. From the beginning of his presidency, Obama rejected holding the individuals who had been responsible for the violations of laws after 9/11 to account, even though the UN Convention Against Torture foresaw their prosecution. Although Obama deemed ‘harsh interrogation methods’ to be illegal, he still refrained from prosecuting Bush and his officials despite the fact that they had approved and authorized them. Certainly, there was political strategy at play here. Obama did not want to jeopardize Republican support in Congress, and the Republicans openly rejected an ex post criminalization of the Bush administration. As Newsweek put it, investigations would have plunged “Washington into a new round of partisan warfare” (Klaidman 2009: 35; cf. Broder 2009). Moreover, prosecuting Bush and his officials could have further split the nation, and the public strongly disapproved of prosecution in this realm (Friedman 2009; Oliphant 2014). Against this background, the outrage was even greater when in summer 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder declared that an investigation would be conducted into detainee abuse. In the end, however, this undertaking was abandoned (see section 7.6.3).

In sum, the change of course implemented by Obama was not as comprehensive as expected. Critics complained about the difference between Candidate Obama’s promises and President Obama’s policies. Furthermore, Obama continued to claim that special authority had been granted to the president after 9/11. This specifically meant that the president still had the power to detain individuals (indefinitely) on the basis of the AUMF (the Congressional Authorization to Use Military Force, from 2001).139 In fact, Obama also continued renditions.140 However, he did reverse parts of Bush’s detention and interrogation policies and reformed others. He altered the conditions of enforcement and thus tried to move towards human rights and humanitarian law (Forsythe 2011: 176, 200f; cf. Finn 2009; Johnston 2009; Alexander 2010; Koh 2010; Lewis 2011; Lennard 2013). To some extent, the judicial obstacles Obama faced certainly contributed to his political shortfalls. However, as will be discussed below, Obama also lacked the support of large parts of his audiences; and he would have needed their support to fully implement his proposed course. This point will be outlined in the following sections.

7.6.1 The Public and the Media

When Obama took office, public discourse strongly illustrated the divisions within the American nation on topics of detention, interrogation, and torture. The New York Times reporter Peter Baker put it in a nutshell when stating that President Obama had inherited two struggles:

one with Al Qaeda and its ideological allies, and another that divides his own country over issues like torture, prosecutions, security and what it means to be an American. The first has proved to be complicated and daunting. The second makes the first look easy. (Baker 2010)

As expected, advocates of the rule of law such as human rights organizations approved of Obama’s change of course. After the president had signed the executive orders on lawful interrogation and the closure of Guantanamo, they spoke of “a giant leap forward” (Shane et al. 2009). Other groups like The National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a coalition comprising 240 religious groups, applauded Obama as he “allowed the United States to again find its moral bearing” (Shane et al. 2009). However, critique was also strong. The Veterans of Foreign Wars, for example, claimed that Guantanamo was “a valuable tool” in the ‘War on Terror’ as it provided “useful intelligence information” and kept “our enemies off the battlefield” (VFW 2009). This was a clear reproduction of Bush’s security logic. Obama’s plans to close Guantanamo were therefore viewed as “not prudent”, even less so as the detention center was regarded as “well kept, professionally run, and respectful of human rights” (VFW 2009). The national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S., Glen Gardner, reminded the audience:

We must never forget that the only reason 3,000 innocent civilians died on a quiet September morning in 2001 was because this new enemy didn’t have the means to kill 30,000 or 300,000 or 3 million people. (VFW 2009)

Although these views expressed by human rights organizations and the veterans’ association respectively certainly embodied opposite poles and provided strongly diverging assessments of Obama’s political action, this sharp divide was not only represented by special interest groups, it ran throughout American society. In general, one of the main problems faced by President Obama was that Bush’s security narrative remained strong during 2009. Former Bush’s officials continued to advocate their positions and strengthen this narrative by restating the necessity and usefulness of ‘harsh interrogation techniques’ for America’s security. By doing so they may have also sought to justify their actions and thus forestall their prosecution. Besides that, it certainly was an attempt to save their legacy as an administration that had kept America safe, but it also enabled them to attack their political successor who was allegedly putting the nation’s security at risk. Whatever the reasons behind their statements, Bush’s security narrative remained present among the American public and with it a reasoning that had moved the limits of acceptable action. Over a period of many years, this narrative had instilled fear in the American people and the continuation of this discourse kept their sense of fear alive. Already during his election campaign Obama had directly addressed Bush’s ‘politics of fear’ and he continued to do so by pointing to Bush’s attempts to promote a feeling of threat. Obama alluded to the “fear-mongering” and the discursive contributions that were “calculated to scare people” rather than inform them (Obama 2009/05/21). It was obvious that this posed a problem for his administration as it meant arguing against a powerful emotion: Bush’s narrative had produced psychological effects that could not be quickly overturned.

Until the end of his second term, Bush had continued to justify his detention and interrogation policies. During his last days in office, he was asked about the consequences of abolishing ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’, and replied: “I feel like it would be a problem because these are tools that we have in place,” and he promptly professed that “everything this administration did […] had a legal basis to it, otherwise we would not have done it” (Fox News 2009/01/11). After Bush had left office, other voices maintained his narrative, as did the departing chief of the CIA Michael Hayden who vigorously defended ‘enhanced interrogation’. During interviews, Hayden argued that “the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer” (Baker 2009a) and reiterated elsewhere that “these techniques worked […]. Do not allow others to say it didn’t work […]. It worked” (Miller 2009). However, former Vice President Dick Cheney was the strongest voice in the continued reproduction of Bush’s logic, and Cheney made great efforts to communicate his position. He went to great lengths to ensure that there was no doubt that Bush’s course had been correct. In an interview in February 2009, for example, Cheney stated:

If it hadn’t been for what we did – with respect to the terrorist surveillance program, or enhanced interrogation techniques for high-value detainees […] – then we would have been attacked again […]. Those policies we put in place, in my opinion, were absolutely crucial to getting us through the last seven-plus years without a major-casualty attack on the U.S. (Harris et al. 2009)

Cheney maintained that terrorists were more likely to succeed under the Obama administration. He also made it very clear that Obama’s approach to terrorism was naïve and too soft, and that consequently, the new administration was making the United States more vulnerable to attacks. After all, “half-measures keep you half exposed” (Cheney 2009a). Cheney also continued to refer to the horrific scenario that Bush had called a ‘holocaust’, that is, an attack on the United States with nuclear or biological weapons:

I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt. Whether or not they can pull it off depends whether or not we keep in place policies that have allowed us to defeat all further attempts, since 9/11, to launch mass-casualty attacks against the United States. (Harris et al. 2009)

On May 21, 2009, the very day that Obama spoke about national security, Cheney set out his objections to the course that had been adopted by the Obama administration. During a speech on the logic behind the Bush administration’s security policies, Cheney strongly justified the detention and interrogation policies that they had employed:

I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program […]. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people […].

You don’t want to call them enemy combatants? Fine. Call them what you want – just don’t bring them into the United States. Tired of calling it a war? Use any term you prefer. Just remember it is a serious step to begin unraveling some of the very policies that have kept our people safe since 9/11. (Cheney 2009a)

In Cheney’s narrative, the detention and interrogation policies of the Bush administration had produced “phenomenal results”, and he asserted that “a great many Americans are alive today because we did all that” (Cheney 2009c). Strong opposition to Obama’s course of action also came from Keep America Safe – an organization founded in 2009 by two nationalist hardliners, notably Elizabeth Cheney – Dick Cheney’s daughter, and William Kristol, the editor of the (neo-)conservative journal Weekly Standard. A third board member was Debra Burlingame, a former Court TV producer and sister of one of the pilots who had died on 9/11. The group’s name implied what the members believed: that the Obama administration would not keep America safe. In fact, the political advocacy group fueled fear about Obama’s alleged foreign policy strategies. It attacked Obama’s national security policy and continued to support the policies adopted by the former Bush administration (Mayer 2010; IPS 2013). The group fostered the neoconservative discourse that emphasized America’s state of war and claimed that Obama’s administration was “weakening the nation” (IPS 2013). Moreover, this venture was supported by prominent strategists and donors and its activities included:

raising money to run ads criticizing the Obama administration and Democratic members of Congress, and disseminating petitions, including a “Save Gitmo” petition in early 2010 that called for keeping the Guantanamo Bay detention facility open because it is purportedly “a safe, secure, and humane facility where the United States can and should detain terrorists.”(IPS 2013)

According to this line of argumentation, Guantanamo was safe and America was safe because of it; moreover, torture was successful and America’s defense was successful because of it. Contributions of this kind to the national security discourse continually forced Obama onto the defensive and made it more difficult to convince the relevant audiences to support his approach. As opinion polls indicate, Bush’s narrative was still accepted by large parts of the public and Obama’s framing was not compelling enough to topple it. According to a survey in May 2009, 40 percent of the American people believed that the detention center at Guantanamo Bay did indeed strengthen U.S. national security while only 18 percent thought it weakened it; 37 percent believed that Guantanamo had little effect either way. The majority of the American people were thus either in favor of or at least undecided towards the detention center as far U.S. security was concerned (Gallup 2014b). Evidently, Obama had been unable to instill his ‘truth’ onto the American people that the closure of Guantanamo was imperative for America’s national security. Related to the figures above were those collected on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States in order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. As mentioned, the Obama administration was preparing to purchase and reconstruct a prison in the state of Illinois, a venture that was eventually thwarted by Congress (see section 7.6.2). Concerning the imprisonment of Guantanamo detainees on U.S. soil, Congress acted in accordance with public opinion. When asked in spring 2009 whether the United States should – or should not – close Guantanamo and move some prisoners to U.S. prisons, only 32 percent approved the closure whereas 65 percent rejected it (Gallup 2009b, 2014a). An even higher number, 74 percent of the respondents, opposed the movement of detainees to their state (Gallup 2014b). During the summer and fall of 2009 these figures almost remained constant.141 Up until the point of writing, the majority of the American public has never been in favor of closing Guantanamo.142

During the course of 2009, Obama faced growing criticism for his approach to fighting terrorism. Although his first actions in office, i.e. the prohibition of torture and the order to close Guantanamo, had been acknowledged by the press, harsh reviews were published about his counterterrorism strategy in Afghanistan.143 Whereas journalists considered Obama to be indecisive, conservatives attacked him outright as a ditherer. This media coverage weakened his standing and culminated in the allegation that Obama was not truly committed to fighting terrorism (King 2014: ch. 3). The question of whether the president was “enough of a warrior for the fight against Islamic terrorism” (Baker 2010) was also linked to Obama’s abandonment of the term ‘War on Terror’. The debate further intensified in early November 2009 when the deadliest massacre on U.S. soil since 9/11 took place. Nidal Malik Hasan, a U.S. Muslim and army psychiatrist killed thirteen people and injured 31 during a rampage at the U.S. army base Ford Hood in Texas. As this instance seemed to prove the enduring threat constituted by the evil ‘other’, it increased the nation’s fear and further strengthened Bush’s security narrative. In an op-ed in The Washington Post, for example, the author and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Bing West described the offender as an “evil murderer” who had been part of an “evil minority” of Muslims and who had hijacked their faith for cruel ends (The Washington Post 2009/11/08). Similarly, on the O’Reilly Factor show, Fox News strategic analyst Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Peters said:

What happened yesterday at Fort Hood was the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. It was committed by a Muslim fanatic, who shouted ‘Allah is great’ and gunned down 44 unarmed innocent soldiers and civilians. And our president tells us not to rush to judgment, to wait until all the facts are in. What facts are we waiting for? This was an Islamist terrorist act […]. And Bill [the host], I believe your viewers understand that this was an act of Islamist terror, and the media is not going to fool them. And President Obama’s not going to fool them. (Fox News 2009/11/09)

During another TV show, former senior Bush advisor Karl Rove spoke of a “cold-blooded murder” committed by someone with a “jihadist philosophy […] an alien ideology that hates our freedoms and hates what is at the core of being an American” (King 2014: 100). This meant that the attacker hated ‘freedom’, and was an ‘evil’, ‘fanatic’ murderer, whereas the victims were ‘innocent’ – this wording strongly resembled Bush’s framing. Republican Representative Pete Hoekstra, former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, also criticized Obama for not calling the rampage what it allegedly was, a case of Islamic terrorism. Hoekstra accused the administration of being unable to “define the threat” and declared that this had led to a policy, “where they want to read Miranda Rights to the people that we capture in Afghanistan and then want to prosecute CIA agents for the things that the previous president in Congress asked our CIA people to do” (Fox News 2009/11/10). Although CIA personnel were not prosecuted (see section 7.6.3), the message was clear: Obama’s administration had missed the point and it was setting the wrong priorities in the fight against terrorism.

This was clearly an awkward context in which to gain acceptance to try terrorist suspects on U.S. soil. Yet, it was only a few days later, in mid-November 2009, that the Obama administration announced that the alleged mastermind behind 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and some other Guantanamo detainees would be tried in a civil court in New York. This sparked fierce resistance in Congress (see section 7.6.2) and in the public debate. Attorney General Eric Holder was verbally harassed and sworn at by protesters. Among the critics, as The New Yorker reported, was former Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy, who had led the prosecution of the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. He declared that Holder had not understood what the rule of law meant in wartime. “It’s military commissions,” he said, “it’s not to wrap our enemies in our Bill of Rights” (Mayer 2010). It is interesting to note that McCarthy had gained firsthand experience of the 1993 case and knew that it had been treated as a criminal act; however, he was now repeating Bush’s conception of war. This further demonstrates how powerful Bush’s framing had been and how deep it had sunk into people’s consciousness. After the Guantanamo captives had been dehumanized for years and adjudged to be ruthless and blatantly evil, there was very little willingness to grant them any kind of rights or to bear additional costs that would aid these suspects. Rudolph Giuliani, for example, who had been mayor of New York at the time of 9/11, resolutely rejected this plan in a series of interviews with the TV channels CNN, ABC and Fox. He pointed not only to the financial burden of the proposed trials but reiterated that they would give “an unnecessary advantage to the terrorists” and increase “the possibility of acquittal” (Berger 2009; cf. King 2009). The top adviser to President Obama, David Axelrod, however, pointed out “that since 2001, 195 cases of terrorism have been prosecuted in civilian courts and 91 percent of them have resulted in convictions,” but his statement seems to have gone unnoticed (Berger 2009). Using historicity to stress his point, Giuliani stated that “we wouldn’t have tried the people who attacked Pearl Harbor in a civilian court in Hawaii” (Berger 2009). Moreover, he pointed to the most prestigious presidents of American history and declared that military tribunals had been “good enough for Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt in many, many cases” (King 2009). Giuliani attacked Obama for treating the issue “like an ordinary murder” (Berger 2009) and concluded that this was “part of Barack Obama deciding that we’re not at war on terrorism any more” (Millar 2009, cf. Berger 2009, Fox News 2009/11/15, King 2009). Needless to say, this issue was also debated by members of Congress on television. A discussion between Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a Democrat who headed the Armed Services Committee, and the Republican Pete Hoekstra, former chair of the House Intelligence Committee, might be exemplary of these debates. Whereas the former praised the administration’s decision to try suspected terrorists in civilian courtrooms, the latter claimed that the terrorists would try “to use it as a platform to push their ideology” (Schieffer 2009). This argument, in fact, was heard often on Fox News (King 2014: 102). Moreover, Hoekstra strongly opposed giving terrorist suspects “all of the extraordinary protections that you and I have as American citizens” (Schieffer 2009). The accusation that came along with this perspective, as stated by Rudolph Giuliani (Fox News 2009/11/15) and Elisabeth Cheney (King 2014: 102), was that Obama’s administration had returned to a pre-9/11 approach to handling terrorism. Former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton also complained that Obama’s “weakness and indecisiveness” in several areas would generate the impression that the president has “got a problem making hard decisions” (van Susteren 2009). In this heated debate, opposition to trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a federal court was apparently one of the main issues that catapulted Scott Brown, a Republican from Massachusetts, into the Senate. The seat had been held by the Democrats before but became vacant after the death of Edward Kennedy in summer 2009. Brown strongly opposed Obama’s course. He claimed that he was “scared at some of the policies” and stated in a television ad, “some people believe our Constitution exists to grant rights to terrorists who want to harm us. I disagree” (Mayer 2010). This debate was flanked by real hardliners like the former Assistant Attorney General in the Bush administration, Jack Goldsmith. He asserted in The New York Times that:

prosecution in either criminal court or a tribunal is the wrong approach. The administration should instead embrace what has been the main mechanism for terrorist incapacitation since 9/11: military detention without charge or trial. (Goldsmith 2010)

Many of these claims challenged if not overrode Obama’s narrative. At the very least, they prevented Obama’s security narrative from dominating public discourse. As a public opinion poll in November 2009 showed, many Americans disapproved of the plans to try terror suspects as civilian criminals. In the case of the alleged mastermind behind 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a majority of the American public opposed attempts to bring him to New York and wanted him to be put on trial somewhere else; 59 percent of the respondents favored a trial in a military court (Gallup 2014b). In the end, pressure from the public and Congress grew to such an extent that the government dropped these plans completely.

As the above indicates, Obama’s attempt to repoliticize the treatment of terrorist suspects was continually contested, and this was particularly the case after December 25, 2009. On Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian airline passenger, attempted to blow up a plane during its approach to Detroit. When Attorney General Holder ordered that Abdulmutallab be treated as a civilian criminal – like previous terrorist suspects who had been arrested in the United States – reactions, again, were fierce:

On “Inside Washington,” Charles Krauthammer declared that it was “almost criminal” that Holder had allowed Abdulmutallab access to an attorney. Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, appeared on ABC, saying, “Why in God’s name would you stop questioning a terrorist?”(Mayer 2010)

Giuliani was referring to the need to read the Miranda Rights to civilian criminals. On this matter, Jospeh Lieberman, chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee criticized the Obama administration and urged it to reverse this ‘error’:

The decision to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal rather than a UEB [unprivileged enemy belligerent] almost certainly prevented the military and the intelligence community from obtaining information that would have been critical to learning more about how our enemy operates and to preventing future attacks against our homeland and Americans and our allies throughout the world. (U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 2010)

In line with this reasoning, Lieberman – an independent senator – urged the administration to treat Abdulmutallab as an enemy combatant, to interrogate him, and to try him before a military commission. A similar demand was made by Peter King, the leading Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, who said it was a mistake to treat Abdulmutallab as a common criminal (NBC Today 2009). Bush’s framing had clearly been absorbed by many, and it proved to be lasting. In this framing the ‘other’ was a secret carrier of valuable information – and gathering this information was more important than complying with the rule of law. In addition to the comments cited above, demands were made that Abdulmutallab be transferred directly to Guantanamo. Legal experts emphasized that this was unconstitutional; however, during the Bush presidency the American people had seen that this could be done anyway.144 In the course of this development, Attorney General Holder was not only criticized by Republicans but also by Democrats. However, Republicans also called for his resignation. At the end of January 2010, top-ranking senate Republican Lamar Alexander suggested on Fox News that Holder should “step down” because he was “not making a distinction between enemy combatants and terrorists flying into Detroit trying to blow up planes and American citizens who are committing a crime” (Jacoby 2010). With this development, Obama’s security policy came under even more pressure. Whereas Obama was once again accused of not grasping the true nature of the threat, he was also condemned for his wording. As Fox News anchor Jim Angle put it:

he calls them violent extremists. A guy who shoots an abortion doctor is a violent extremist. The nature of the threat that we’re facing is jihadism […], that’s the threat. It is a word he dare not use. (King 2014: 103)