Unfortunately, examples of failed U.S. leadership in foreign policy continue to increase in both frequency and gravity:

1. We have failed to stop Iran’s nuclear-weapons program.
2. We have failed to punish Tehran for facilitating the deaths of American soldiers
3. We have failed to punish them for plotting to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

In the aftermath of September 11, 2012, an even more tragic failure,the Obama administration failed to have Iraq extradite Hezbollah terrorist Ali Musa Daqduq to the U.S. for trial. The president continues to reinforce the impression of American impotence. In December 2011, nearly a year ago, we predicted that the failure to extradite Daqduq would “have serious repercussions, measured in diplomatic defeats and lost lives.”

Did the fact that an Iraqi court cleared Daqduq of all charges embolden the attackers on Benghazi last month?

By David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey

(originally published in The Washington Post on Saturday, May 10, 2008)

Hamas claims that former president Jimmy Carter’s recent meeting with its leader, Khaled Meshal, marks its recognition as a “national liberation movement” — even though Hamas rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, which Hamas rules as an elected “government,” continue to rain down on Israel’s civilian population. While Hamas is clearly trying to bolster its legitimacy, the conflict along Israel’s southern border has a broader legal dimension — the question of whether, as a matter of international law, Israel “occupies” Gaza. The answer is pivotal: It governs the legal rights of Israel and Gaza’s population and may well set a legal precedent for wars between sovereign states and non-state entities, including terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.

Israel’s critics argue that Gaza remains “occupied” territory, even though Israeli forces were unilaterally withdrawn from the area in August 2005. (Hamas won a majority in the Gazan assembly in 2006 and seized control militarily in 2007.) If this is so, Jerusalem is responsible for the health and welfare of Gazans and is arguably limited in any type of military force it uses in response to continuing Hamas attacks. Moreover, even Israel’s nonmilitary responses to Hamas-led terrorist activities — severely limiting the flow of food, fuel and other commodities into Gaza — would violate its obligations as an occupying power.

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The ACLU loses its nasty suit against former defense officials.

By The Wall Street Journal 

(published January 28, 2012)

The guerrilla legal campaign against national security suffered a big defeat this week, and the good news deserves more attention. The victory for legal sanity came Monday when the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court decision to toss out a suit brought by aspiring terrorist Jose Padilla against a slew of Bush Administration officials.

Readers may remember that Padilla was arrested in 2002 for plotting to set off a dirty bomb on U.S. soil. He was detained as an enemy combatant, convicted in a Miami court and sentenced to 17 years in prison. But Padilla has been adopted as a legal mascot by the ACLU and the National Litigation Project at Yale Law School, which have sued far and wide alleging mistreatment and lack of due process.

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(Published in The Washington Post, April 27, 2012)

The United States has just lost a key ally in the fight against al-Qaeda terrorists: the residents of Virginia, and state employees in particular.

Virginia’s legislature recently passed a bill that forbids state employees, including police and members of the National Guard, from participating in the investigation, surveillance, detention or arrest of any suspected member of al-Qaeda or its affiliates, if that suspect is a U.S. citizen.

The bill, which Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) signed Wednesday, is unconstitutional. It trenches on the federal government’s war powers and violates conditions under which Virginia and other states have received billions of dollars of federal funding. It has dangerous symbolic and practical consequences and undermines the cooperation necessary to disrupt and defeat al-Qaeda plots on our shores.

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