Collins on Mutallab

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, one of conservatives’ least favorite senators, gave the GOP talk today on national security (video and transcript here). The subject was the administration’s mind-bending decision to arrest Abdul Mutallab as a criminal with Miranda rights instead of treating him as an enemy combatant waging war on the United States. I found it a bit hard to take Collins’s laborious, “low IQ kindergarten teacher” way of talking, but when she got to near the end (at about 4:00), it was powerful, both the words and the delivery. Her earnestness invested these words with conviction and high indignation:

The Obama administration appears to have a blind spot when it comes to the War on Terrorism.

And, because of that blindness, this administration cannot see a foreign terrorist even when he stands right in front of them, fresh from an attempt to blow a plane out of the sky on Christmas Day.

There’s no other way to explain the irresponsible, indeed dangerous, decision on Abdulmutallab’s interrogation. There’s no other way to explain the inconceivable treatment of him as if he were a common criminal.

This charade must stop. Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such. The safety of the American people depends on it.

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LA writes:

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a response similar to mine. He writes:

Normally, most conservatives would groan at hearing that the Republican response to Barack Obama’s weekly presidential address would be coming from Senator Susan Collins (R-ME). In this case, though, it’s a smart move. If Jim DeMint or Mike Pence had delivered the speech you’ll watch below, it still would have been a fine speech—but we already know where conservatives stand on counterterrorism. However, when a moderate like Collins calls the handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab “irresponsible,” “dangerous,” and “inconceivable,” that has a broader political impact. When Collins says that “Foreign terrorists are enemy combatants and they must be treated as such,” and calls the current Obama policies a “charade,” that will make it more difficult for people to write it off as knee-jerk, right-wing contempt for Obama instead of his policies.

Read the entire transcript here, but the closing is terrific:

The commenters at Hor Air are also impressed by Collins’s performance.

Here’s one comment:

Mr President,

When you’ve lost the Maine sisters, it is clear evidence that your policies are so far over the top and to the left that you are promoting exactly what you mocked the retreat about yesterday: a Bolshevik revolution.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 30, 2010 06:16 PM | Send