online.wsj.com

What Does the Detroit Bomber Know?
The president’s job is not detecting bombs at the airport but neutralizing terrorists before they get there.

Well-deserved mockery has already been heaped on the move-along-folks-nothing-to-see-here tone of the administration’s initial pronouncements—from Janet Napolitano’s “the system worked,” to President Obama’s statement that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was an “isolated extremist.” This week brought little improvement.

The president acknowledged that the plot had been hatched in Yemen, but not without adding the misleading statement that Yemen faces “crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies.” That Yemenis have to cope with “crushing poverty” is irrelevant here. Abdulmutallab is the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker. Other jihadists, including the physician who blew himself up and killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan last week, and indeed the millionaire Osama bin Laden, prove that poverty does not beget terrorists.
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Holding Abdulmutallab for a time in military custody, regardless of where he is ultimately to be charged, would have been entirely lawful—even in the view of the current administration, which has taken the position that it needs no further legislative authority to hold dangerous detainees even for a lengthy period in the United States. Then we could decide at relative leisure where to charge him—whether before a military commission or before a civilian court.