Thom Hartmann: Up next, my old Conservative friend Bob Barr, who is not terrified of trying the 9/11 criminals. Bob Barr, Libertarian party candidate for President and former Federal prosecutor, former US Congressman, a Republican from Georgia’s seventh district. Bobbarr.org I believe is his website. Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob Barr: Thank you. That is indeed the website and it’s good to be with you today again.
Thom Hartmann: Thank you. Thanks for coming back on. We just had a conversation with Chris Holton, from Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy. We have a policy on this show of never picking on or trashing our guests after they’re gone, so I’m not going to violate that policy in this instance. But one point that he made, that I’m curious if you agree with, is… Well, actually let me get to that in just a moment.
But first, you and David Keene, who is the founder of the American Conservative Union, and Grover Norquist, the Americans for Tax Reform. Three well known, well noted, highly regarded Conservatives, and I still so well remember your debate with John Yoo at the CPAC convention three or four years ago, where you were absolutely heroic in that, and I was just horrified to see the crowd applauding John Yoo, defending torture and you defending the Constitution, and being booed by a Conservative crowd.
I don’t get it why these so-called Conservatives are coming out of the woodwork yelling that it’s a bad thing that the American criminal justice be used. Could it be that they’re just afraid that President Obama is going to get a victory on this thing?
Bob Barr: It is all about politics. Now, to some extent, it’s also sort of an irrational fear of anything having to do with actually implementing the criminal justice system that a lot of these Conservatives and Republicans vote for. In other words they vote for expanding the definition of terrorism, expanding the ability of government to prosecute terrorists, and then when the time comes to prosecute them and house them and jail them, then 'oh, we can’t do that, we have to do it through some other mechanism'. They’re trying to have it both ways, but the bottom line is, it’s all about politics. They’re criticizing Obama. The Democrats, when Bush was in, criticized Bush. This should have, as Eric Holder I think is trying to do, have nothing to do with politics.
Thom Hartmann: Yes. It’s entirely to do with the criminal justice system. The point that Chris made that I thought was really interesting. You know, I was saying they guys are criminals. He said is al Qaeda a criminal organization, or is it essentially, he didn’t say or is it, but the implication was, or is it a foreign government, or a military organization, and therefore if the latter, should be subject to things like military tribunals. And my response was it’s a criminal organization, and then his comment was, well, the Mafia is a criminal organization, why don’t we do airstrikes on the Mafia? And my comment was, I don’t think that we should be doing airstrikes on al Qaeda.
I think that we should be working with local governments to arrest al Qaeda members and put them through the criminal justice system, just like England did with the IRA in [Northern] Ireland, ultimately with a good outcome. Just as Italy did with the Red Brigades, even though they kidnapped and murdered a Prime Minister, Aldo Moro. Just as Germany did with the Baader Meinhoff gang. Just as we did with the Weathermen in the United States, and several other splinter groups. That’s how you appropriately deal with terrorism. And he seemed to think that that was incredibly humorous. That I was opposed to the airstrikes that frankly are still going on, and in my opinion producing terrible collateral damage and hurting our reputation. I’m curious what your thoughts are on that; I have no idea what your position is on that.
Bob Barr: It’s really, it’s very difficult to deal with some of these folks, because it’s like they can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. You have to deal with this organization as a military power and that’s the only way that you can deal with it.
Thom Hartmann: In their mind, you mean?
Bob Barr: Yes, in their mind. There may be some circumstances in which an entity, let’s say al Qaeda, but it could be anything, takes action against our military, and it is indeed appropriate for our military to respond to that. Now that leaves…
Thom Hartmann: Just because of the proportionality of it, you mean?
Bob Barr: Well, because if our military is somewhere, and al Qaeda takes action against our military, our military has every right to, and should, respond to that appropriately.
Thom Hartmann: Right.
Bob Barr: But that does not mean simply because al Qaeda might engage in a military action, that when they commit terrorist acts in this country that fit the legal definition of an act of terrorism, that they should not be dealt with, or we cannot somehow deal with them through our criminal justice system. It makes no sense to compartmentalize these activities.
Thom Hartmann: I was in, Louise and I, were in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. And certainly there was a British military presence there. In fact we got chased out of a neighborhood in Belfast by a guy driving a half-track with a sub-machine gun on the back of it, which was pointed at the back of our car, for the better part of twenty minutes. But, they weren’t calling in airstrikes on IRA houses, as much as the Irish Republican Army tried to call itself an army.
The British never dignified it that way. And even though they tried to assassinate Maggie Thatcher and blew up No. 10 Downing Street, the British still didn’t dignify what they were doing by calling it a military action. They continued to call them criminals, and ultimately brought them to justice. How do we, and we just have a minute left here, Bob Barr, bobbarr.org by the way, how do we reach out to these terrified Conservatives and give them some hope that the American criminal justice system, after two hundred and some odd years of success, can still do it?
Bob Barr: Well, first of all, you point out the history of our criminal justice system and that it has uniformly dealt with both domestic and international terrorists who commit acts within our country successfully in the past. There are mechanisms within our criminal justice system, the Classified Information Protection Act, for example, CIPA, that addresses the issue of not disclosing vital sensitive national security information. We have the most secure prisons of anywhere in the world, here in this country. We have fully mechanisms to address these, and I don’t understand why they have so little faith in our criminal justice system.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah, well, it may be as you said when we began, it’s just all about politics, which would be rather tragic.
Bob Barr: Well, we do the best we can. I appreciate your getting the word out there.
Thom Hartmann: Thank you, Bob Barr. bobbarr.org his website, a principled Conservative, great to have you on, Bob.
Bob Barr: Thank you, as always.
Transcribed by Gerard Aukstiejus.
