Gingrich on National Security

From Democracy in America a few days ago:

DIA: You've said that under the Obama administration the nation is under greater risk of being attacked than we were under George Bush. How has Mr Obama made us less safe and how can we judge a counterfactual like that?

Mr. Gingrich: First, we do know that for over seven years the Bush policy of aggressive national security kept us safe and blocked a number of planned attacks. Second, we are watching the Obama administration return to the criminal-justice attitudes that failed to keep us safe in the Clinton years. Despite the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the Khobar Towers bombing of American servicemen, the two east African embassy bombings, and the bombing of the USS Cole, the Clinton administration insisted on treating terrorists within a criminal-justice framework. The Obama team is even more pro-terrorist-rights and anti-national security than the Clinton team was.

There a few issues I have to take with Mr. Gingrich's argument here. First, I wouldn't say that "the Bush policy of aggressive national security" is what kept America safe under the previous administration, but rather two wars "against" the enemies that attacked the U.S. It's really easy to claim that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT, or torture for those of us willing to call a spade a spade), indefinite detention and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram, and suspension of some civil liberties within the U.S. are what kept America safe for the past eight years. These are the products and legacy of Bush's "aggressive national security."

However, it's just as easy to claim that multiple wars against Islamic terrorism moved far from U.S. soil and diverted the resources and time of fleeing and/or scattered jihadist accomplished that same goal. Maybe Mr. Gingrich is including the wars as part of Bush's national security paradigm, but either way it does not necessarily imply the lack of a foreign terror attack within the U.S. since 2001. The former Speaker honestly can't say, even with any amount of data he can procure from his think-tanks without considerable doubt. Neither can I, definitively - there are just too many variables.

My second issue is his condemnation of the Clinton administration's use of a criminal justice framework in order to prosecute foreign terrorists, and the Obama administration's return to such a policy. Mr. Gingrich claims that the terror attacks at home and abroad that occurred throughout the Clinton administration are an indication of the failure of applying criminal justice attitudes towards terrorists, and that Obama has made us less safe by returning us to this policy.

Obviously Mr. Gingrich again must exclude the casualties of two wars of Islamic terrorism initiated under the Bush administration and from the attacks of September 11th when comparing what occurred on Clinton's and Bush's respective terms at the helm of state. Obviously the terror attacks in Spain, Britain, and throughout Africa, Europe, and the Middle East have nothing to do with Bush's "aggressive national security" regime, nor the deaths and casualties from them. Then yeah, Newt's right.

This whole discussion brings a chart from a few months back to mind that pretty easily wraps this all up. From CAPAF (via Yglesias):