Both Adam Serwer and, at my other place, I focus on this element of John Brennan’s “fuck the other team/they jealous” op-ed on the Abdulmutallab case & beyond:

Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lack foundation. There have been three convictions of terrorists in the military tribunal system since 9/11, and hundreds in the criminal justice system — including high-profile terrorists such as Reid and 9/11 plotter Zacarius Moussaoui.

Every line is true. So the Obama administration needs to get rid of the commissions. Don’t try to save them. End it, don’t mend it. That line “Cries to try terrorists only in military courts lack foundation” is a huge concession to the civil-libertarian opponents of the commissions. Yet the Obama administration spent last year mending the hell out of the commissions — even though Jeh Johnson and David Kris’ hearts didn’t seem to be in the effort – and the next Pentagon detentions chief got his job in part because of the confidence he inspired when he aided the mending effort. These are people who clearly know better when other political contexts arise.

And that speaks to the donut hole at the heart of the administration’s counterterrorism approach. It’s not striking sufficiently at the politics of fear. It’s treating that political impulse as a dragon to be tamed — and, in Brennan’s case, harnessed — instead of slain. That wasn’t what the Obama Doctrine promised in 2008. But it’s the entire reason why the administration wants to work with the military commissions and indefinite detention instead of abandoning it. Because it takes a hell of a lot of political courage to say, “If there isn’t enough evidence to convict someone of a criminal conspiracy, then dammit, we have to let him go, even if he is a danger, because that’s what justice is.” (Ironically, one of the seniormost administration officials who has struck back at the politics of fear is John Brennan.)

There’s a quote I like, supposedly given by Rahm Emanuel, that sums this up. It was in that big Financial Times piece this weekend:

“Rahm said: ‘We’ve got these two Boeing 747s circling that we are trying to bring down to the tarmac [healthcare and the decision on the Afghanistan troop surge] and we can’t risk a flock of f***ing Canadian geese causing them to crash,’ ” says an official who attended an Oval Office strategy meeting. The geese stood for the closure of Guantánamo.

But you know what happened after the geese showed up? The pilot, a brave man, very calmly and professionally, took control and brought the plane down safely in the Hudson. Before that, he was a great pilot. Afterward, he was a real hero.