Obama's Tone Deaf on Terror

The Obama administration's policy on captured terrorists seems like it's aimed more at pleasing America's critics than making Americans feel safer, writes Richard Cohen. Blunders like trying to hold the KSM trial in New York and giving the "underwear bomber" suspect his Miranda rights show that the administration is tone-deaf to the public's concerns, Cohen writes in the Washington Post.

The Bush administration damaged America's international reputation by bending over backwards to prevent another 9/11, but the Obama administration appears to be bending over backwards not to be the Bush administration, Cohen writes. It's striving to ensure that terror suspects get American civil liberties. It forgets that "the paramount civil liberty is a sense of security and this, sad to say, has eroded under Barack Obama."