Yesterday, attorney general Eric Holder held up military commissions for Guantanamo detainees as “not only appropriate, but also necessary.”

It probably behooves us to ask: appropriate and necessary for what? Even he isn’t ready (yet) to argue that they are appropriate and necessary for the rule of law to triumph. They are appropriate and necessary “to convict and neutralize terrorists.”

I could have sworn that the oath this man swore was to uphold the constitution, not to “convict and neutralize terrorists”, but I must have somehow got it wrong.

Holder was speaking to members of the Constitution Project, “a group of devoted defenders of the Constitution — the kind of folks who ardently defend basic rights no matter how popular or unpopular, and regardless of politics.” So it was funny stuff to be pitching to them.

Holder also delivered himself of this little gem:

Let’s start with one stark fact: We are a nation at war. In this war, we face an intelligent, nimble and determined enemy.
[...]
Like every person sitting in this room, like the President and those who serve this administration, and like every Member serving in our Congress, I am determined to win this war. I know we can, and I am certain we will. But victory and security will not come easily. And they won’t come at all if we approach this work by adhering to a rigid ideology or narrow methodology.

You see, he’s a war AG. And, as Dan Froomkin drily points out, why should a war AG have to adhere to the rigid ideology of the Constitution?

It is, of course, perfectly ironic that Holder’s boss used to see pretty clearly that military commissions — quite apart from the issue of whether they besmirched the ideals of American justice — were simply counterproductive. This was candidate Obama in 2008:

By any measure, our system of trying detainees has been an enormous failure. Over the course of nearly seven years, there has not been a single conviction for a terrorist act at Guantanamo. There has been just one conviction for material support for terrorism. Meanwhile, this legal black hole (that would be the military commission system) has substantially set back America’s ability to lead the world against the threat of terrorism, and undermined our most basic values.

So there you have it. Fifteen months into Obama’s presidency, it is necessary to undermine our most basic values in order to convict and neutralize terrorists, and achieve victory and security in this war against an enemy who is too intelligent and nimble for our civilian justice system.

It’s just like they always told us. All’s fair.