Graham calls for debate

Fighting a new kind of war — chasing terrorists all over the globe, as U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham puts it — poses challenges beyond how to kill the enemy and prevent attacks on America.

Tactics change, or should, as the military learns more about how to fight such a war, and strategy discussions become more complicated, Graham said in an interview with The Greenville News.

Serious debate among the nation's leaders is critical, Graham said. But attacking President Barack Obama, labeling him soft on terror, as some Republicans have since a young terrorist allegedly tried to blow a passenger jet out of the skies over Detroit on Christmas Day, helps the enemy, he said.

'From a national security point of view it has been a tradition that America rallies around the flag and the president when we are at risk.' Graham said. 'However, the policy debates are real about how to make us safe.'

Obama made it clear Thursday in a speech on strengthening intelligence and aviation security that he thinks it's time for former Vice President Dick Cheney and other critics to tone down the rhetoric.

'Instead of giving into cynicism and division, let's move forward with the confidence and optimism and unity that defines us as a people,' Obama said. 'For now is not a time for partisanship, it's a time for citizenship — a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands.'

Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said Obama gave a good speech, one that laid out that our superior value system, if we maintain it, will lead us to victory.

'We don't need to use al-Qaida techniques on al-Qaida,' Graham said. 'We need to be Americans using what's available to Americans and to freedom-loving people to fight the terrorists. When you break with your values you are giving the enemy an advantage.'

However, if Obama is asking people who have views different from his own to be silent, that isn't appropriate, Graham said. Discussion is needed, he said, and at the top of the list is how to deal with people being held as suspected terrorists.

Cheney issued a statement after the Christmas Day attack blasting Obama for 'trying to pretend we're not at war.'

'He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al-Qaida-trained terrorists still there, we won't be at war,' Cheney said. 'Why doesn't he want to admit we're at war? It doesn't fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn't fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency — social transformation — the restructuring of American society.'

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Graham has policy differences with Obama on how to fight terrorism, and he is not shy about expressing them. But, without naming names of the president's more ardent critics, Graham said, 'The one thing I don't do is question his motives in terms of running this country.'

On the other hand, he said, 'I, like Vice President Cheney and others, am very disturbed about the criminalization of the war,' meaning that some captives, like the notorious 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are being treated as criminals rather than enemy combatants.

'Most military folks are scratching their heads and saying, ‘What the hell is going on here?'?' Graham said. 'We're chasing these guys all over the world and when we capture them through military intelligence operations, all of a sudden they become common criminals like they robbed a liquor store. That makes no sense.'