The reasons are legion for opposing the Obama administration’s decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other al-Qaida terrorists to New York City for civilian trials.
But the most significant reason is the most fundamental: Why extend constitutional protections to the worst of enemies, the man who has bragged about his role in planning the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed 3,000 civilians in New York; Washington, D.C.; and Pennsylvania.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not a U.S. citizen and he was not even apprehended on U.S. soil. He is not part of a uniformed standing army and probably shouldn’t deserve protections under the Geneva Conventions. Let’s get it straight: He is a terrorist, not a criminal or a soldier.
The United States is engaged in a war against terrorists, killing lesser Taliban and al-Qaida targets without extending them the opportunity for constitutional protections. Yet we are supposed to now give Sheikh Mohammed all of the opportunities for the now-familiar American spectacle of a circus trial that will capture the attention of the world.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder deems it appropriate for others captured and held at Guantanamo Bay to be tried before military tribunals. How can this be? Why the red-carpet treatment for Mohammed?
There are many well-informed observers who easily predict the pitfalls that lay ahead in New York. One of the best is Andrew McCarthy, the former federal prosecutor who led the case against the “Blind Sheikh,” the man behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
“As experienced defense lawyers well know,” McCarthy wrote this week, “when there is no mystery about whether the defendants have committed the charged offenses, and where there is controversy attendant to the government’s investigative tactics, the standard defense strategy is to put the government on trial.”
That’s right. Beyond motions for changes of venue and other delaying tactics, there will be motions for the discovery of evidence related to U.S. intelligence gathering and there will be challenges over interrogation techniques. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as everyone knows, was waterboarded. Will his confessions hold up?
Or will there be enough doubt for a hung jury? Or will a judge find some technicality to acquit. Despite President Obama’s stated confidence that Mohammed will be convicted and executed, there are no guarantees except for the certainty that the trial will be lengthy and expensive.
It took five years to prosecute and convict Zacarias Moussaoui for his role as an accomplice in the 9/11 attacks, and there is no reason to expect this trial to be any shorter. New Yorkers are rightly concerned about the costs of providing security for years on end, as well as their own safety.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts should be tried before a military tribunal, period. Even that is more than they deserve.
BadRockBilly
We should have some dancing Israelites to lighten up the mood.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRfhUezbKLw
You guys can wait a little while before drawing and quartering the accused. Are you afraid of what they might say about the GREAT SATAN. Do you phoney patriots swell up with pride at the broken bodies of innocent children? You blindly support genocide again and again. Do you think you stand for the Constitutional Republic, you phoney flag waving ignorant cowards.
lousia
This circus in new york, against these terrorists who will get off because someone slapped them a little hard or what ever. They should be tried in a military court.
But this circus will drag on forever at the expense of the tax payers of America, What has happened to our country. ( Gone a little soft has it) Oh yes keep on blaming Bush, I think thats getting a little old you libs.
I guess you don't remember how many innocent people were murdered in 9-11 .
Oh yes blame our good editor for a very well written editoral. .
DavidS
It's sad to see yet another huge burst of bigotry and ignorance spewed out by our little country editor. Our community deserves better.
Shortly after 9/11, as GWBush was launching his new crusade against terrorism first in Afghanistan, a number of thoughtful people in America suggested that it might be more prudent to declare it a police action rather than a crusade. Of course, Bush and his fellow Republicans would have none of that since it conjured up memories of the Korean War which was officially termed a "police action" by both the United States and the United Nations. The best settlement the Republican administration of Dwight Eisenhower could achieve in Korea was only an armed truce that continues to this day with all the attendant difficulties we have come to know so well.
No, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and their neo-con minions insisted that the war on terror should be a crusade because they had bigger fish to fry than Afghanistan. They wanted to take down Saddam Hussein and gain control of Iraq and its vast oil resources. Now, we all know about the lies they told, the intelligence they cherry-picked and the false information about WMD's in Iraq that they bannered in order to achieve their bigger and, to them, better war.
To their surprise, however, much of the rest of the world was not taken in. Unlike the grand WWII coalition that defeated German, Japanese and Italian fascism or the fine coalition that GWBush's daddy patiently assembled to eject Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1990-91, little GW was only able to assemble a coalition of the barely willing and unenthusiastic by paying them off in advance for their miniscule troop contributions in Iraq. Only Tony Blair's Britain and John Howard's Australia joined in enthusiastically, but the British and Aussie publics very quickly turned sour on the entire enterprise.
Had GWBush been smarter and announced that the 9/11 attacks were the work of a single, well financed terrorist group named Al Qaeda and that the nations of the world should join in a coordinated effort to track these criminals down, he could have assembled a much larger and far more willing coalition than he did. He would have had far greater cooperation from both the military and police forces of many other countries. It was a fateful decision, because it meant America had to fight both wars virtually alone. Bush and Cheney also chose to emphasize the wrong war producing the catastrophic results we see in Afghanistan today.
Our little country editor probably understands that terrorists are criminals and deserve criminal punishment, but he is incapable of understanding that terrorists and criminals can be dealt with equally effectively by our civilian controlled justice system. There is no need to deny the accused the basic rights accorded to all accused criminals under our system. They should have the right to know the evidence against them, to confront their accusers, to be represented by competent counsel and not to be tortured or held incommunicado at home or abroad and tortured by those who detained or arrested them. Indeed, by granting these terrorists the same right to a day in court that we grant to our own criminals, we demonstrate to them and the world the vast superiority of America's system of criminal justice.
There is also no reason to fear that the trials will become show trials or three ring circuses as our little editor fears. Remember, show trials were introduced by the Soviets under Lenin and Stalin and later adopted by Hitler most spectacularly when he slaughtered the military officers and civilians who had tried unsuccessfully to kill him on July 20, 1944. It will also not be a circus like the O.J. Simpson trial nor that of Zacharias Moussaoui. It will be a solemn judicial proceeding especially impressive because it takes place within a mile of where the greatest crime was committed. It will be an open trial attended by relatives of the victims, the American and world media and ordinary citizens.
Americans have no need to fear such a trial. It will do us proud and go a long way towards restoring America's prestige and respect that suffered so much under the GWBush administration. Let's hope our little editor spends a good deal of time watching it.