When it comes to terrorists, you would think that an al Qaeda operative who targets an American mom sitting in her office or a child on a flight back home is many degrees worse than a Taliban soldier picked up after a firefight with U.S. Army troops.
Your instinct would be correct, because at the heart of terrorism is the monstrous idea that the former is as legitimate a target as the latter. Unfortunately, by dispatching Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al Qaeda leaders to federal criminal court for trial, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will be undermining this distinction. And the perverse message that decision will send to terrorists all over this dangerous world is this: If you kill civilians on American soil you will have greater protections than if you attack our military overseas.
Behavior that you reward tends to increase, versus behavior that you punish.
There's also this.
None of this seems to bother Mr. Holder. Since he dropped his bombshell on Friday, much commentary has focused on the possibility that KSM might be found not guilty. That, however, is unlikely: Mr. Holder is not a fool, and everyone in the Obama administration appreciates the backlash that would occur if a KSM trial results in an acquittal. Thus, the men he will send for trial will be those against whom he has the most evidence.
The perversity here is that the overwhelming evidence of their war crimes gain them protections denied a soldier fighting in accord with the rules of war.
Not only does being a clearly evil monster (to the point where acquittal is near-unthinkable) reward you with greater perks, but there's also the idea of selective civilian trials. The administration wants to show that civilian courts can handle this, but they are specifically only sending the terrorists that they know won't be acquitted in. The rest will face military tribunals, or simply be held indefinitely.
Under that scenario, justice doesn't exactly seem blind.
Worst of all, he says, is turning the laws of war upside down: Why fight the Marines and risk getting killed yourself or locked up in Bagram forever when you can blow up American citizens on their own streets and gain the legal protections that give you a chance to go free? With this one step, Mr. Holder is giving al Qaeda a ghastly incentive: to focus more of their attacks on American civilians on American home soil.
"It is foolish to think that al Qaeda does not train to our system and look for our vulnerabilities," says Mr. McCarthy. "Remember what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told his captors when we got him, 'I'll see you in New York with my lawyer.' It seems he knows our weaknesses better than our government does."
Heck of a job guys. Heck of a job.
And Goldberg has more detais on the "nuance"
Sen. Jack Reed (D., R.I.) defended the administration Sunday on Fox News, echoing suggestions from the White House that even if the accused are acquitted on a technicality, they won’t be released. They would go back to the legal purgatory known as “preventive detention.” That is the right policy; these are dangerous men, after all. But it is an affront to civilian jurisprudence. Under military law, preventive detention is a well-established norm. Under civilian law, it’s an affront.
Throw into the equation that these men weren’t read their rights, were interrogated in a manner that is illegal in civilian courts, are being tried with little if any possibility of an impartial jury — and the fact that Holder all but insists they’ll be convicted — and it all adds up to a farce.
Following the law (civilian or military) is less important than looking like you're following the law.
Obama’s defenders don’t believe it. “Does anyone think,” asks Joshua Micah Marshall, a prominent liberal blogger, that the “Nuremberg trials . . . advanced (the defendants’) causes?” Obama himself invoked the Nuremberg trials during the presidential campaign. “Part of what made us different was even after these Nazis had performed atrocities,” he explained, “we still gave them a day in court, and that taught the entire world about who we are but also the basic principles of rule of law.”
Such arguments are revealing on at least two counts. First, the Nuremberg trials were military tribunals — it was understood that the Nazis were not mere criminals.
Second, they took place after we had won the war against Nazi Germany. We could afford such a spectacle because the Nazi cause was dead.
Wow... You'd think if you bother citing Nuremberg, that one would know the kind of trials those were.
And if that's not enough...
In a meeting with the press in China, President Obama said that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be "convicted" and had "the death penalty applied to him" ... and then said he wasn't "pre-judging" the case. He made the second statement after it was pointed out to him — by NBC's Chuck Todd — that the first statement would be taken as the President's interfering in the trial process. Obama said that wasn't his intention. I'm sure it wasn't — he's trying to contain the political damage caused by his decision — but that won't matter. He has given the defense its first motion that the executive branch, indeed the President himself, is tainting the jury pool. Nice work.
And this is a man that bragged about how he was a Constitutional Law Prof, and the President of Harvard Law review. He's really showing off that firm legal mind ain't he?
And more reactions to the "fair trial"
Where in the Hell do we live again? Is this Putin talking? I will not have the slightest difficulty sleeping after KSA assumes room temperature, but that doesn't mean I want to start emulating the Soviet Union FFS? or Iran? I especially like the idea that even if the are acquitted we will keep them locked up. I mean that is a quintessentially American twist on totalitarian show trialing. We can't even guarantee the outcome.
Holder and Obama have stepped in it and while we will all pay in some ways, they have exposed themselves as clueless political hacks on a vital issue of national security. Bring 2010 on and let's carve away at the clowns in Congress who enable these two to play payback politics.
And going forward, it just gets worse.
The next question is if the Obama administration has intentionally setup a show trial for one man with a predetermined outcome and penalty, they've just proven they're OK with the notion of rigging civilian trials.
That is a pretty chilling revelation.
Well, that's a comfort. And these are the folks that constantly bleated about how Bush was undermining the rule of law and the justice system.
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