I suspect that Eric Holder and company are putting KSM, Ramzi bin Alsheebh, and the other high level al Qaeda folks in federal court for a few reasons. First, it’s a way of repudiating Bush’s controversial classification of high level al Qaeda people as an illegal military organization. Second, it shows a naive faith in the justice system that does not address the real problems with ordinary civil trials for terrorists, i.e., the requirements of Miranda warnings for someone as high level as Osama bin Laden or the revelation of intelligence-gathering techniques as happened in the first World Trade Center trial of Ramzi Yousef. Three, it shows someone who has not really thought through a controversial decision, which is a sign of a guy making decisions in an echo chamber. Of course, this last bit is not that surprising. Various high level DOJ folks spent much of the last eight years representing al Qaeda’s biggest dirtbags and getting them habeas review and other assorted offensive gestures, which rendered the benefits of the military tribunal system less robust than they would otherwise be.
I really don’t understand this way of thinking. There are criminals, sometimes very bad people but also fellow citizens, and they deserve a robust defense. They deserve this because they’re proxies for all of us potentially, who may wind up through mistake, bad luck, or the like an innocent person in the dock, criminally accused. But al Qaeda detainees are foreigners, bad people, mass murderers, and delared enemies of the United States. As enemies they’ve always been treated differently. You don’t blow up the house of an accused criminal, but you do blow up an al Qaeda member’s house overseas, and you don’t worry too much about his wife and children who may be at home. It’s a different more flexible set of rules where the fears of domestic overreach have little application, not least because these are foreigners and enemies. We’re not going to do this to fellow citizens. There is little danger of any normal American being on the wrong end of this system.
Obama’s a lawyer, and this privileging of the domestic legal system over well-established principles of military justice is part and parcel of the broader contempt liberals have shown for the military since the Vietnam War, exemplified, not least, by their mass expulsion of ROTC from Ivy League campuses, and the mass desertion from military service by those who attend elite schools.
This is an atrocious and indefensible decision, and Holder’s defense of it shows the slipshod way that it was enacted and is now being defended. Watching him squirm, however, gives me newfound respect for Lindsay Graham.
Subscribe To This Feed
“It’s a different more flexible set of rules where the fears of domestic overreach have little application, not least because these are foreigners and enemies.”
Very true, but one of the problems of the modern West is that it is unable to make this distinction, lost as it is in the delusion of universal man. The Left, as we know, is convinced that every human being is entitled to the same rights as an American citizen, and thus demands that every terrorist be given his day in court. But even some among the “Alternative Right” are also unable to make the distinction any more. They reflexively assert that any American government not willing to afford full rights to terrorists will similarly deprive Americans of their rights.
Of course any conservative 50 years ago would have thought this assertion ridiculous on its face and would have easily understood the clear separation between citizen and non-citizen. I think the inability of many among the Alternative Right to make this distinction is an excellent example of how Leftist ideas have permeated the thinking not only of neo-conservatives, but many other ostensibly conservative movements.
Some on the Alternative Right are sensible, including Derbyshire, Sailer, and Paul Gottfried. Others are certifiable and far more interested in ridiculous questions of ideological purity than anything sensible. They’re so alienated they are rooted in nothing and have nothing to conserve. They’re like the fangalistas, but less interesting.
The decision makes so little sense that it makes me start thinking dumb things…like conspiracies and the Manchurian Candidate type stuff —and I don’t like myself when I think like that.
************************
Another point—how likely is it that an Arab or Muslim sympathizer or an Israel hater will get seated on the jury? It’s New York, for God’s sake. It *could* happen and it only takes one, just one person to hang that jury. Likely? Maybe not this time, but what about next time? Think a Palestinian-American with enough hatred against American-Israeli policy can’t get seated on a jury? Sure he could.
Remember how whites and Asians thought “no way” OJ could get off with the mountain of evidence against him? I kept reminding people of how mob bosses often got off–sometimes with bribes, other times with threats, and sometimes just because someone felt ethnic loyalty. They didn’t believe me until the OJ verdict came in.
Yes, it could happen again with terrorists. The guy belongs in a military court. I’m 61– I think this admin is the most arrogant of my lifetime.
I don’t agree with Lindsey Grahmnesty too often, but my Lord, he stomps Holder’s nonsensical ramblings but good.