As President Obama makes his record 20th international visit to China and other parts of Asia this week, Eric Holder, the US Attorney General announced plans to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 4 others to New York's federal southern district court in New York City to face thousands of counts of murder and other terrorism related charges. According to Holder and Senate Democrats who support the announcement, that we will be showing the world that our system of justice will provide a fair opportunity for these men as defendants and will finally bring to justice the leaders of the attacks of 9/11. What it will really do is expose our backsides to additional terrorism just as the trial of the infamous blind Sheikh for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing did by naming Osama Bin Laden as a co-conspirator, alerting him in time to escape the Sudan.Bin Laden's escape (or expulsion) from Sudan came as the US pressed harder on on the Sudanese goverment to have him turned over to the US. Instead their government simply expelled him and Bin Laden found refuge under the umbrella of the highly restrictive Taliban in Afghanistan. It was this covered and familiar territory that Bin Laden first announced his war on the American's who were in the Persian Gulf and where his attacks on the USS Cole and the US Embassies in Africa were plotted and funded. The Taliban's brutal regime also shielded Bin Laden from additional exposure because the tribal nature of the Afghan people, coupled with the extremely capital punishment based Taliban acted to protect Bin Laden as he crafted his strategy to strike into the very symbols of American; Economic prosperity and our military might.
How are the two events linked? It was the trial for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Centers that information about the structure of the organization called Al-Qaeda would first be spoken of. The American system of justice that allows the defendants to confront the evidence as well as the mechanisms of evidence gathering during the course of the trial provided this information to defense counsel.
For domestic crimes, where rights are read and attorneys are assigned, our system for provides a fair form of justice and ensures that the law enforcement arms are held to high standards of accountability and that those convicted are more than reasonably certain to have committed the offenses accused of.
The issue with what AG Holder is doing with KSM and Co. has fundamental flaws in that we do not need to prove anything to the world about our system of justice which has been the world model for more than 230 years. The other significant issue is that battlefield encounters rarely afford the same kind of luxuries that civilian law enforcement provides and it is clear that KSM was not given Miranda warnings that are standard parts of the US Justice system. There is concern among conservative Republicans and Democrats that there may be loopholes that will be taken advantage of that could cause KSM and the others to be found not guilty. The men in question were found in foreign countries fighting against coalition forces. KSM bragged on tape that he was responsible for 9/11 and the beheading of Daniel Pearl the Wall Street Journalist who was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan.
The previous administration took the trouble and expense to establish the security and facilities to hold military tribunals offshore. President Obama and others are touting that most of the prosecutions will be in these tribunals which afford less defendant protections and provide the secure mechanisms to preserve methods and strategies used to gather intelligence from these men. Open courts in the US act against the interests of the nation in that exposures to these methods are leaked back to the terrorist organizations and allow them to react to us, creating substantial loss of life and property as demonstrated by the bombing of the USS Cole and the embassy bombings in Africa before 9/11.
In making the decision to bring these terrorists to US soil, Eric Holder has given KSM what he craves most, attention to his cause. He should be put in a hole and given pictures of sunlight and never be allowed to communicate with anyone ever again for the heinous acts he and his gang have perpetrated on innocents. If we kill him, we make him a martyr; If we try him in US Courts, we look like the circus he is hoping to much like Saddam Hussein's trial in Iraq. I don't necessarily think that it would be a bad thing to keep him imprisoned for the rest of his life and deprive him of everything except his life and to let him wonder what he could do, if only he could get out.
Instead, Eric Holder and Barack Obama chose the rest of the world's collective perception over the interests of Justice for our citizens and the survivors of 9/11. The trial will open all the old wounds in a place still reeling from the effects of so many lost. It did not have to be here. It is yet again, a representative example of the president choosing to stroke his own ego on the backs of the victimized and the arrogance with which he does it should cause reasonable people to blanch at its very notion.
Mike Rowland
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