One can imagine a number of motives President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder might have for making such an egregious choice to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and al-Qaida terrorists to New York for civil trial. But the bow to political correctness and the refusal to try enemy combatants in military courts and try them in civilian court, is disturbing on many levels.
To begin with, it shows a basic ignorance of the military court system. It is ideal to handle these kinds of situations. The Left has all kinds of myths about military courts, all of which can be debunked by anyone willing to make effort. “Military Courts Just Follow What the Commander Wants”, “Military Jurors Are Punished If They Disagree With Authority”, “Military Justice Deals Only With Uniquely Military Crimes” or even “There’s No Appeal of a Military Court Verdict”.
The mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor was tried under the rules of the Geneva Convention. The collaborators with Benedict Arnold and John Wilkes Booth were all tried in military tribunals. The mastermind of the USS Cole attack, Nashiri, is bring tried in a military commission. Obama is conceding that military commissions are constitutional, legal and fully capable of providing al-Qaida terrorists with fair trials consistent with longstanding American traditions of justice. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 10 of the Constitution says: “The Congress shall have Power … To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations.”
If Democrats wanted control of the trial, and wanted to show that “they” could dispense jurisprudence to terrorists, Article 1, section 8 states clearly that Congress has the power to make regulations for the military. This is not Article 3 for judicial courts. If Congress can control how much executives are getting paid, take over GM and try to seize control of 1/6th of the national economy, they could certainly pass laws to deal with the terrorists as they see fit. But they don’t? Why?
We already watched how the twentieth hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui escaped the death penalty because the evidence the government could use against him in a civilian criminal court was limited by his civil liberties. As a result, the data from his computer, which had not been seized pursuant to the Fourth Amendment, could not be entered into evidence against him. Failing such evidence, the feds had to settle for a life sentence. So we know the outcome could be less than what these characters deserve.
I’m not going to debate the pros and cons of the death penalty here – much. I will say, I heard not a peep out of the nutters like Mike Farrell and the rest of the “Save Tookie” crowd when John Allen Muhammed was put to death. But it feels to me like some strange ideological impulse – rather than respect for the law or common sense – is driving Obama to give special treatment to the perpetrator of one of the greatest war crimes ever committed against the United States. The admissible evidence against Mohammed may not be enough to secure a conviction in a civil court.
Then you have Obama’s stunningly naive belief that by being solicitous toward Islam and overly kind to terrorists, we can convince them that we are good people after all and not an enemy they should attack. If we hadn’t been so “arrogant, sometimes dismissive,” if we hadn’t initiated “wars of choice,” if we hadn’t been imperialistic and “unilateralist,” if we hadn’t avariciously consumed a disproportionate measure of the world’s resources, the world wouldn’t look upon us with disfavor, and maybe even Islamic terrorism itself would be but a couple of isolated footnotes in an otherwise peaceful world.
Leftists and people looking to turn this into a show trial about the Bush administration want to give terrorists Miranda rights. In the mind of the addled Left, pre-Obama America was, on balance, not a very admirable nation. They literally want to use the Constitution of the government these men sought to destroy to protect them from the death penalty and probably even life in prison.
Obama is giving the terrorists exactly what they wanted, a global stage right in the shadow of their greatest success. World wide attention and a stage to air the grievances that, let’s face it, they share with the Left.
And if you disagree with me, you’re probably a racist.
“one of the greatest war crimes”
Ummm, which war was that?
Greenwald exposes Crowley’s BS so elegantly and so completely that I have nothing to add.
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/14/terrorism/index.html
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/index.html?page=2
Here is another article against the civilian trial.
http://townhall.com/columnists/CharlesKrauthammer/2009/11/20/travesty_in_new_york
what I find interesting….
it will endanger U.S. security. Civilian courts with broad rights of cross-examination and discovery give terrorists access to crucial information about intelligence sources and methods.
That’s precisely what happened during the civilian New York trial of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. The prosecution was forced to turn over to the defense a list of two hundred unindicted co-conspirators, including the name Osama bin Laden. “Within ten days, a copy of that list reached bin Laden in Khartoum,” wrote former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, the presiding judge at that trial, “letting him know that his connection to that case had been discovered.”
Well, kudos to Terry for toning down the heavy breathing and writing a little more thoughtfully, even though I still don’t understand his title, and it’s still almost all wrong. I think the biggest problem Terry has getting an accurate handle on current events is that he thinks of EVERYBODY more liberal than Dick Cheney, and more solicitous of human rights and civil liberties than Dick Cheney, and more respectful of the Constitution than Dick Cheney, as being part of some huge monolithic “Left.” Well, we’re not. Terry doesn’t even notice how conservative and cautious Obama and his administration are, especially when it comes to public safety versus civil liberties.
For one thing, the Obama justice department under AG Holder is definitely going for the death penalty for the five douchebags. For another thing, they are certain that they have enough evidence, NOT obtained unconstitutionally by torture, to fry the bastards. Or else they wouldn’t be going forward with civilian trials.
This is precisely what civil libertarians and strict Constitutionalists like Glennzilla criticize Obama for – agreeing to civilian trials only if they’re sure they can get a guilty verdict, otherwise going with military commissions with their lower burdens if they think that will get a conviction, and as a last resort just holding the suspects in “preventive detention” forever. Maybe your fight is with people like Glenn who have no real power and are not running things at all, rather than the very cautious and moderate Obama administration.
Ah yes, the Glennzilla link that anon posted is his already classic essay “The Right’s Textbook Surrender to Terrorism.” I’ve actually been working on my own smartass version of this story. But nobody least of all Terry is gonna click on anon’s links, so let me just copy over the meat of the essay. HEEEEEEER’S GLENN!
This is literally true: the Right’s reaction to yesterday’s announcement — we’re too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country — is the textbook definition of “surrendering to terrorists.” It’s the same fear they’ve been spewing for years. As always, the Right’s tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it’s hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.
People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn’t allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country’s 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.
It’s only America’s Right that is too scared of the Terrorists — or which exploits the fears of their followers — to insist that no regular trials can be held and that “the safety and security of the American people” mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it’s the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of “strength” and “courage” to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose “leaders” — people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts — cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it’s hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate — it’s too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists — is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.
Well, I knew Vern wouldnt wait very long before dragging the straw man out of the closet. First, its “every other country can host war crime trials in their capitals” – uh, Vern, New York isn’t our capital. And then its, “oh, the right is just scared.”
Well, then the Left is just stupid. And that’s all I have to say. This is a sycophantic bow to political correctness and the Lefts continuing denial to confront evil. It wants to make victims out of these men just like it is doing Hasan and make you afraid to step up and demand justice. Nice.
And by the way, continuing to distort military trials as something other than “normal” – and what would Vern know about NORMAL? – is to distort reality in as big a way as it gets. Sorry Vern, you don’t get to set the parameters. In fact, the only NORMAL thing would be to treat these men in the way American law – not the laws of the rest of the world – has for two and a half centuries. Once again a great example of the arrogant elitist Left thinking it is SO much smarter than the rest of human history, when it hasn’t a clue at all.
Vern wouldnt wait very long before dragging the straw man out of the closet. First, its “every other country can host war crime trials in their capitals” – uh, Vern, New York isn’t our capital. And then its, “oh, the right is just scared.”
Well, reading comprehension and Terry Crowley have always been a difficult fit, but I guess the fact that this is Glenn Greenwald speaking and not me isn’t that important since I did deem him worthy of quoting. And what “strawman” – I think Terry doesn’t even understand the concept of a “strawman argument” despite all the effort we have made to explain it to him.
Silly, who ever said New York was the capital? Oh, now Terry would support holding the trial in Washington instead? Didn’t think so. So what’s your silly point. And yes, the right is scared. The GOP is the Fear Party. It worked for them spectacularly in 2002 and 2004, so well that they cling to it like Pavlov’s drooling dog despite its diminishing returns in 2006 and 8. I promise my “2009 Orgy of Bedwetting” post today, even though its observations are so beyond obvious that it’s mostly a comedy effort.
Let’s see, “making victims out of Hasan,” “political correctness,” – Terry who still doesn’t understand the idea of a “strawman argument” is condemned, like those who forget history, to repeat it.
On military trials vs. civilian trials let’s see what the far left far left NOT NORMAL Jack Goldsmith and Jim Comey (George W Bush justice dept) have to say: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/19/AR2009111903470.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
HOLDER’S REASONABLE DECISION
Reasonable minds can disagree about Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four other alleged Sept. 11 perpetrators in a Manhattan federal court. But some prominent criticisms are exaggerated, and others place undue faith in military commissions as an alternative to civilian trials.
Mohammed is many things: an enemy combatant in a war against the United States whom the government can detain without trial until the conflict ends; a war criminal subject to trial by military commission under the laws of war; and someone answerable in federal court for violations of the U.S. criminal code. Which system he is placed in for purposes of incapacitation and justice involves complex legal and political trade-offs.
A trial in Manhattan will bring enormous media attention and require unprecedented security. But it is unlikely to make New York a bigger target than it has been since February 1993, when Mohammed’s nephew Ramzi Yousef attacked the World Trade Center. If al-Qaeda could carry out another attack in New York, it would — a fact true a week ago and for a long time. Its inability to do so is a testament to our military, intelligence and law enforcement responses since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In deciding to use federal court, the attorney general probably considered the record of the military commission system that was established in November 2001. This system secured three convictions in eight years. The only person who had a full commission trial, Osama bin Laden’s driver, received five additional months in prison, resulting in a sentence that was shorter than he probably would have received from a federal judge.
One reason commissions have not worked well is that changes in constitutional, international and military laws since they were last used, during World War II, have produced great uncertainty about the commissions’ validity. This uncertainty has led to many legal challenges that will continue indefinitely — hardly an ideal situation for the trial of the century.
By contrast, there is no question about the legitimacy of U.S. federal courts to incapacitate terrorists. Many of Holder’s critics appear to have forgotten that the Bush administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid; al-Qaeda agent Jose Padilla; “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh; the Lackawanna Six; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was prosecuted for the same conspiracy for which Mohammed is likely to be charged. Many of these terrorists are locked in a supermax prison in Colorado, never to be seen again.
In terrorist trials over the past 15 years, federal prosecutors and judges have gained extensive experience protecting intelligence sources and methods, limiting a defendant’s ability to raise irrelevant issues and tightly controlling the courtroom. Moussaoui’s trial was challenging because his request for access to terrorists held at “black” sites had to be litigated. Difficulties also arose because Moussaoui acted as his own lawyer, and the judge labored to control him. But it is difficult to imagine a military commission of rudimentary fairness that would not allow a defendant a similar right to represent himself and speak out in court.
In either trial forum, defendants will make an issue of how they were treated and attempt to undermine the trial politically. These efforts are likely to have more traction in a military than a civilian court. No matter how scrupulously fair the commissions are, defendants will criticize their relatively loose rules of evidence, their absence of a civilian jury and their restrictions on the ability to examine classified evidence used against them. Some say it is wrong to give Mohammed trial rights ordinarily conferred on Americans, but a benefit of civilian trials over commissions is that they make it harder for defendants to complain about kangaroo courts or victor’s justice.
The potential procedural advantages of military commission trials are relatively unimportant with obviously guilty defendants such as Mohammed, but they help explain the attorney general’s related decision last week to consign five men accused of attacking the USS Cole to a military commission. Holder indicated that he was doing so in part because the Cole was a military target outside the United States, but that reason does not hold up. The Pentagon was a military target, many aspects of the Sept. 11 attacks were planned abroad, and the Cole attack is already the subject of a federal indictment in New York.
It is more likely that Holder decided to use a commission system still learning to walk because the Cole case is relatively weak and will benefit from the marginal advantages the commission system offers the government. It is also likely that the Justice Department will decide that many other terrorists at Guantanamo Bay will not be tried in civilian or military court but, rather, will be held under a military detention rationale more suitable to the circumstances of their cases.
These decisions have already invited charges of opportunistic forum shopping. The Bush administration, criticized on similar grounds, properly explained that it would use whatever lawful tool worked best, all things considered, to incapacitate a particular terrorist. Holder’s decisions appear to reflect a similarly pragmatic approach.
Of course, the attorney general made a different call on Mohammed than did the Bush administration. The wisdom of that difficult judgment will be determined by future events. But Holder’s critics do not help their case by understating the criminal justice system’s capacities, overstating the military system’s virtues and bumper-stickering a reasonable decision.
Jim Comey, a deputy attorney general and U.S. attorney in Manhattan during the Bush administration, is general counsel of Lockheed Martin Corp. Jack Goldsmith, an assistant attorney general during the Bush administration, teaches at Harvard Law School and is on the Hoover Institution’s Task Force on National Security and Law.
I know, I know, couple of heavy breathing coffee filters, what would THEY know about normal? LOL LOL LOL LMAO LMAO ROTFLMAO You know rolling around on the floor going where the hell did my ass go I think it just detached from laughing so hard at scaredycats like Crowley and the Republicans!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Geez, with all the imaginary flies Vern is swatting at, you would think he would have just run off screaming into the distance, where he belongs.
Lesson for the day: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Man_argument
When Vern talks about the motivations of others rather than the argument at hand, thats a straw man. When Vern talks about how the inconsistency of others, rather than the facts at hand, thats a straw man.
When Vern picks out one detail in the argument and then bases his response to the cherry picked fact and thinks that repeating fallaciousness is a retort, thats a straw man.
Vern, you were the one who made “the example” that other nations have held trials in their capital. No, you’d rather have it in the shadow of the Little Eichmanns as an example of how tolerant you supposedly are. When actually Leftists quake in their boots and lose their lunch at the prospect of naming a rampaging Islamic extremist as a terrorist. You’d rather say “maybe he had a toothache.” Its you who are frightened, and unable to confront evil and name it. Its you who are frightened of losing an opportunity to propagandize the trials of mass murderers for political profit.
I don’t think anyone thinks Democrats are being brave. That simply isn’t in their lexicon. Terrorism wasn’t mentioned once in Democrat debates, because for them it doesn’t exist. Its either Americas fault, or its a law enforcement problem. Give it up Vern. Democrats trying to act strong is like the little chihuahua that barks bravely and goes yapping off into the distance.
Now, play nice with the others while I am busy today. I’ll clean up your rhetorical mess when I get home.
Well as usual it seems from Crowley’s comments that he either doesn’t read or comprehend what I write before he fires off responses. It’s like “talking to a dining room table” but that’s okay, hopefully some gentle readers out there are learning something from these quasi-exchanges. Have a nice Saturday all!
LOL! The notion of Crowley cleaning up anyone’s “rhetorical mess”, is rich indeed.
In fact , I found this in Webster’s;
Crowelyism; to speak nonsense, hysterical gibberish; one who has no idea what they are talking about.
synonyms; moron, parrot, right-wing nut, paranoid extremist
antonym; Vernism
And there you go, two examples of mainstream Leftist carpet chewers screaming into the wind about their own argument. Never mind what’s actually on the screen.