Khalid Sheikh Mohammed On Trial
November 16, 2009 · By Martin Street
Victor Davis Hanson, writing on The Corner on National Review Online, asks,
Why the assumption that KSM and others will be found guilty?
This got me thinking about a recurring theme in articles written over past decade by George Jonas (a sample of which is here). Mr. Jonas was examining (in part) a central problem of high profile show trials, being that there never really is a presumption of innocence in cases involving the trials of men who commit (or aspire to commit) genocide; as a result, trials like this are actually inconsistent with modern Western traditions of criminal justice. In Jonas’ words, these are kangaroo courts.
There are numerous reasons why giving KSM a civilian trial is wrong. It treats the leadership of an organised, international, terrorist group, with legions of fanatics willing to die to achieve broad socio-political goals, as a mere criminal conspiracy. It exposes classified information and the techniques used to obtain it* to examination by a known terrorist and public review in an open court. It proposes that any number of activities committed on foreign soil, tantamount to acts of war, should ultimately be treated as domestic criminal matters within the American civilian court system.
What it does not do is further the cause of criminal justice. It is absolutely unthinkable, absolutely impossible, that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will leave the courtroom in New York a free man. The Supreme Court finding that some of the techniques used in his interrogation constitute torture will surely come up, and in a normal case this would sink the prosecution. It will not have a bearing on the outcome of this case. There can be no other outcome but a finding of guilt and a sentence of death. As it was for Saddam Hussein, so too shall it be for KSM.
What President Obama and AG Holder have set in motion is not justice; it is a showy revenge plot, with the added “bonus” of exposing the Bush administration’s prosecution of the war on terror to unlimited public scrutiny and criticism.
Heaven help us all if this pointless piece of Kabuki theatre goes sideways.
(*Let’s not forget that beyond waterboarding lie techniques such as infiltration that may still be ongoing and valuable; if such operations are at risk of being exposed by the trial they will have to be wound down before lives are put at risk; valuable information in the struggle to protect ourselves against those who would have us all dead might therefore be lost or compromised for the sake of defending the indefensible.)
Update: Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz points out another, potentially far worse problem.
What the USG proposes to try in the Southern District of New York is a multiple homicide which took place within the jurisdiction of the said Southern District.
QUERY: Should the British Government have treated members of the Irish Republican Army who were accused of committing homicides in England, Scotland or Wales, incident to the IRA campaign to drive the British out of Ireland, as prisoners of war, immune from prosecution in Britain’s civil criminal courts?
The administration has not yet announced what KSM will be charged with, but one can be certain it won’t be multiple homicide. If that were the plan, then the trial would be a slam dunk for the defense, in that KSM has the iron-clad alibi of being out of the country at the time of the “crime”. No, the men who acted on that day, those who could conceivably be charged with multiple homicide, all died on that day at the targets KSM chose for them.
You’ll note that KSM’s targets weren’t actually people, but large buildings he considered socially significant to the civilization he felt himself to be at war with. Striking at these targets was him symbolically striking at the heart of the West. The deaths of individual people were incidental to his actual intent. His was not an act of murder, multiple or otherwise. It was an act of war.
Setting off a car bomb to send a political message is conceivably a much smaller scale version of what KSM is known to have done. A more apt comparison might be the bombings of Dresden or Hiroshima. Would you prefer that Truman or Churchill face trial to maintain ideological consistancy? Don’t answer that.
The British government’s response to the IRA does your argument no credit. Gerry Adams is an unrepentant terrorist at the centre of one of Europe’s deadliest homegrown terror organisations; he is also an elected Member of Parliament. Let’s leave aside the notion of KSM being allowed to walk free and finding a welcome home in Berkeley’s political scene. Let’s leave aside too Maudling’s revelatory “acceptable level” of violence gaffe and what it says about what the British are willing to put up with. Let’s also leave aside that the IRA’s goals didn’t include the destruction of the British civilization.
What interests me as that you imply that unlimited detention without charge in a military facility to be preferential from the defendant’s point of view to due process in a civilian court. How is that an immunity?
I occurs to me that I need to clarify something and to apologize.
It is my contention that the bombings of Dresden, Hiroshima, and New York were all overt acts of war. In comparing the men who ordered these acts it was my intention to illustrate a similarity in the scale of the acts, and ultimately how futile and inappropriate it would be for any of them to be tried criminally for ordering them.
Dresden and Hiroshima were targeted in the hopes that their destruction would end ongoing conflicts and bring peace. New York and Washington were targeted in the hopes that the destruction of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and (most likely) the White House would incite hatred and war.
Though all three actions were ultimately successful in achieving their goals, I regret that my last comment drew any comparison between the Allied leadership of World War II and the terrorist leadership of contemporary times. It was not my intent to slander the memories of great men who fought for peace.
As always, Bill Whittle has a better command of language (may require registration):
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=video&video-id=2716