Civil Trial of 9-11 Mastermind and Other Terrorists a Grand Gesture - But is it Wise?
The United States prides itself on being a nation ruled by laws; in practice, it's a nation that's ruled by competing special interests.
Because of the back and forth between the political parties, and the sweeping change putting Democrats in complete control of both houses of Congress, nearly anything that contravenes the doctrines of the former Bush Administration is going to be popular, and will sell to a certain political base, regardless of how procedurally, or structurally, sound it is.
This includes trying terrorists in the New York public court system, rather than a military tribunal under the Geneva Conventions.
While much ink has been spilled about how the Bush Administration violated the Geneva conventions by incarcerating people as enemy combatants, the reality of the matter is that the Geneva Conventions have specific rules in place for dealing with non government actors taking up the roles of combat in a war zone: If you are waging war in a war zone, and are not wearing some identifying mark, your rights under the Geneva Conventions more or less amount to a speedy trial run by a Captain or lower, where the penalty for conviction is being taken out and shot as a spy or a terrorist.
The legal precedence for this is hostis humani generis - an enemy of all mankind.
It was applied in Roman times to both land and sea conflict (and is the traditional penalty for piracy), and has been carried through and codified for 400 years of rules of warfare.
By capturing, detaining and using them as intelligence assets, the US Armed Forces have given the terrorists more rights than they should legitimately be granted under the Geneva Accords - they are treated as formal prisoners of war, with all the rights and privileges granted to them, even though they've been taken under arms without a mutually agreed upon symbol of identification.
By trying them in a civil court, civil evidentiary rules are in force, which will result in several US intelligence gathering techniques being exposed.
Is scoring points against the opposition party (while proclaiming moral superiority) worth risking the lives of Americans, Iraqis and Afghans by giving out the techniques that the US hunts terrorists with on a world stage? In the end, this is partisan showmanship, and, sadly, the likely result is going to be a mistrial.
When the President states "it won't be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.
", he has just handed a major weapon to the defense attorneys in this case - that if the President says that on the national news, there IS no neutral venue where this trial can occur and a jury selected that's unbiased.
While it is likely that US Attorney General Eric Holder has a great deal of evidence to swing the jury with, bringing it out into a media circus for, bluntly, political points against the Republican Party may not be in the best interests of the prosecution, or the security interests of the United States.
Because of the back and forth between the political parties, and the sweeping change putting Democrats in complete control of both houses of Congress, nearly anything that contravenes the doctrines of the former Bush Administration is going to be popular, and will sell to a certain political base, regardless of how procedurally, or structurally, sound it is.
This includes trying terrorists in the New York public court system, rather than a military tribunal under the Geneva Conventions.
While much ink has been spilled about how the Bush Administration violated the Geneva conventions by incarcerating people as enemy combatants, the reality of the matter is that the Geneva Conventions have specific rules in place for dealing with non government actors taking up the roles of combat in a war zone: If you are waging war in a war zone, and are not wearing some identifying mark, your rights under the Geneva Conventions more or less amount to a speedy trial run by a Captain or lower, where the penalty for conviction is being taken out and shot as a spy or a terrorist.
The legal precedence for this is hostis humani generis - an enemy of all mankind.
It was applied in Roman times to both land and sea conflict (and is the traditional penalty for piracy), and has been carried through and codified for 400 years of rules of warfare.
By capturing, detaining and using them as intelligence assets, the US Armed Forces have given the terrorists more rights than they should legitimately be granted under the Geneva Accords - they are treated as formal prisoners of war, with all the rights and privileges granted to them, even though they've been taken under arms without a mutually agreed upon symbol of identification.
By trying them in a civil court, civil evidentiary rules are in force, which will result in several US intelligence gathering techniques being exposed.
Is scoring points against the opposition party (while proclaiming moral superiority) worth risking the lives of Americans, Iraqis and Afghans by giving out the techniques that the US hunts terrorists with on a world stage? In the end, this is partisan showmanship, and, sadly, the likely result is going to be a mistrial.
When the President states "it won't be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him.
", he has just handed a major weapon to the defense attorneys in this case - that if the President says that on the national news, there IS no neutral venue where this trial can occur and a jury selected that's unbiased.
While it is likely that US Attorney General Eric Holder has a great deal of evidence to swing the jury with, bringing it out into a media circus for, bluntly, political points against the Republican Party may not be in the best interests of the prosecution, or the security interests of the United States.
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