Justice Done?

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he would seek the trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others through the military tribunal system, at the Guantanamo Bay detention center - and not, as Holder wanted, in a civilian court on the American mainland.

America had a chance to demonstrate the beauty of its imperfect but superior judicial system by giving Mohammed a fair and impartial trial, in New York, through due process of law, and with confidence from Holder that the government could get a conviction with its evidence against Mohammed and his own guilty plea. But so many members of Congress from both parties - as well as many New Yorkers - were afraid of the need for extra security and the costs to provide it, as well as the inconvenience involved, that Holder was forced to retrench and retreat.

I don't understand what Americans are afraid of. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would have stood an excellent chance of conviction after all of the liberties afforded to him as a defendant under the American legal system. Holder has what is easily an airtight case against him. New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, were for the plan to try Mohammed in New York before they were against it. So were several other politicians who later proved to be less than profiles in courage. If logistics in holding the trial in Lower Manhattan - which is a narrow tip of an island - were a problem - why not hold the trial in upstate New York, in Newburgh, for example, as had been suggested? And is Mohammed really as much of a threat to people's security while in custody as he was as a free man plotting 9/11?

Holder made it clear that he was moving the trial to a military tribunal - the differences between which and a civilian trial are still unclear to many people - under protest, citing Congress's refusal to provide funds to close Guantanamo Bay facility and move its prisoners to a detention center in rural Illinois, as well as its refusal to provide money to transfer Mohammed to New York for trial. He apparently hoped to assuage civil libertarians with this comment, adding that Congress demonstrated its lack of familiarity with this case. Hmm, it seems the Holder himself didn't make the argument for his civilian trial proposal strongly enough over the past few months, nor did the White House make it forcefully either.

Politics ultimately doomed the hope of trying Mohammed in a public arena and allowing the judicial system to work fairly before the eyes of the world. Politics led to the secretive tribunal now being planned. It's a big shame.

Trying Trial

Late word from Washington is that Attorney General Eric Holder will have 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad and four other al-Qaeda operatives tried for the World Trade Center attacks in federal court in New York - literally in the shadow of Ground Zero.

Republicans have inevitably cried foul over this, but it took guts for Holder to go ahead with this. Although 9/11 was seen as an act of war, the current situation in Afghanistan finds al-Qaeda practically gone from that country after eight years of American and NATO involvement there in response to 9/11, yet that effort has apparently been as successful as it's going to get. The Taliban remain difficult foes. Al-Qaeda has resettled elsewhere, mainly in Pakistan. The best way to stand up against terrorist acts is to treat it as a law enforcement issue. Law enforcement should investigate and stop potential plots. That's how the British found that cell of terrorists hoping to blow up airliners over the Atlantic in 2006. Any plot that succeeds should be dealt with by the criminal justice system, and the punishment should fit the crime.

Also, putting Muhammad and his confederates on trial in the federal judicial system, we have the opportunity to show the world that our judicial system works and can bring the kind of justice that Muhammad and the others deserve without torture or indefinite imprisonment without a trial. Mayor Bloomberg and his police commissioner, Ray Kelly, said New York can handle the trial.

One bugaboo that remains is the failure to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility. Although Holder says it won't be done by January 22, 2010 as planned, he thinks he can still have it done shortly thereafter. That would compensate for the resignation of White House counsel Gregory Craig, whose difficulties with closing Guantanamo supposedly forced his departure. The Justice Department claim Craig's resignation and the delayed Guantanamo closing are not related, but others see it as an abandonment and a scapegoating of Craig, one of Washington's best legal experts.

Contradictions

President Obama should be credited for releasing the CIA memos involving torture in the Bush administration. It sheds light on some of the most cruel and inhumane practices ever committed in the name of the United States under the guise of protecting the homeland.

However, Attorney General Eric Holder is all wrong when he says he declines to prosecute the CIA agents who were involved in the torture of suspected al-Qaeda combatants. I've heard all of the reasoning and rationale for this decision - the nation had just been savagely attacked on September 11, 2001, we didn't know what al-Qaeda was capable of, information involving future terrorist plots had to be extracted post-haste, the CIA agents were acting in good faith based on legal reasoning, and so on. None of them measure up. By treating these prisoners with the same cavalier attitude al-Qaeda showed toward the victims of 9/11, we descended to their level. We violated several of our own laws and likely violated international law, and we made ourselves hypocrites in the eyes of the world. These agents need to be prosecuted, and their superiors - those who approved the use of torture - should be given justice. Even an attack as horrible as 9/11 doesn't justify or excuse this policy.

Twenty years from now, Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA members for torture and simply move on and not do it again may be seen in the same light as Gerald Ford's pardoning of Richard Nixon for Watergate, but I doubt it.