CE Week #4: “Due process for terrorists? Really?”
Kevin O’Brien
February 15, 2008
More than six years after Americans watched Muslim terrorists destroy the World Trade Center, damage the Pentagon and kill more than 3,000 innocents, the Bush administration is about to attempt justice for some of the high-ranking alleged perpetrators.
Six al-Qaida members, a cast headlined by Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, are headed for trial by a U.S. military tribunal.
The questions before the court will involve 169 charges, including conspiracy, murder in violation of the laws of war, and terrorism.
The question before the nation is broader: Are we more interested in defending ourselves from terrorists or defending terrorists against intrusions upon their “rights”?
For the last five or six years, the defendants have lived at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. The key word in that sentence isn’t “defendants,” “detention” or “Guantanamo.” The key word is “lived.” That’s the thing they got to do that their victims didn’t.
I can’t help but feel a little apprehension about seeing them go before a court – even a military court. We haven’t done very well at justice in this war.
In fact, lawyers have provided some of the finest aid and comfort to the enemy that money can buy. In doing so, they’ve worked hard to sow confusion in Westerners’ minds about what constitutes justice.
War isn’t a courtroom drama. The calculations of the people who must save their own lives by pulling a trigger shouldn’t have to include, “What would a lawyer say about this?” Yet those calculations are made every day. But only by our side.
We ought to be ashamed that our own good men have been wounded and killed because hesitation is built into their rules of engagement.
We ought to be ashamed that American lives have been sacrificed to fears that some terrorist might file a lawsuit against his interrogators.
What we don’t need to be ashamed about – not for one second – is that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed got water up his nose before he cracked. By the standards of his own organization, which has a penchant for cutting off the heads of its captives and gleefully packing the videotapes off to Al-Jazeera – Mohammed says he himself wielded the knife that killed journalist Daniel Pearl – he’s gotten off pretty light, so far.
The people we’re fighting have never shown the slightest inclination toward playing by the rules of the Geneva Convention, or anything else that might pass for “civilized” warfare.
They do not wear uniforms, nor do they act under the auspices of any nation or government. They target civilians. They don’t mistakenly commit the occasional atrocity in the heat of battle. Rather, they strive for atrocities, planning them carefully for maximum loss of life and shock value.
Their most effective weapons are terror, stealth, propaganda and our own civilized sensibilities, which they understand perfectly, sneer at, and use against us at every opportunity.
And some of their most effective propagandists, unwitting and otherwise, are people who demand that Americans focus on the legal niceties of this war and the legal rights of enemies who find our laws quaint, silly and useful.
So, although there were worse ideas than leaving Mohammed and his boys to rot in the warm Cuban breeze, the complaints of the I-dotters and T-crossers have won them a day in court. It isn’t the court they would have preferred – a civilian trial court where the whole legal circus could have come to town. But with the military promising all kinds of openness and transparency, the defendants and their advocates probably will have ample opportunity to spew their venom and insult our intelligence.
With the legal strategizing and handicapping already well under way, the Telegraph of London offered this bit of odd phrasing: “Legal experts said the willingness of Mohammed, known as ‘KSM’ in intelligence circles, to take credit for terrorism could complicate the tribunal process.”
Complicate? Killers who brag about their murderous exploits usually simplify the process.
Then again, maybe those legal experts are hoping for an acquittal.
Does it scare anyone else that this writer uses the way terrorists treat their captives as a standard of conduct for our interrogators? If we are going to use moral justifications for going into middle eastern countries, then we for darn sure better act morally once we get there. However, accepting Justice Scalia’s ticking time bomb analogy, I would not want to be the person to have to explain to millions of parents, spouses, siblings, and children that their loved ones are dead because we wanted to make sure we were nice to the person who planted the bomb when we asked him where it was.
Dear Joe,
Besides summarize the article what else can you do? The arguments of the two different sides are simply not enough; your blogging skills are trash. You are right that the two different sides both have very logical supports. However, in a world where everything is considered black and white (or should i say red and blue) this doesn’t work. We can’t have both immoral interrogating skills and moral interrogating skills. Your post does not connect to anything we’ve learned in class… but thank you for the summary.
On a different note, but in the same key, Joe, you only wrote 100 words. Hopefully you have posted more than the minimum amount of times or you shall not get points.
My opinion on the matter is that if we want to be respected, we have to be morally aggressive. We also have to draw a line and clearly define moral from immoral. From one standpoint calling pouring water over someone is laughed at, but when you think that you’re drowning then it is most definitely torture. What if we do torture someone, and they still don’t talk, then it will have all been for nothing. Also I want to know if these guys who were allegedly tortured at Guantanamo Bay if they knew the whereabouts of a bomb about to kill millions of Americans, or if they knew anything whatsoever. The problem with these tactics is even though some may be able to justify them, for example the example of Justice Scalia’s opinion in Joe’s post, these tactics aren’t used in periods where people would be dead if we don’t get information. They are used as punishment. The 9/11 prisoners are a great example. They may have information, but it should be only information we can get through the Patriot Act and violating people’s rights and listen in on phone calls, I believe it was purely for their punishment.
Response to Vanessa
Well I do see Vanessa point that we do have to find a moral ground on how to deal with these terrorist, but really why do we? They don’t consider our morals when they crash into our towers and kill thousands of people. They don’t care when they invade our freedom because they want the world to be unsafe for us. I am open mined about this topic though. Vanessa also bring up a good point. We teach freedom and fairness through due process. If we torture them. We aren’t giving them their rights and what if they don’t know anything? Then we are torturing someone for someone elses mistake. That like bombing Afghanistan because the terrorist are in their country.
Also on this topic. Most of these prisoners are being tried in the world count because they have broken laws of war. Well if we are torturing them aren’t we breaking those same laws. Though they have broken laws doesn’t give us the same right. Vanessa tries to justify this saying that they are being punished, but they have the right to a trail though they have been treated unjustly. No ones perfect. They say we want justice and freedom, but can you really have both.