Yep:
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who as a judge presided over a trial stemming from the first attack on the World Trade Center, on Friday warned that the Obama administration’s decision to bring Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York, along with three other terrorist detainees, to stand trial in a civilian court, reflected a pre-9/11 mindset that viewed terrorism as a simple criminal matter.
Speaking at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, Mukasey described the move, as “a decision I consider not only unwise, but based on a refusal to face the fact that what we are involved with here is a war with people who follow a religiously-based ideology that calls on them to kill us, and to return instead to the mindset that prevailed before Sept. 11 that acts like the first World Trade Center bombing, the attacks on our embassies in Africa and other such acts can and should be treated as conventional crimes and tried in conventional courts.”
Describing a pattern of decisions made since the the Obama administration pledged in January to close Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, Mukasey said that, “What’s followed has seemed in many instances to be a system in which policy is fashioned to fit and proceed rhetoric rather than being thought out in advance with arguments then formulated in support of it.”
Rush was theorizing yesterday that, perhaps, this was all just a sop to the left so that they can – in discovery – find “evidence” against Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to get them indicted by the ICC or some other foreign court. Such cannot be discounted – but in my view its ok if we just figure that this was the triumph of ideology over common sense. Leftist ideology says that the worse the criminal, the more should be accorded him in order to be “fair” because a really horrible criminal is someone who has just been that much worse victimized by society. If KSM really did mastermind 9/11 (and do pay attention to Holder’s use of the word “alleged” in his statement), then it probably stems from his childhood…or just about anything of than radical Islam or KSM’s own moral failings.
But our desire here is justice, and a trial is not necessarily justice (see the OJ verdict). Especially in today’s world where all too many attorneys are relentlessly dishonest, trials are mostly about suppressing the truth and avoiding justice at all costs. Justice dictates that KSM and the rest never be at liberty, again. I know that many want them executed, but I’m not in favor of the death penalty, even for such as KSM. But he must be forever prevented from harming others – and this means confinement and if there’s even an outside chance he would walk in a civil trial, then such a trial must not happen. If he behaves in prison we can grant him many privileges – but the only way he should get out is in a box.
Its a hard thing to do – but KSM is a hard man who came up second in his chosen game. No one put a gun to his head and forced him to become a terrorist – he did it because he wanted to, and there’s an end on it, for him. To bring him to America and put him on trial in our courts is (a) stupid because law doesn’t cover things like this and (b) counter productive because it just allows evil greater scope for propaganda.
We are certainly back in to a pre-9/11 mindset – lets hope it doesn’t end with more planes being crashed in to buildings.
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