Holder Will Be Held Accountable
On Wednesday November 18, Attorney General Eric Holder defended the administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 plotters in U.S. criminal courts. Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder was asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham if Osama bin Laden would be entitled to a Miranda warning. Holder responded that the answer would "depend" on the circumstances. At the heart of Sen. Graham's questioning was a distinction between whether captured terrorists will be afforded the criminal protections granted to others tried in criminal courts (a law enforcement model) or not (a law-of-war model).
Sen. Graham's focus and conclusion in this line of questioning are clearly right. While the Miranda issue isn't as clear as he suggests, the choice of a law-of-war model or a law enforcement model is the key issue, and there he's right. We live in a post-9/11 world and should act accordingly.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is not some Bond villain, an errant super-criminal finally put behind bars. He led an organized network of foreigners abroad who were at war with us long before KSM's actions pushed us into war with them. For those foreign terrorists, as opposed to their home-grown financiers or fellow travelers, our criminal justice system is ill-fitted. It is both too much, in the scope of rights and platform for mischief it provides, and too little, in its incapacity to address the overseas intelligence and military issues that arise. The trials of the World Trade Center bombers and of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called twentieth hijacker, proved how incapable our justice system is at efficiently prosecuting terrorists while safeguarding information necessary to our own war efforts. And, the Obama administration's rationale for providing a jury trial for the worst war criminals, while reserving to the military commissions lesser al-Qaeda members, is impossible to discern or defend.
The administration's choice also undermines our criminal justice system. Already, the President has publicly stated that KSM is guilty and should be put to death; Department of Justice officials have indicated that he would be held as an enemy combatant if acquitted or prematurely released; and the AG and others have said that the choice between the systems depends on the strength of the evidence at hand. This is the language of show trial, and demeans and politicizes our criminal justice system. As Sen. Webb observed, KSM doesn't belong in our country, our courts, or our prisons.