The KSM Decision

Peter Wehner calls it “astonishing.” Jennifer Rubin calls it “shocking.” Others have used similar adjectives.  But at this point it’s really not so surprising at all.  The Obama administration’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his 9/11 co-conspirators in federal court has little to do with “bringing justice” to the terrorists who killed over 3,000 people on American soil.  After all, there is a military-tribunal system already in place for these types of cases and KSM and his cohorts could easily have been tried under the military’s jurisdiction.  In a post on The Corner yesterday, Andy McCarthy reveals the real reason for this decision: get George Bush.

The continuing investigations of Bush-era counterterrorism policies (i.e., the policies that kept us safe from more domestic terror attacks), coupled with the Holder Justice Department's obsession to disclose classified national-defense information from that period, enable Holder to give the hard Left the "reckoning" that he and Obama promised during the 2008 campaign. It would be too politically explosive for Obama/Holder to do the dirty work of charging Bush administration officials; but as new revelations from investigations and declassifications are churned out, Leftist lawyers use them to urge European and international tribunals to bring "torture" and "war crimes" indictments. Thus, administration cooperation gives Obama's base the reckoning it demands but Obama gets to deny responsibility for any actual prosecutions.

McCarthy goes on to list the downside for the country a civilian trial will result in:

Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.

McCarthy ought to know.  He was the Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the prosecution of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and the eleven others convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.  He’s been intimately involved in the investigation and study of international terrorism for two decades.  He knows what of he speaks.  And it would defy common sense to believe that some in the Obama administration don’t understand this also.  Yet still they proceed.  Why, when their are already military-tribunals in place; to which KSM and his buddies already had planned to plead guilty; to “crimes” which KSM had already confessed?  What can possibly be gained by trying these butchers in civilian court?

It’s clear now that this promised “post-partisan” administration is actually rabidly partisan.  They passed a left-wing “stimulus” package, they backed a left-wing cap-and-trade bill (which thankfully seems to be dead), and they are still hard at work trying to get through a left-wing health care bill.  The Republican party has been cut out of all debate and even the so-called Blue-Dog Democrats have their arms twisted to vote for widely unpopular legislation which may cost them their seats.  A normal administration would be quite careful to keep a hold on the legislative majorities the Democrats now enjoy.  But this is not a normal administration.  It is driven by ideology and ideologues will sacrifice their own for the benefit of what they believe is the common good.  I’d say Obama knuckles under to the left on each issue but are you really knuckling-under when you share those views?  The president, his attorney general, and virtually his entire administration are of the left.  And part of the left’s agenda is to thoroughly and completely discredit the Bush administration.  Hence yesterday’s decision. As Jennifer Rubin points out, that it was announced on a Friday while Congress is out of session and the president is out of the country suggests the Obama administration knows how unpopular this decision will be with the American people.  But again, ideologues don’t care much about the opinion of ordinary people. 

I’ll leave it to McCarthy to explain the consequences of these upcoming show-trials:

…the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.

UPDATE: Someone else who should know, Rudy Giuliani, former mayor and also a former U.S. District Attorney for New York, goes into much greater detail of the dangers of this decision in the video below.  Some of the adjectives he uses to describe this: dangerous, irresponsible, incompetent.  Watch the whole thing and then I have a few questions for my fellow conservatives out there: what precisely is it about Rudy Giuliani that stopped you from supporting him during the presidential primaries?  Would you have any doubts whatsoever that this man, as president, would be zealous in his efforts to keep Americans safe?