The New York Times has a good article, in which several pragmatic reasons for retaining the use of what used to be the most common, normal thing in democracies with the rule of law until ten years ago – namely, the criminal justice system – for trying terrorism suspects are cited. Of course, this is as much a principal matter as a pragmatic one, but in the age of Obama, principles don’t really count for much.
Obama’s view on trying terrorism suspects – either putting them away forever, or giving them a fake trial in a military commissions system - is now almost indistinguishable from that of the most conservative of Republicans. This is not why he was elected, and if he continues on this line, I believe he deserves a challenger in the next primaries, and then I hope he loses.
Of course, if he turns around from what he is now expected to do and does give the 9/11 suspects, who are bound to get convicted anyway, a normal trial, then I take everything back. In the meantime, read the following article. This is not something that only “left wing” “fringe” ”civil libertarians” (should) worry about, as people who want to support Obama no matter what he does might contend. This is really about the fabric of democracy, about the most basic principles you can have in a state to which the rule of law applies – that you give people who are suspected of something a trial. If Obama does not have it in him to retain this principle, then he was elected for nothing.
Leading Congressional Republicans are arguing that getting tough on terrorism means trying all foreign terrorism suspects before military commissions. But national security officials who served in the Bush administration say that taking away the criminal justice option would weaken the government’s hand.
Former counterterrorism officials are warning that the political debate has lost touch with the pragmatic advantages of keeping both the civilian and military systems available.
“This rush to military commissions is based on premises that are not true,” said John B. Bellinger III, a top legal adviser to the National Security Council and the State Department under President George W. Bush. “I think it is neither appropriate nor necessary to limit terrorism cases to either military commissions alone or federal trials alone.”
Among the problems with a commissions-only policy, they say, are that some nations will not extradite terrorism suspects or provide evidence to the United States except for civilian trials; federal courts offer a greater variety of charges for use in pressuring a defendant to cooperate; military commission rules do not authorize a judge to accept a guilty plea from a defendant in a capital case; and the military system is legally untested, so any guilty verdict is vulnerable to being overturned on appeal.
(…)
The Republican line on military commissions has hardened after an outcry over the administration’s decision to send to a civilian court the cases of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, accused of planning the Sept. 11 attacks, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of trying to blow up a Detroit-bound jet on Christmas.
Conservatives, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have sought to attack Mr. Obama as soft on terrorism and unwilling to treat Al Qaeda as a wartime enemy rather than a criminal target.
But Mr. Obama has undertaken several hard-line policies in national security matters — including sending more troops to Afghanistan, increasing missile strikes on militants from Predator drones in Pakistan, continuing to imprison some detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, without trials and using military commissions to prosecute some terrorism suspects. Those policies, which have outraged some civil libertarians, have left the administration’s willingness to handle other terrorism cases in civilian courts as a rare remaining opportunity to try to draw a sharp political line between the Obama approach and that of Republicans.
(…)
National security officials from both the Bush and Obama administrations say such a ban would create major obstacles to swift punishment of terrorism suspects. For instance, many European allies, including Britain, have been willing to extradite terrorism suspects only if they faced regular criminal trials, not military commissions. In some cases, extradition treaties require criminal trials.
(…)
Current and former officials who want to preserve the option of civilian trials note that prosecutors routinely use a broad array of charges against terrorism defendants or their friends and families: obstruction of justice, false statements to investigators, passport and immigration fraud, firearms and arms trafficking offenses, and various computer and finance-related offenses.
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