One of the odder outbreaks of outrage from conservative pundits is the horror expressed at the idea that people accused of being connected to the September 11 attacks would actually be put on trial. Here’s Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson (11/18/09) on Attorney General Eric Holder’s “destructive” decision to prosecute Khalid Mohammed and other 9/11 suspects in an actual court:
There is one serious argument for this course: that a civilian court will provide greater legitimacy for the imposition of the death penalty than a military tribunal. But the guilt of these terrorists is not in question. And it is difficult to imagine that those repulsed or impressed by Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s confessed crimes will care much about the procedures surrounding his sentencing.
Gerson seems to be saying in that last sentence that nobody actually cares about the rule of law. That’s not literally true, of course, but from the vitriol expressed toward the idea of defendants having constitutional rights, you do get the idea that its stock is at a low ebb.
I THOUGHT BIN LADIN WAS THE MASTER MIND BEHIND 9/11 AND ALL HIS CO-DEFENDANTS DIED IN THE CRASH. IF THEY WERE ALL ARABS, WHY DIDN’T THE USA RETALIATE ON SAUDI ARABIA. HERE’S THE KICKER, THEY WERE NOT AL QAIDA BASE TRAINED, THEY WERE TRAINED RIGHT HERE ON USA SOIL. BY THE WAY, WHERE IS BIN LADIN???
I’d like to waterboard Chenney and Bush myself 183 times for at least 183 days in a row and see if those repressed or repulsed by their crimes will care much about the procedures surrounding their sentencing.
We have seen what disregard for the law brought us during the fascist regimes of the 1930s and ’40s. In the 1950s the U.S. government assisted in the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala, and we — and their people — are still suffering the consequences. In the ’60s we clandestinely attempted to overthrow the Cuban revolution, thus insuring that it would align itself with the other superpower, the Soviet Union, and fought an ill-considered war in Vietnam to thwart a nationalist (and communist) uprising. In the ’70s we supported an overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile, and funded both sides of the Iraq-Iran war. In the ’80s we intervened in the affairs of Nicaragua and El Salvador, culminating in the Iran-Contra scandal, and supported the mujahideen in Afghanistan against the Soviets. These became recruits for the Taliban and Northern Alliance of today. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, it appears we decided to intervene more directly in the Middle East: 1991 produced the Gulf War; 2001 the Afghan war; 2003 the Iraq war. In 2009 we are no closer to “winning” or ending those wars, i.e., establishing security and “democracy” in those countries.
Who has benefitted? Not the U.S. taxpayer; not the U.S. citizen living in a heightened security state; not international advocates for law and human rights. Oh! Surprise. A consortium of Western oil companies has won a lucrative contract to develop oil in the south of Iraq. So perhaps the universally recognized law of non-intervention in other countries’ affairs needs to be reconsidered. Or scrapped altogether.