Does A Democracy Have The Right To Defend Itself?

Today Reuters is reporting that five of the detainees at Guantanamo are being sent to New York City for trial.  The detainees include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who will now be tried in a civilian court instead of a military tribunal.  The majority of the people detained at Guantanamo were captured on the battlefield.  They are generally not American citizens, and there is no reason to give them the civil rights of American citizens.  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has admitted to being one of the planners of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.  He is an admitted terrorist.  Why should he be entitled be tried in the civilian justice system of the country he was trying to destroy?  What kind of a trial did he give Daniel Pearl before he slit his throat?

Keep in mind that the blind sheikh,Omar Abdel-Rahman, was put in prison for the first World Trade Center bombing.  When he sat in prison, plans were made to do the job again.  Putting him in prison was not a deterrent to terrorists planning future operations in America. 

The article reports:

"(Attorney General) Holder said that he would authorize prosecutors to seek the death penalty against the five accused of the September 11 attacks and that they would be held at a federal detention facility in New York.

"The decisions about the terrorism suspects came as Obama's top lawyer, Gregory Craig, who was charged with leading the White House's troubled effort to close Guantanamo, announced his resignation Friday."

The fallout of the decision to try the Guantanamo detainees in civilian courts will unfold within the next two to five years.  It will include World Court trials of the members of the Bush Administration who worked so hard to keep our country safe.  As this unfolds, we can expect to find ourselves asking the question, "Does Democracy have the right to defend itself?"