The National Review Online posted an editorial by its editors on Saturday on bringing al-Qaeda terrorists to New York. Andrew McCarthy posted an article at Nationa Review's The Corner on Friday on the same subject.
The editors of National Review reminds us that treating terror as a law-enforcement issue was one of the problems of the 1990's. The article points out:
"While the champions of this (law enforcement) approach stress that prosecutors scored a 100 percent conviction rate, they conveniently omit mention of the paltry number of cases (less than three dozen, mostly against low-level terrorists, over an eight-year period, despite numerous attacks), as well as the rigorous due-process burdens that made prosecution of many terrorists impossible, the daunting disclosure and witness-confrontation rules that required government to disclose mountains of intelligence, the gargantuan expense of "hardening" courthouses and prisons to protect juries and judges, and the terrorists' exploitation of legal privileges to plot additional attacks and escape attempts."
Bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) to New York City will break the ice in making it easier to move the remaining Guantanamo terrorists into this country. These are not American citizens, and yet we are transferring them to America and giving them the rights of the citizens they tried to kill.
The argument for this insanity is that it will make us safer. We need to remember that after following the course of treating terrorists as common criminals in the 1990's, we were rewarded with the September 11th attacks.
Andrew McCarthy points out:
"Let's take stock of where we are at this point. KSM and his confederates wanted to plead guilty and have their martyrs' execution last December, when they were being handled by military commission. As I said at the time, we could and should have accommodated them. The Obama administration could still accommodate them. After all, the president has not pulled the plug on all military commissions: Holder is going to announce at least one commission trial (for Nashiri, the Cole bomber) today."
Mr. McCarthy points out that if the military commissions are going to continue, there really is no reason to bring KSM to New York for trial other than to open the gates for a trial of the Bush Administration. I understand that politics is not a friendly business, but I feel strongly that the Obama Administration and the Democrats are putting politics ahead of national security. These trials will be a serious blow to America's ability to defend herself.
Leave a comment