The Obama Administration has decided to try a handful of the Guantánamo detainees in civilian courts in New York City. While I'm sure this was a difficult decision for Attorney-General Holder and others, it seems to me the correct one. It fulfills an Obama campaign pledge, it begins the process of extracting us from a Cheney-Bush mistake that made a mockery of our justice system, and it reaffirms that we're a nation of laws. Could this possibly be controversial, and if so, why?
According to many Republican politicians, it can be and is. If we take the word of House Minority Leader John Boehner, for example, their reasons lie in the realms of security (what if there is violence because of the trials?), publicity (what if the accused use the media to get attention for their views?) and incredibly, the possibility that the plotters might be found innocent, due to some "legal technicality." (My emphasis, Boehner's words.)
I'm dumbstruck by this line of argument. Can the Republican Party, the voice of conservatism, the self-proclaimed defender of the U.S. Constitution and the American tradition which includes the rule of law, really not see how the other option (trial in closed military courts without the "niceties" of civilian rules of evidence) flies in the face of that tradition?
Maybe Boehner should have a look at some of those old Ronald Reagan and John Wayne Westerns, in which the local sheriff stands alone to keep the lynch mob away from his prisoner, even if there might be some violence, or publicity for the prisoner's side of the story, so that the varmint can have a fair trial and maybe, just maybe, even be found innocent. This is a drama that's playing out today, with a new cast: Obama as the sheriff, Holder maybe as his stalwart deputy, the town-hall objector crowd as the mob and Boehner, apparently, as their spokesman. In a saner, less partisan world, the GOP should be the old drunken has-been lawyer in town who is prevailed upon to sober up, break open his dusty old law books, and defend the accused.
The concern that Khalid Sheik Muhammed and his four partners in crime might be found innocent particularly attracts my attention, for that normally is cited as one of the strengths of our legal system.
I wonder if anyone recalls the Angela Davis case back in 1970-72. Ms. Davis, a Communist, a Black Panther, definitely a radical, was arrested in a case involving the murder of a judge. She, her lawyers, and other supporters claimed at the time that she could never get a fair trial, yet she was acquitted. The charges and countercharges surrounding the trial, in a period of intense left-right partisanship not so different from what we are experiencing today, were heated, and they were front-page news. I suppose the verdict upset the right-wingers of the day, but I always thought it showed the strength and resiliency of our legal system. Reading the Wikipedia article on Angela Davis today (link above), it's just amazing to see how short and matter-of-fact the paragraph about this trial is, compared to the furor it sparked at the time. We might conclude that the verdict averted a situation in which Ms. Davis might have become a martyr, or her trial might have touched off more controversy, or even violence -- and that's also a strength of our system.
The politics of the New York trials is clear. The main difficulty in Holder's decision was concern about the political fallout from the mob. Today's Republicans oppose anything and everything done or proposed by the Obama administration. If that's a viable strategy at all, it shouldn't be applied in a way that weakens our commitment to the rule of law. And (to address another GOP bugaboo I've heard), it's our law, and our tradition, that we want to preserve. We're not doing this for a bunch of "furriners," but for ourselves.
Last but not least, I should note there's another source of opposition to the Holder decision. At least some of the relatives of the 9/11 victims also object, evidently on pretty much the same grounds. Those who do can be forgiven for their emotionalism, but for them there's a principle that should always apply: the victims of a crime do not, and should not, have any influence in how justice is meted out.
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