Prosecute the Terrorists in Civil Court
The idea of trying the terrorists responsible for the attacks on 9/11 in civil court has been causing a tremendous amount of anxiety for people, especially those that live in Manhattan. For some, they feel that they shouldn’t be brought so close to where the World Trade Center is. For others, they feel as if they should be tried in a military tribunal. Others feel that they shouldn’t even be brought onto American soil. One thing is for certain: something needs to be done about them.
As much as it might seem nerve wracking to have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – the mastermind behind 9/11 – brought into New York to try him, that is the only effective way to do it. The 9/11 attacks was a criminal act, not a military act, and therefore, they can’t be tried in a military tribunal. Had it been a country that was attacking us with soldiers, they would be tried by a military tribunal. But, because this was a criminal act, our law dictates that they must be tried as criminals.
The most justice will be done if these individuals are brought into court and tried by a jury. Furthermore, it will keep everyone quiet. If they are tried in a military court, what you will find is a ton of human rights groups saying that they were “not treated fair” and “not represented to their utmost abilities,” so there will be appeals. By having this done in a civil court, a defense lawyer will do it more effectively and when they are found guilty, there won’t be any room for argument against it. Sure, there might be appeals, but if what the government says is true about all their fact finding, there should be more than enough information to put them away for life.
As for the topic of trying them in New York…If I murdered someone in Brooklyn, I would be brought to court in Brooklyn. These terrorists committed a crime in Manhattan and should be tried in New York because of that. Fear of being attacked again by the terrorists is not something to worry about simply because security is going to ramped up. Fear of a terrorist attack because we’re prosecuting them. That’s terrorism! They try and put fear into people’s hearts to get their way, but if we don’t show them that fear, they lose. There might be repercussions, but this is our legal system and it is the right way to put these criminals behind bars.
These terrorists came to our country and committed a tremendously heinous crime. They should be prosecuted by our legal system, not put away by military rules. We might be emotional about it, but the right way is still the right way even if it bothers us incredibly. That is why we have laws. Just because they are not American doesn’t mean we don’t prosecute them the same way an American would.
Expect the legal proceedings to get hot and expect torture to be brought up. However, I have faith that there is enough information gathered without torture to put these individuals in jail for life. The only emotional thing I can say is that I hope they are thrown into general population after being found guilty. One step at a time, though. While it might be emotionally trying, it is important that we prosecute them in civil court so that they don’t go down as martyrs and help breed a future generation of terrorists. It might seem difficult, but sometimes it takes difficulty for great success.
I think you’re wrong on this one on a number of points:
1) This wasn’t a criminal act, it was an act of war. Al-Queda had declared war on our nation in 1996 and earlier.
2) Our civilian court system isn’t meant to keep the sensitive intelligence that will be brought out in the trails out of the public sphere. See the “Blind Sheik”, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Ramzi Yousef
for three high profile cases where we let intelligence get into the hands of terrorists by trying them in civilian courts. (http://politicalfriends.blogspot.com/2009/11/terrorists-in-civillain-courts-what.html)
3)There is at least a 50 /50 chance KSM and the others may go free. Much of the evidence we have against these terrorists is not admissible in a court of law. Eric Holder has said he is comfortable that we will get a conviction without the confessions and other information we got from water boarding KSM. However, in the past, it has been hard to convict terrorist in court and we have settled for a charge of “seditious activities”.
4) The best we can hope for from a civilian court is a guilty verdict. We can get that in a military tribunal. The worst case scenario is that KSM and his co-conspirators may be ordered released. Can you imagine news footage of them leaving the courthouse and walking around ground zero?
5) Finally, the military tribunal system is legal. The rules were developed with the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches working in concert.
Lets also not forget the cost of this. We are probably talking about a price tag in the $100’s of Millions once all the additional security is factored in. I fear that trying these men in civilian courts will have very bad repercussions. I hope I am wrong, but I see no evidence from historical cases to make me feel I am wrong.
See, I disagree with you Andy on your first point. It was an act of terrorism, not a military action. They might try and say that they declared war on us and we might try and say that we are at war with terrorists, but in the end, their attack on America was an act of terrorism which is a crime. Therefore, being tried in civil court is important.
However, I do agree that it is much easier for them to get away with it. That doesn’t mean that we should go against principle and our legal system and not try them in the correct way. This wasn’t an act of war and therefore, we shouldn’t be trying them in military court. That’s an abuse of power and I don’t want to see the United States continuously abusing power.
The cost is going to suck, I agree. But ya know what? I’m okay with the cost if proper justice will be conducted. I just don’t trust military tribunals.
I think on the first point you and I will not see eye to eye.
On the second point, you make an interesting statement: “That doesn’t mean that we should go against principle and our legal system and not try them in the correct way.” The military tribunal system was legal according to all three branches of our government. Would you try a speeding ticket in criminal court or traffic court? Would you try a murder case in civil court? Would you try a case involving disputes between states in a civil court or in the Supreme court? Our system has a number of different courts for different types of cases because different types of disputes require different types of knowledge. Military tribunals are legal, and are the appropriate place to try terrorists.
President Obama has elected to try these men in a civilian court when he could have legally tried them in a military tribunal. You note that the cost is going to suck. What if that cost is in blood because of the intelligence that will be leaked in court?
I think that if we won’t see eye to eye on the first point, it is impossible to see eye to eye on the second point because I believe it is a criminal act and therefore, it must be done in a civil court. I don’t believe that a military tribunal is the appropriate place to try terrorists because they are not military; they are fanatic civilians who attacked America. We wouldn’t try an American citizen who committed an act of terrorism against an American building in a military tribunal; we shouldn’t do that with terrorists. If it is a crime, it must be done in a civic court.
Turns out that AG Eric Holder disagrees with you as well. In testimony today before the Senate he stated that we are at war with terrorists. I quote:
“I know that we are at war. I know that we are at war with a viscous enemy that targets our soldiers on the battlefields of Afghanistan and our civilians on the streets here at home.”
Here is the video of him saying this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpwlFQ0KjHI&feature=player_embedded
Would this change your opinion on the first point? Does that then affect your opinion on the remaining points?
I feel that we are at war with disconnection, not terrorists. There are some books I want you to read (if you get time). The Pentagon’s New Map and The Blueprint for Action by Thomas P.M. Barnett. It’ll explain what I mean by the idea of war against disconnection.
However, to weaken your argument, we refer to our policing drugs as our War on Drugs. Do we give them a military tribunal when drug cartels kill some Americans in their drug wars? No.
First, your opinion on who we are at war with or not is your opinion. However, Eric Holder says we are at war with the terrorist and has decided to try these terrorist (he says enemy combatants)in a civilian court. Based on Mr. Holders own statements, this is a terrible decision. Eric Holder also didn’t look to any precedent for making this decision. You may agree with the result of his decision, but his logic for getting there is terrible.
Second, I actually have The Pentagon’s New Map on my to read list. A number of friends recommended it, while I haven’t bought a copy, I would love to read it sometime.
I don’t agree with your final point. It is one thing to say we are in a “War on Drugs” or a “War on Poverty”. It is quite another to say we are at war with terrorists and to invade another country because of that. I don’t think the two situations are the same.
If he refers to them as enemy combatants, I disagree with him. We are at war with terrorists, but these individuals committed civil crime because we were not at war with them at the time of the attack and therefore, in my opinion, need to be tried in civil court. So, his logic of getting there is terrible, I agree, but his decision all the same is right in my opinion.
However, my final point is valid. We invaded Afghanisan because the Taliban wouldn’t give us Osama. Therefore, we are at war with Afghanistan and now trying to stop their insurgents. It’s impossible to be at “war” with a group of people because you, in the end, threaten someone’s sovereignty. So, the war on Terrorism is actually the war to stop disconnection and that isn’t a military war so much as globalization in full swing.
You can hide your heads in the sand all you want, but THEY have said this is WAR. They DECLARED war, and war it is. This isn’t terrorism. That’s a new fancy word made up by liberals for physcological reasons.
Considering it was President Bush who said that we were attacked by terrorists, I am confused about the whole “liberal psychological reasons.”
Yea…associating the usage of the word terrorism stemming from liberal roots is just plain ignorant…Bush used that word way too much…the only reason someone would say that is just plain political bias.
Some act as if terrorism is only committed by Middle-Eastern people….the war on terror encompasses EVERYONE! This is a subject that’s very emotional for some, and some seem to lose sense of humanity when it comes to trying these individuals, but we can’t just pick and choose to who and when to apply laws and when not to.
We have to remember it was only a relatively small faction actively involved in the attack on 9/11 on America.
These terrorists responsible for attacking us unfortunately don’t all come from one source. They don’t claim any country. They have many bases of operations and work in many smaller factions. But they DO all claim one leader, whom is Bin Laden. We can take out the organization from the top, which is what we should have done 8 years ago…
We can’t try them militarily because acts of terror simply aren’t acts of war! They aren’t acting on behalf of a location, but on behalf of some sort of principle or motive, religious and political combined. They also believe that civilian death is permissible to achieve the objective.
The problem with snuffing them out is their versatility. If al qaeda was simply a political or social movement, it would have been long gone by now. These people tie in religion with their political and social agendas, which creates a very hard to pinpoint and very versatile adversary.
If, during Bush’s years, we had actually PURSUED the individuals responsible for 9/11 from the get-go, instead of using it as an excuse to blindly invade Iraq while choosing to ignore a very REAL and very IMMINENT threat, we may have dismantled the organization by now and caught Bin-Laden. If Bush had done the logical thing and gone after al qaeda members and sources, he would probably be talked about in an entirely different way today.
He’d probably be respected instead of being laughed down, because now, 8 years later, here we are being attacked by apprentices of al qaeda members that have already been caught and released back to Yemen and Saudi Arabia behind the scenes by good ‘ol Dick Cheney only to re-emerge as leading organizers for their local al qaeda faction.
And it’s just PLAIN SILLY to believe that these people have the possibility to be walking back out on the streets because “very little evidence will be admissible and they could be acquitted” (according to mayor Guiliani).
If you think that could happen then you’ve just been taken by Fox News, and happen to be gullible….Don’t you think that if these people are acquitted, the gov’t would AT LEAST take the precautions to get them out of America?? They don’t just hand over visas to alleged 9/11 terrorists after they’re acquitted of no wrong doing…
And if they are acquitted, I’m almost willing to believe they’re innocent…because if so little evidence is available to convict, then US intelligence is pretty pathetic.
The reality is the guilty WILL BE CONVICTED!! Have faith in our courts! And as someone says above, we don’t send native terrorists to military tribunals, so why should we start now? Just because these people aren’t from the US?
I hope someday all Americans will believe in equality for everyone. Howabout we start to grow a pair, and show these terrorists we’re not scared to put them on trial. If our country gives off the scent of fear during these trials, al qaeda will pick up on the scent quicker than you can blink. Fear is what they want.
If you are against these trials, then consider yourself defeated by terrorists because they have achieved their objective of inciting the emotion of fear in you so deeply that you’re willing to put aside individuals’ constitutional rights to trial…
People act like if these guys get close to ground zero that some sort of black hole will start to form over New York…misinformation and basic ignorance of what will happen during these trials and the reason these guys are being tried in civil court instead of a military tribunal is the reason people are upset with this. They just don’t understand. This brings RESPECT to America. This is us standing tall on our feet with no fear of them. Why should we just kill them?! They WANT TO DIE!! I want to know what is going on. If we send them into a military trial, we’ll never know anything about it and we can bet that it was probably a pretty crooked trial on top of that…but this way we can stare our attackers back in the eye.
We can fully regain our dignity by showing no fear in front of these guys.
I hope you can understand the difference between a country committing an act of war and an organization committing an act of terrorism. We can’t just go after everyone we don’t like with tanks and guns. Sometimes we have to use intelligence, which is something a Bush fan probably wouldn’t know much about…
“The 9/11 attacks was a criminal act, not a military act, and therefore, they can’t be tried in a military tribunal. Had it been a country that was attacking us with soldiers, they would be tried by a military tribunal.”
I was disappointed in the lackluster quality of the entire op-ed. It provided nothing of significance backing the stated opinions. There was no logical reasoning given for the positions taken and no evidence brought to bear to support them in anyway. The quote above is a perfect example of this. Throughout the op-ed JCD merely stacked one statement on top of another, as though merely by making the claim it was a truth of first principle.
The view stated in the op-ed falls completely outside of American precedent, as well as failing to account for the dynamics of asymmetrical warfare in the current era, wherein those without sufficient military means, whether nations like Iran funding proxy paramilitary forces like Hamas and Hezbollah or militant organizations like al-Qaeda, employ terrorism as a force multiplier in order to lessen the advantage of the superior military forces and supporting economic dynamism of powerful nations like the United States. By failing to account for the changing dynamics in world warfare the conclusion is drawn that only uniformed soldiers belonging to nation state military forces can be tried in military tribunal settings. That is not only, as previously stated, unprecedented in American history, but it also hands paramilitary terrorist forces yet more leverage and advantages thereby unnecessarily increasing the danger we face. As such, this strain of thought that enemy combatants should be tried as common criminals is a relic of last century and is outdated. Despite Obama’s current tack in this direction it will not survive as a longstanding American policy, but go down in history as a footnote of misguided policy developed by ideological politicians naive in matters of war and confused in how to handle the threat we face. Look at Obama’s policy; he says we are at war, but then tries our enemies as common criminals in civilian court, while keeping still others incarcerated indefinitely without charges in Gitmo and soon to be American prisons. It’s total confusion.
I read a number of other articles on this site and they all reflect the same sort of lackluster quality where hard hitting argumentation is totally absent. It’s totally absent. It’s like ordering a hamburger and just getting a bun with condiments and some lettuce. There is no meat to the content, no show of reasoning which leads readers to see how the writers have arrived at their conclusions and no accounting, refutation or explanation of why the common opposing views are wrong.
I had arrived here with excitement anticipating contributing content, but after looking around the caliber of content is not sufficient enough to be attractive. The writing is fine, nothing wrong with that, but it lacks argumentative weight and insight. I wish you luck with your endeavor, but you need to add meat if you want to survive on the Internet. The competition is fierce.
Thank you, Hondo, for your honest comment. I will be certain to put more meat, as you explain it, into my articles to give them more hard hitting argumentation. I do hope to see you around the site again.
Clearly you gentlemen are way over my head. Maybe you can answer a question for me. Aren’t there a lot of tactics used in the field that would not be admissible in civil court but are ok in the military tribunal? If so, how can we be sure this case wouldn’t be thrown out on a technicality?
Well, the issue with a military tribunal that I happened across recently is that we signed the Geneva accord. Article five of the third Geneva convention states that we can’t try prisoners of war. This was to ensure that any of our soldiers captured wouldn’t be unfairly tried. Therefore, if we were to try them in military tribunal, it means we considered the 9/11 attackers as combatants and therefore, that goes against what we signed.
Then again…We agreed that we wouldn’t torture and we did that, so…
Now, to answer your question. The only way the case would be thrown out is if prosecutors tried to use evidence found using methods such as waterboarding and the such. Therefore, what prosecutors will have to do is rely on the information found without torturing and hope that it does just as good.
Thanks, Jacob, for your response. This war is so different because we are the only ones that abide by the Geneva convention and these people use our own rules to manipulate us. If they capture our soldiers, I seriously doubt they would abide by the convention rules. Reciprocity should be considered here. When they abide by the law, they will get equal treatment. A good example is the impending trial for our Navy SEALs. Considering what they did to the Blackwater employees, a bloody nose seems irrelevant. We put our military on trial but their solldiers would be made into heroes.
Giving the enemy a platform where they are privy to sensitive information that could be made public doesn’t seem to be a wise decision.
These are just my feelings and I appreciate the opportunity to express them. As I said earlier, I don’t have the education on these matters that you guys have, just strong feelings.
The thing that makes America so great – or at least I hope makes it so great – is that we don’t bend the rules simply because someone else does. We have our form of government. We have our legal system. And it is so effective that we are able to do things such as try a terrorist in civil court.
I don’t see this as giving them a platform where they will be privy to sensitive information. What information are they getting that the public doesn’t already know? These individuals have been in jail for years. I seriously doubt that they know anything about what is being planned in the future. And if they do, chances are, we already know about it as well.
By trying them in a civil court, what it demonstrates is that this was a civil attack. The same as if I were to blow up a building, I’d be tried in a civil court. Even if I yelled “I am doing this for al-Qaeda,” I’d still be tried in civil court. These individuals have to be tried the exact same way.
I appreciate your strong feelings. It’s what makes writing so much more enjoyable for me.