One of the things I don’t understand about the reaction to trying KSM and others is why people on the right are reacting the way they are. After 9/11, the general attitude was one of defiance- “we’re gonna rebuild the World Trade Center bigger than it was before.” I remember people suggesting we should build the new WTC in the shape of a middle finger to show the terrorists we won’t take it:
And who can forget Michelle Malkin’s ridiculous I am John Doe Manifesto? That was just a couple years ago. What happened to the right wing swagger? When did they turn into such a bunch of scared wimps? When did they go from standing there in the rubble with George Bush and his megaphone to hiding under Dick Cheney’s desk cowering in fear?
Personally, I can’t think of anything more defiant than taking KSM, frog-marching him through Manhattan, giving him a fair trial, and then sending him to prison forever or executing him. That is how you show the terrorists that we aren’t going to be fazed.
For goodness sakes, right wingers. Man up for a change. I honestly think I liked the belligerent cowboy right-wingers better than the diaper-clad bed-wetters we have now.
Halffasthero
It is a desire to turn the US into a nation of bed wetters. Scare people enough and you can get them to agree to anything in order to feel safe.
RedKitten
They have absolutely no faith in their own country’s justice system, obviously, and think that one of those horrible liberal activist New York judges might have sympathy for a fellow America-hater and would sentence him to community service, or let him off altogether.
To their minds, the only safe bet is no trial at all, followed by a televised execution in the form of Chuck Norris ripping the guy’s heart out from his chest and then eating it.
jeffreyw
Bah, I don’t like either version.
Darius
Damn straight.
The thing that really pisses me off is when they say, “oh, it’ll give KSM a platform to spread his views”. First off, we’re giving him a trial, not a talk show. Second, who the hell cares what some madman says?
Cowards, the whole lot of ’em.
Left Coast Tom
They were always a bunch of scared wimps cowering in fear. Shrub, himself, spent the day of 9/11 flying randomly across the country while members of Congress stood outside the Capitol in a show of solidarity and defiance. The megaphone only came a few days later.
dmsilev
Groucho Marx summed up their philosophy a long time ago.
-dms
Seebach
A right wing commenter/troll at another blog I think hit the nail on the head. This is a move to once again treating terrorism as a criminal issue, instead of a war issue. If you want endless war, this is a bad way to go about it.
Seriously, though… even if KSM is innocent, there is no way he is going to be found innocent.
MikeJ
Hell, I have very, very little faith in the criminal “justice” system in the US, but it’s due much more to the actions of jackasses like Gov. Goodhair in Texas. If you’re poor (net less than a few mil a year) you’re pretty well fucked if the state wants to get you.
Mind you it’s still better than military “courts”, especially if you can get a decent lawyer.
New Yorker
Not to mention that the justice system did a fine job of nailing most of the pre-9/11 terrorists connected to the first WTC bombing, the Africa Embassy bombings, etc.
Hell, Ramzi Yousef, one of the most dangerous terrorist masterminds in the world back when he was on the loose, was tried and convicted in the US courts, and is now rotting for the rest of his life in the Supermax in Colorado. It worked fine then, it will work fine now.
As for the pants-wetting cowardice, well, the blustering authoritarian right is just a bunch of cowards anyway. Few of them served in the armed forces, and they felt safe blustering about giving terrorists what they deserve as long as the terrorists were being tortured in some black hole site overseas. Now, as soon as you bring them into court, the pants-wetting fear that the terrorists possess some General Zod-esque power comes out. For Christ sakes, KSM is just a man like you and me! Keep him in handcuffs, and things will be fine!
Violet
Home of the not-so-brave.
Roger Moore
Tuesday, 4 November 2008. As long as they were part of the gang, they thought their might leader would protect them from the evildoers. But once they figured out that their gang wasn’t the biggest, baddest gang around, they started to wet their pants.
sloan
They hate the President so much it has blinded them to the fact they’re acting like cowards.
Three words: Obama. Derangement. Syndrome.
Seebach
Spread his views? What views? That America is evil, but that he was less successful in destroying America than Americans prove to be on a regular basis?
MattF
‘Authoritarian’ is the A-side of the winger creed, ‘scared’ is the B-side.
bleh
Oh come on. Surely you understand that fear is THE motivating emotion of the Right. They fear people different from themselves (I think because they don’t understand them) and so they hate other nationalities, other skin tones, other sexuality, other political systems, other culture, etc. But they also LIKE the fear — as long as the Other is at a safe distance — because it gives them something to hate comfortably.
The Republicans — notably Nixon — figured this out 30 years ago.
General Winfield Stuck
Although I think most of the most rabid wingnuts are personal cowards in both the intellectual and physical sense, that is not what’s motivating them with all this oh noes, hand wringing shit. IMHO
I think at this point, it is pure unadulterated tribalism for a party and brand with three legs in it’s grave and the other slipping. Much as they now forget who GWB was, mainly due to him losing all power for their cravings in that regard, they still have center stage and defend his policies. Largely, because they believe in them, but also because what the hell else they going to do. They were spawned by Bush and Cheney and are children of the damned in that regard. Guarding the Alamo with little more than clenched teeth and spittle.
There are other, and somewhat more sensible and sane republicans out there, at least to know when to quit and do something new, or at least repackaged new. This is what’s behind the crazy tea bag shit and the crazier still notion they can sell it outside the wire of the south and a few other places. Desperation doesn’t care about the odds, it is seat pants flying of the cornered with no where else to turn.
The problem for the GOP and right sided people is there are so many of them, and they are well funded by other crazies that have money to keep it going, until all that is left is Bachmann, Steve King, Eric Cantor et al and the Titanic Stringed Quartet.
Then things might get a little better for them when the bottom comes up to hit them in the face.
ellaesther
There is something so like this over in that other country I call home, Israel, where the right screams and moans and demands and frightens ALL.THE.TIME., and I always, but always have wanted to say: Do you not trust our army, the praises of which you are forever singing?
Only here I want to say: Do you not trust our country, the praises of which you are forever singing?
I honestly don’t know how to get my head around it, because I know that for a whole lot of these people, no matter how insane it might sound, they are expressing something quite sincere. It makes no sense to me.
Jon H
It’s the wingnut noise machine. They spend all their time encouraging their audience to be a) afraid, b) angry, or c) both.
Donald G
John, the belligerent cowboy right wingers and the diaper clad bedwetters are the very same people. When bullies have power or think they are in control of the situation, they puff up and swagger. When they are out of power, they’ve lost the illusion of control and the cowardice shines through. Both sets of behaviors come from the same place… fear, fear of being victimized again. The only way for them to control that fear is to get themselves into a place where they can victimize others.
Anne Laurie
Word is that KSM is too badly damaged to defend himself, so he may not be “guilty” but probably he’ll never be free either. You’re right, though, the Pantpissing Patriots don’t want to admit that terrorism is a criminal problem — they prefer to act like a toddler, or a drunk, who barks his shin on a table & responds by giving it a good kick.
SpotWeld
If Bush had set this up, then yes.. all the right wing bloggers would be touting this as a bold move, upholding the greatness of America.
But Bush didn’t do this.. so, it’s not.
I’m sorta indifferent as to the civilian vs. military trial. I just think he should be brought to trial, convicted and made to face the appropriate punishment.
Justice shouldn’t be bread and circuses, it should be the simple and honest truth that American Justice can be fair and equitable.
But it’s a national event and Obama is tangentially involved, so somehow it’s wrong. Or something.
Sly
There was a time when bellicose wingnuts were not scared wimps?
People like Curtis LeMay and Norman Schwarzkopf were always the exception, never the rule.
dmsilev
Beyond the naked tribalism of “whatever Obama’s for, we’re against”, I think some of them really have internalized the last several years of propaganda about how evil and dastardly and cunning these people are, and actually think that KSM etc. are Magneto and The Joker and that Ordinary Prisons Cannot Contain Them.
-dms
Seebach
Magneto and The Joker and that Ordinary Prisons Cannot Contain Them.
That’s pretty hilarious, since KSM appears to have the physique and temperament of Rush Limbaugh.
smiley
waaaaaay OT: Michelle Wie just won her first professional tournament. Good for her. Maybe she can send a million or two my way.
PonB
IMHO, I think they are afraid of being exposed and possibly made responsible by someone for the 2001 – 2009 period…I also like Donald G’s analysis…fear is the key.
Cue Pink Floyd’s “The Trial” (The Wall)…
– PonB
Mark S.
@New Yorker:
Yeah, why is Guiliani saying the WTC bombing trials were a disaster? These guys got convicted and are rotting away in Supermax.
@sloan:
Exactly.
ploeg
They’re afraid that any conviction will get thrown out because the evidence was acquired illegally through torture, or like Anne says, he’s too badly damaged to defend himself in court. (Not too likely, otherwise the DOJ wouldn’t move forward.)
Much more likely, they’re afraid that people will see him in court and not see the sort of archvillain that you would see in a Bruce Willis movie. Not good for the future of the GWOT.
General Winfield Stuck
@dmsilev:
I get that vibe from many of them as well. I will give the wingers this, they know how to craft an emotional message that scares more than a few rubes, and stick to it like Elmers Glue. And if they don’t actually come to believe their own myths made, then it is an Oscar worthy performance that they do.
Problem for them is they keep playing the same movie with the same basic plot with the scenes rearranged some. My guess is when they get home and say their prayers before bed, it’s hoping for a real and catastrophic terrorist attack that takes out as many libtards as possible. Specially the ones who stole their bikes and mojo.
Sanka
Actually, what would be more “defiant”, is continuing to hole up KSM and his ilk, in the stank-infested detention cell that they’ve been in for the past several years, shoot some high-powered H2O up their schnozzes while in a reverse recliner some more…..maybe slice off a digit on their hand each week with a rusty carpenter’s blade, until they tell us all we need to know. But then, you’d just find that was too much for an admitted murderer and terrorist and be whining about that as well. (Oh wait, that’s what you’ve BEEN doing….)
The same vermin that sliced off Daniel Pearl’s head for all to see, is the same scum that you’re insisting should have the same comforts of a fair trial as a bank robber.
I would ask that the progressive nut-wing of the Democratic party insist on bringing this issue to their re-election campaigns in 2010. “Vote for Mr. Smith (D), we’re proud that KSM was given a fair trial, because that’s the least we can do..it’s just a shame he wasn’t read his Miranda rights.”
I’m sure that will go over really well…
demkat620
@Roger Moore: No, it happened 9/11/01. No matter what they said at the time, that was the day they walked away from the constitution.
The moment they decided to lie and say that the terrorists had tried to hit AF1 with another plane, you could see where they were headed.
Mark S.
@dmsilev:
Yeah, I somehow doubt KSM has Rebecca Romijn helping him on the outside.
General Winfield Stuck
@Sanka:
Now Sanka, don’t git yer panties in a wad. When they are convicted and sentenced to death by the closet terrorist/Kenyan usurper, we willsend you a brand spanking new purple plastic Unicorn with “Yes We Can”.
With dashboard attachment kit — FOC.
Seebach
What else do we need to know?
I understand revenge impulses and how much fun torturing people might be… but in all seriousness, what more information do we need to extract from him? He’s been out of the al Qaeda loop for years now.
Comrade Kevin
@Sanka: Did you type that one-handed?
PeakVT
@Sanka: we’re proud that KSM was given a fair trial, because that’s the least we can do
Why do you hate the Constitution of the United States?
RaptureReadyAndLovinIt
The question has been floated here several times over the last couple years, without any answer that I know of:
What is the difference between the wingnuts acting like scared old women over terrorism and the gay agenda, and Dems acting like scared old women over a feckless press and the scary countenances of Sarah Palin, Dick Cheney, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and John Boehner?
What’s the difference between the fearmongering of “waronterra” and the fearmongering of “America is fucked?”
Aren’t both flavors of the Scary Stuff just standard ways to keep the respective bases riled up?
DBrown
@Seebach: Seebach – you should have added that NAZI SS ways were not what we try to follow – even cheney (I surely hope) would draw aline over that insane and evil idea.
Linkmeister
@smiley: Woohoo! Is that right?
She’s our hometown girl here, and we’ve been waiting a long time (not as long as she has, obviously, but still)!
Seebach
Well, the GOP politicians are the ones that are riling up the GOP base.
The Democratic politicians are gonad-less wonders who inspire no one and terrify no one. The people saying that America is fucked are the base. Besides, nobody here is afraid of the press or of Sarah Palin.
Maybe a metaphor can explain the difference:
The GOP is snug in their McMansion, but they hear a loud noise outside. The father figure grabs a shotgun and screams “you better go away! I’m armed” meanwhile pissing himself.
The progressive base is like a ward doctor at a psychiatric hospital. We walk into a cel and see old Uncle Sam naked, head on the floor, back up against the wall, ass dangling. “Betcha I can eat my poo!” he screams. We prepare to get the mop.
tavella
Because a brave and defiant people couldn’t have been herded into the neocons’ idiot war in Iraq. So they pushed fear, fear, fear for years until enough people were pissing their pants and they got their endless war.
They *want* you to be afraid, fear is the very best friend of power.
DBrown
@Sanka: You are a very sick person. Only cowards offer such sick ideas of punishment.
Rick Taylor
I presume it’s because we’re torturing people, they want to continue torturing people, and that doesn’t work so well coupled with public trials.
Trollhattan
If you remove KSM from the kryptonite netting that comprises his Gitmo cell there’s no telling what further havoc he might inflict. It’s dangerous, Citizens! As Socrates instructs us…Awww shit, my bOb alarm’s going off.
Cool massive beard impact aside, this mother-raper will spew sufficient nonsense on the stand to demonstrate how little rational thought comprises the foundation of Al Queda’s global jihad and discount rug and electronics mart. How can he possibly help them? The only scenario I can envision that could be damaging to us is if he proves to be Jose Padilla’s twin human doorstop. If we’ve tortured this guy into a toaster oven it’s not to our benefit to be parading him in front of the world (and I’d expect an unfortunate accident in transit).
Bill Arnold
Why would any real New Yorkers have any worries about these trials except for how they might negatively affect traffic flow?
RaptureReadyAndLovinIt
@Seebach:
Cleverly descriptive. But I don’t see the difference.
I am not afraid of terrorists, and I am not afraid of rightwing lunatics.
Why should I be afraid of either?
dmsilev
@Sanka: Wow, way to demonstrate John’s point for him. Did you hear the theme music to _24_ in the background as you wrote that?
-dms
El Cid
Has everyone forgotten that it was exactly the same dynamic throughout the cold war?
I.e., THIS IS THE BEST AND STRONGEST NATION ON EARTH and also simultaneously WE MUST DEFEND OURSELVES FROM THE SANDINISTAS BECAUSE NICARAGUA IS 2 DAYS’ DRIVE FROM HARLINGEN TEXAS…
The Soviet Union and the Communists were the most simpleton fools on the planet, believing the stupidest ideology ever, and their laughable economies and pathetic technology make us giggle.
And the Soviet Union and the Communist Party have burrowed into each and every corner of our society, with agents at all levels, even in the Pentagon and the President’s office, and they have their electronic spy equipment and chemical mind control all around us.
There is nothing, nothing new here — except they’ve chosen even a weaker enemy to scoff at / fear at every corner.
RedKitten
@Sanka:
You’re not even fit to utter his name. You’re espousing everything that he was against.
Mariane Pearl has more courage in her little finger than you have in your entire, piss-soaked body:
Justice. Not revenge.
kay
@Sanka:
Sanka, why didn’t conservatives try the terrorists?
You had eight years.
Because it’s really, really difficult, and politically problematic (as you helpfully mentioned, but I knew why conservatives punted).
Eight years, Sanka. Nothing. You couldn’t hide the failures in that prison in Cuban forever, you know.
Incidentally, before you morons continue to insist Eric Holder is putting his city, New York City, at risk, remember:
“Born Jan. 21, 1951, in the Bronx and raised in New York City, Mr. Holder attended public schools and graduated from Columbia University and Columbia Law School.”
mcc
Maybe they’re afraid Obama will pull it off where they didn’t
Sly
@dmsilev: I’d go one further and suggest that he also indulged in the use of copious amounts of hand lotion and rape fantasy porn. And that would be before, during, and after posting that particular gem.
Possibly while wearing two wetsuits, also.
New Yorker
We aren’t. If FOX News wants to dare me to walk up and down Centre St. in front of the courthouse where KSM is going to be tried, I’ll say “bring it on”.
kay
“Holder attended a public school in his neighborhood until the fourth grade, when he was selected to participate in a program for intellectually gifted children. The school consisted of predominantly white students, which Holder says forced him to keep his “foot in both worlds.” This only became more apparent when it came time to attend high school. While his friends at home chose to attend public schools in Queens, Holder’s white schoolmates were taking an exam to enter the city’s most elite institutions. Holder got into the prestigious Stuyvesant High School, an hour-and-a-half commute from his home, which pulled him even farther away from his neighborhood friends and community.
Holder says he concentrated mainly on his studies in high school, and felt overwhelmed by the rigorous academic demands placed on him at Stuyvesant. But the young man stayed well rounded; he was selected as the captain of the basketball team, and in 1969 he earned his high school diploma, as well as a Regents Scholarship.”
But Liz Cheney is going to lecture this person about her deep abiding concern for New York City.
Yeah. That makes sense.
They’re appalling dense, on the Right. Just dumb as rocks.
General Winfield Stuck
@El Cid:
They developed little new technology on their own. Most of their scientists were DFH’s that had to be threatened constantly just to do basic work. Very little creative productions. They stole most of it from us and others.
I often wondered if there had been a nukular exchange what would have happened when they fired their missiles, or if instead of hitting us they landed in Red Square instead. But the neo con cold warriors had bank accounts to stuff, so the bumbling big bear was made to seam likely a giant hungry grizzly, other than the three legged circus bear it was.
Now the big bad bear is a scraggly bearded preacher that can sometimes blow shit up and scare the rubes into ponying up some more cash, but that is about it.
PeakVT
@RaptureReadyAndLovinIt: Fear (wingnut) != concern (moonbat).
The concern is warranted; the fear is not.
LD50
So, what, people should only be given a fair trial if YOU approve of them?
That’s a piss-poor appreciation of our constitution. Why do you hate our freedoms?
Still whiny about getting stomped last year, eh?
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
I don’t understand the weird insistence that terrorism is a criminal problem. It certainly evokes the bizarre irony that some people want to treat terrorists as common criminals but also want to try Bush and Cheney as war criminals.
Is it that we are only supposed to arrest terrorists, never hunt them down and kill them or disrupt their operations in the places where they seek refuge?
On the other hand, the insistence from some on the right that the terrorists not be tried in the US is based not simply on fear, but on the bizarre notion that the US Homeland is so sacred that it should never be polluted by the presence of terrorists or enemies. A variation of this nonsense was that we were fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq so that we would not have to fight them here. Again the idea is that the US is such a magical place that war should not touch us, and that our enemies are always entities in foreign countries that we can contain and crush with the minimum of upset to our domestic tranquility.
kay
@DBrown:
Nah. They waterboarded. Then they didn’t know what to do, so they made a lot of noise about closing the Cuban prison- President Bush vowed to close it, realizing it was a huge blunder, in 2006.
But it was too difficult to do, and the base would have gone bonkers if they had hinted they were going to try people, so they just didn’t bother to convict anyone of anything.
And there they sit, and here we are, and they’re now busy rewriting history. They had some big ideas about military tribunals, but the botched the initial effort so badly the SCOTUS had to step in, and then they sort of wandered around in the weeds for 4 years.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@El Cid: What you said. The Birchers were preaching pretty much the same lines we hear today on Fox back in the 60s.
tom p
thumb sucking bed wetting ostri/lemmings
El Cid
@General Winfield Stuck: But that was the point.
The point was that when it was time to discuss the superiority of conservative American culture, then it was time to highlight every real or imaginable weakness of the Soviet Union and Community governments.
And when it was time to scare up for a war in the 3rd world, or military spending, or just slandering liberals or union members or leftists, then it was time to highlight or invent an unstoppable foe about to kill us all at any moment, and not just via nuclear war but via internal sedition.
They would die because they were so weak, and they were about to take over the world and kill us all because they were so strong.
Just Some Fuckhead
Republican Terror Alert color now at shitstain brown.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I’m sorry to be the house pessimist, but the extreme Stalinist interpretation of this turn of events is the one that all the media, including the allegedly liberal outlets, is taking. Due process is just too darn dangerous. George Carlin was right, this country is finished.
El Cid
@LD50: Note that to the right, the only reason you have a fair trial is because of your feelings toward the accused.
There’s no notion whatsoever, not the slightest hint, that you might wish fair trials to be held due to your own sense of dignity and the type of society you wished to be.
So the Founding Fathers were all a bunch of wimp faggots who wanted us to have restraints on government, spying, and to have fair trials because they were all weak-minded British sympathizers, and had they been more manly the Constitution would mainly have consisted of insults for the scumbags whose asses we were about to kick.
Frankie
I just find it ironic that of all people, it’s those on the right that are afraid that people are stupid enough to fall for the rantings and ravings of a deranged lunatic like
Glen BeckKhalid Sheik Mohammad.Liberty60
@Donald G:
Its funny,I hear so much of this snarling lynch mob motif,yet I recall back when some Duke University lacrosse players were accused of a horrible crime, suddenly the “rights of the accused” seemed like a good thing…
kay
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
It’s difficult, no doubt. If it were easy, Mukasey would have done it.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I guess so, since if we universally applied the principle of disrupting their operations in their refuges then the B-52s would have leveled the Idaho panhandle a long time ago.
ChrisB
You know, that’s exactly the way I felt after 9/11 — fuck Al Qaeda, we’re going to rebuild the WTC exactly the same way except taller.*
I felt a little different after I went to ground zero. Then it was like, thousands of people died here, there needs to be some kind of memorial.
But I sure as hell agree with this:
Well said, John.
And if the Republicans want to act like pussies, let ’em. They just need to be called on it all the time.
*By the way, I hate Bush for all sorts of reasons, but abandoning Afghanistan to go into Iraq is right at the top of the list.
Wile E. Quixote
Do you think it’s possible to beat courage into conservatives? I’d be wiling to try pistol whipping Erick Erickson with one of my .45s until he grows a pair, or dies bleeding and whimpering on the floor.
RaptureReadyAndLovinIt
@PeakVT:
I see. What’s the concern? We are smart enough and strong enough to stand up to terrorists, but … we’re concerned that stupid people who read endtime books and fear science and laugh at education and read birther websites are going to doom America?
The Peak Wingnut stuff that is often mentioned on the blogs is just the behavior of losers, people who feel powerless and resort to theatrics and outrageous behaviors to get attention and gum up the works.
The stupid and the crazy … and for that matter, the terrorists … have been around since I was a kid. And long before. I used to listen to news of terrorist attacks in Algeria, in London, in Northern Ireland … in the Fifties. I listened to Dan Smoot and read John Birch materials and heard Billy Graham and Oral Roberts spread their crazy superstitious crap … and lo and behold, here we are, with a Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Social Security Intact, Roe v Wade, and a black president. The legacy of the Warren Court pretty much intact. A shrinking and marginalized GOP.
I am having a hard time feeling doomed or fucked here. I’m a progressive ,and I look back over the last 75 years and I see a relentless, if episodic, march of progressive policy, and more apparently on the way.
Linkmeister
@Liberty60: And was it just coincidence those lacrosse players were white?
Mike G
Their penchant for empty swaggering bravado is exceeded by their need to justify the torture and military tribunals at Gitmo. If the terrists don’t rot in Cuba until executed after secret trials, if any whiff of post-Magna Carta due process enters the picture, then their absolutist Thor-Conan revenge-manliness fantasy has been contaminated by librul legalism and that would be the same as setting KSM free and giving him a luxury condo in Myrtle Beach.
31 Flavors of Stupid.
ChrisB
@kay: Well said. Why don’t statements like yours show up anywhere in the MSM?
(You don’t have to play SATSQ with me; it was a rhetorical question.)
RaptureReadyAndLovinIt
@kay:
Take heart. The way this will play out is, these terrorists will be tried, convicted, and sentenced to die. The nonsensical clucks of the chicken littles will be exposed for what they are …. nonsense. No judge in this country is going to let them out of jail, ever.
That’s what is going to happen. All the rest is just noise.
TenguPhule
The difference is, Sanka, we’re not lawless vermin.
General Winfield Stuck
@El Cid:
It is just right wingers doing what they are, acting on impulse to use any argument to support an action they want to take, all the while running ads and preaching the virtues of the GOP as THE party of principles.
It is a lie and currently manifests itself in different ways for the enemy du jour and how to keep the war making beast fed. With the current situation of KSM and trials and all the criminal v war nonsense, it comes out as what is convenient for a particular position by wingers, say like holding terror suspects without trial and torturing them, they use the “it’s not really a war but war crimes with illegal combatants” tact to deny Geneva convention protections to serve their purpose, but when it comes to using the heavy hand of the military with more funding and invading countries unnecessarily they call it a war and not a crime. And try and keep it all secret with dubious kangaroo court tribunals that even a wingnut SCOTUS wouldn’t swallow.
I believe it is sometimes a war situation when a state becomes a launching pad for targetting civilians around the world, like AF was, and is not currently, with less than 100 AQ in country presently. But what to do, keep playing whack a mole militarily with the locals, or actually use the nogin to figure out how best to proceed with current realities. This is what Obama and others in charge are trying to do, and having to fight wingnuts tooth and nail to do what is right. Their resistance is largely tribal and ideological, but mostly it’s just lazy contrarianism for political points and resurgence.
This is why I sometimes quip that America is Fucked, because we have too many idiots being idiots and preventing rational progress. And for terrorism as being criminal at least in how to fight it, this is true and everyone knows it, except when it isn’t and the military is needed to fight it. There are places where that is being done and it is appropriate, but not very many imho.
kay
@ChrisB:
It’s all bullshit in the media on this issue. Holder was complying with a court order. This is happening now, and has been happening, and everyone knew it had to happen, because there was an order:
WASHINGTON – In courtrooms barred to the public, dozens of terror suspects are pleading for their freedom from the Guantanamo Bay prison, sometimes even testifying on their own behalf by video from the U.S. naval base in Cuba.
Complying with a Supreme Court ruling last year, 15 federal judges in the U.S. courthouse here are giving detainees their day in court after years behind bars half a world away from their homelands.”
I’m comforted by the HUGE FUSS they made over the release of the memos, and….how much have you heard about that? Not a lot. They have about a 20 minute attention span. Trials take a long time. They’ll be distracted by some other outrage.
srv
While so many Wingnuts place so little faith in Justice, it is a supreme virtue in the Islamic world. In the battle for hearts and minds, this will win more over than bombs.
Brachiator
@Bruce (formerly Steve S.):
Then I guess you’ll also be agitating for the prosecution of Obama as a war criminal if he doesn’t pull out all the troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
TenguPhule
Because they know any half competent defense could probably air out all the dirty torture and illegal shit the prisoners were subjected to. And that the right’s past behavior could theoretically lead to the prosecution losing the case against these people.
The chickens have come home to roost.
Svensker
@Sanka:
You’re a spoof right? Cuz otherwise, I don’t see what you’re saying has anything whatsoever to do with the “America” your always on about. Stalin’s USSR, yes. Pinochet’s Chile, yes. Uzbekistan, yes. But the Constitutional Republic of the USA? Nope.
Guess it gives you a hard-on to act like a two-bit movie thug, huh?
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Brachiator:
__
Does the one preclude the other? Well, hunting terrorists down and killing them seems to be out, if one believes that justice requires judicial proceedings, including the right to a trial. Other than that, why can’t we do both? I don’t see how saying that accused terrorists should be handled through the criminal justice systems equates with saying that terrorism is exclusively a civilian law enforcement problem.
At the least I think we have to have a way to sort the real bad guys from the guys who just get swept up in the net, and I think that the court system is a better way to do it than secret tribunals or the absurd system of indefinite confinement that we started in Guantanamo. There are problems with doing it within the court system, of course; for example, how do you manage to keep intelligence gathering methods secrets, for example? I’d prefer dealing with those problems rather than have the other situation.
Delia
@El Cid:
I remember when I was seventeen and had my first opportunity ever to step into a real live Marxist bookstore. I was so excited because I thought it was a chance to show my stick-in-the-mud parents that I was hip. I picked up some newspaper and was so disappointed because the stuff was a load of simple-minded propaganda and I couldn’t see how any of it would convince a pea-brain. But obviously some people believed that crap and I found out later I couldn’t talk to them. I guess it’s sort of like trying to talk to wingnuts now.
RareSanity
@dmsilev:
This.
Hell, he graduated from the same school I did. We both have engineering degrees.
I can say for sure that a Middle Easterner that is getting his degree from a state HBCU*, is most likely NOT a super villians.
*-Historically Black Colleges and Universities
El Cid
@Delia: It depends which one it was. I’ve stepped into some party function bookstore and all it carried were the approved tracts. I’ve also been to Marxist bookstores and they had some of the best works I’ve encountered.
I still read Marxists, including Monthly Review.
RareSanity
@RareSanity:
Reply to myself…
It almost sounded as if I was downing my Alma Matter, not so.
It’s just that everyone knows that super villans are either orphans that didn’t go to college, or Ivy League educated and “went wrong”.
I’ve yet to hear about the super villan that went to State U.
Nick
Oh, you’re taking them seriously? I’m not. These ridiuclous cowardly arguments are nothing but cover because they’re too embarassed to say what they really mean, that they don’t believe in freedom and civil rights.
Let’s be real, the fact that people aren’t being beheaded on the National Mall on live television is pretty surprising considering the law & order views of Americans.
Chad N Freude
@Sanka: How do you feel about Timothy McVeigh being tried in a criminal court?
Chad N Freude
@RedKitten: Re Marianne Pearl: Yeah, but she’s French.
burnspbesq
@Sanka:
Listen, dickhead, this isn’t about Khalid Sheikh Muhammad. It’s about us. It’s about who we are as a nation and a people. It’s about living the values we’re trying to sell to the rest of the world. It’s about being better than those other muthas.
If you don’t get that, there is no hope for you, so just go away.
Keith G
@RaptureReadyAndLovinIt:
Maybe.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if after all the torture, KSM is found to be mentally incompetent to assist in his defense. Would be fun times.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@General Winfield Stuck:
__
Two names: Lev Landau. Pyotr Kapitsa.
RareSanity
@Nick:
I disagree. They believe in freedom, civil rights, and autonomy from the law as long as you are a white male or one of their cheerleaders.
Nick
@Sanka:
Yep…and that’s what makes America so awesome…that we award even the slimest people basic rights, you know, the rights they supposedly hate…called “being better than them”
Chad N Freude
@Brachiator: One difference is that KSM was a member of a terrorist organization, not state actor. Bush, Cheney, and company were state actors in a war of choice, not a civil police action.
Xenos
@Sanka:
Was good enough for Jeffrey Dhamer, Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling, so good enough for him.
In any case, it is truly a criminal case. KSM committed murder on American soil, and murdered an American Civilian under conditions that meet the definition of criminal acts under US law. Lots, if not most, of the guys at Guantanamo have not broken US law, and so can’t be prosecuted criminally in this country’s civilian courts. Thus the military commissions truly are appropriate for them – at least as a jurisdictional matter.
kay
@Brachiator:
That isn’t the distinction Holder made, Brachiator. He had to make a decision. No choice on that. He stated that he based his decision (tribunals or federal court) on the location of the act. Now, that’s not all he based it on. They haven’t made any progress, at all, in the tribunals. Partly that’s because KSM refuses defense counsel, and they had to do a competence analysis because he’s essentially pro se. That’s as far at they got, in the tribunal. It wasn’t going well. It has been years. They have to try these people at some point.
You’ll recall that the tribunals have been problematic. This tribunal idea already went to the Supreme Court, failed, and then back to Congress.
Holder wants them actually tried and convicted, and he wants the death penalty.
Bush declined to pursue the death penalty in the Africa bomber case, because (Frances Townsend said this week) they were afraid the defendants would use the forum to agitate. Holder is making a different call.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
@RareSanity:
Sure, you say you’re not a supervillain…but isn’t that just what a supervillain would say?
General Winfield Stuck
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Neither were members of the Communist Party, and DFH’s imo. I could have specified better that I was talking about direct weaponry technology. Of course The SU had good scientists and a few were dedicated commies and came up with some important discoveries, but largely they were dissidents, not true believers. And most weapons systems were stolen secrets or parts of them.
jcricket
@burnspbesq: This. And some more.
I mean the fucking Israelis’ don’t torture their Palestinian prisoners if they’re trying to get information out of them. And in the more distant past, Jews around the world all wanted the Nurenburg trials and Israel kidnapped/brought Eichmann to Israel for trial.
If that level of terrorist/war criminal can be tried, so can the losers from Al Queda.
Republicans suck, and everything about their complaints is bogus, from top to bottom. The sooner they die out as a party, the better we’ll be as a country. I’m not saying this means universal Democratic rule, just some other kind of party that (perhaps) isn’t filled with faux-patriotic asshat morons with religious zealotry and endless war as their main goals.
vivi
Danny Pearl’s family opposes the decision to try KSM in federal court. Their concern is that it gives the terrorists a global publicity platform and will encourage others.
El Cid
I haven’t seen a breakdown of Israeli torture of Palestinian prisoners as to whether it was for informational or punishment or demonstration purposes.
Anne Laurie
@Brachiator:
Not seeing the distinction here, sorry. We try hired killers for murder, and we try the capos who hire those killers for murder-by-proxy. And our law enforcement agents are supposed to attempt, within the limits of the law, to keep murders from happening and if possible to disrupt the organizational end of the ‘organized crime’ cartels. Therefore, we can try KSM for 3,000+ murders, and presumably still try Bush/Cheney for ordering the murder of even more thousands under flimsy & dishonest pretexts. In a sane world, “terrorism” is just criminality on a larger scale, not some kind of alien possession or high-tech witchcraft / voodoo.
HRA
I have not changed my mind about rebuilding the WTC. It doesn’t take much for me to see that day again as it unfolded from the moment I heard the news as it happened at work until late into the night when I realized I had not eaten since breakfast at 6 am and I was not hungry. It would have been the best memorial ever built.
If President Obama said it a lovely day today, the rabble would jump on it as being wrong and not true. Every day it gets easier to see their motive. Every reason expressing what their motive is in reading BJ is true.
KSM and the others must be tried in NYC. Rudy Guiliani has selective memory when in past terrorist criminal trials he praised them as being done right. The rest of the whiners who don’t live in NY should STFU.
New Yorker
If anything is encouraging others to follow in KSM’s footsteps, it’s what happened at Abu Ghraib and GTMO. This is an attempt to heal that awful legacy.
I feel for the Pearl family, but they don’t get special rights here.
Cynicor
Sam Seder made a great point about this on Twitter tonight: “A trial of a couple of terrorists makes NYC a target as opposed to, say, a massive political convention.”
I had to deal with 15 men from the local firehouse going out on the call on 9/11 and not returning. Then I had to put up with 20,000 of these morons walking around Manhattan in 2004, wearing elephant hats made out of balloons. The least they can do is shut up now.
General Winfield Stuck
@HRA:
Gulliani is a sadistic crackpot liar. I don’t know which would scare me more, him or Sarah Palin having Presidential power.
El Cid
Isn’t a great deal of the historical distinction between crimes of war and terrorism was not so much about the type of crime as the context of the actors and their relation with state power?
A man who blows up a dam on his own and floods a town below could be a mass murderer. A man who does so and who can be proven to have done so on the orders of or working with a government or recognized belligerent force could be a war criminal.
We may call them both “terrorists”, but wouldn’t the crimes you actually charge them with vary based not on the act but the context of the actor?
RareSanity
@The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge:
And it was a great plan! I would have gotten away with it, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Brachiator: Actually, you’re going about this backwards. Under the laws of the United States, as embodied in our Constitution, there are very specific procedures that are to be followed when someone is being held by the United States government. I know some people like to think that the protections of the Constitution don’t apply to foreigners, but these rules are actually restrictions on the government to protect all Americans. Therefore, KSM must be tried in a court.
How does the military fit into this? Their job is to protect us. In most cases that means be a really large presence, scaring people that attacking us is not in their best interest. When we do get attacked, their job is to make sure those people do not do it again. It is not the military’s job to get revenge, though, just like that’s not the job of a police officer chasing down a suspect by shooting just because the suspect did something egregious. If the military were to capture OBL, it would not be their job to decide what to do with him, and for the protection of us, those who do get to decide – the executive branch of the government – are restricted by the Constitution.
HRA
@General Winfield Stuck:
Maybe running together in 2012?
HRA
Meant to add this as reference. Too fast on the submit :(
“Gulliani is a sadistic crackpot liar. I don’t know which would scare me more, him or Sarah Palin having Presidential power.”
General Winfield Stuck
@HRA:
“on the run together” would be OK
running together NSM
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
I have absolutely no idea how “sane world” and “terrorism” go together. None at all.
Chad N Freude – One difference is that KSM was a member of a terrorist organization, not state actor. Bush, Cheney, and company were state actors in a war of choice, not a civil police action.
But the problem is that states underwrite terrorism, as is the case with some of our supposed opponents and some of our supposed allies. Bush’s nonsense about “either you are with us or against us” is nonsense, but the issue remains as to what to do when a state supports terrorists or gives them safe haven.
Comrade Scrutinizer – I’m largely in agreement with you. I’m not for secret tribunals.
kay – That isn’t the distinction Holder made, Brachiator. He had to make a decision. No choice on that. He stated that he based his decision (tribunals or federal court) on the location of the act. Now, that’s not all he based it on.
I don’t have a problem with Holder’s decision. As I noted, there isn’t much rational foundation for opposing bringing the accused to New York, except for some bizarre notion that the US Homeland is sacred soil which should not be polluted by terrorists. My issue is with the insistence that terrorism is just large scale crime by people who are looking for anything they can find to downplay the use of the military.
Maus
You do realize these are the exact same ones, right?
MNPundit
Well of course you do, you were one of them.
Nick
@vivi: Cause CNN covering any terrorism anywhere in the world isn’t enough of a platform already?
Little Dreamer
@General Winfield Stuck:
That’s some really funny shit there, considering I was the wife of an army man in Nuremburg, Germany and I was witness on many occasions to him and his entire group which transferred from a base in Huntsville, Alabama smoking all sorts of drugs before programming Pershing II missiles for OUR side.
Carol
The argument that the trial would be a “platform” for his views seems ludicrous to me. In the time of the internet, using a trial, with its controlled amount of time alotted for testimony, as a stage seems pretty quaint. If KSM really wants to spread his views, a website where everything he wants to say can be posted without censorship is a better bet. Between his lawyers, the judge, the presentation of evidence, questions asked, there’s really no time for speeches anyway.
There’s plenty of material that he made before capture that’s already accessible-his trial statements won’t add much more. And if his tenure in prison shows anything, there certainly isn’t a massive groundswell of interest in what he has to say either. What he has done (or accused of doing) is so monstrous that while people may feel he has a point or two, the messenger will be ignored. Remember the Unibomber manifesto that was published? People read it and thought he had a few points, but rejected the messenger. He gained no following then and certainly doesn’t have one now.
Sometimes I think the real fear is that we will see KSM as just another human being instead of the massive monster he’s been portrayed as. Or that we’ll see the tortured, insane hulk he’s now become and actually have a sense of fellow feeling for him, the way we see a kitten wandering lost and helpless and may even feel compassion of sorts. Not that it would move the jury to acquit or anything, but that we would stop feeling scared. Or feel that there were real grievances that needed to be addressed and that we may address them. Or something.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@General Winfield Stuck: Hell, almost all Sov physicists of that era were arrested and spent time in the Gulag during the Purges. Even whatsisname—Khurchatov?—the guy responsible under Beria for the development of the Sov atomic bomb spent time in prison. They weren’t so much dissidents as guys who just got swept up in the net.
As for Soviets stealing tech, they stole tech not because they were incapable of doing the work, but because they knew the work had been done successfully, and why reinvent the wheel? It allowed them to focus development time and resources in areas that needed basic research. That’s what scientists and engineers do everywhere: build on existing research and technology. That’s also why industrial espionage is so popular: remember the McLaren-Ferrari scandal a couple of years ago?
bob h
And remember Pataki’s idiot suggestion that the new buildings contain steel from the Towers?
brantl
But John, the bed-wetting is truth in advertising. The bluster is just like that whiny little shit in high school who would yell taunts at you from the passing car, when he thought you couldn’t/wouldn’t catch up to him.
kay
@Brachiator:
I think liberals that is a political miscalculation. Republicans want to talk in broad strokes, because they fail on nearly all specific measures. Liberals making this a return to a law enforcement approach are 1. wrong on the specific facts and 2. handing Republicans their favorite argument.
Liberals making this a decision about an approach to terrorism play completely into their hands. I want to bash my head against a wall when I hear it. It’s just stupid.
That isn’t how our system works, anyway, when it works. Even if he had determined they were to be tried in military tribunals, we would be talking about one case at a time.
That said, I knew this would be “political”. I think we have to tread very very carefully when making a policy argument regarding specific prosecutions. People on the Right do it, incessantly (because they got nothing else) and people on the Left do it, and it’s always a mistake. It doesn’t belong in the same sentence with “trial” OR “tribunal”.
I’d like to go back to seperating political wrangling from prosecutions. I worked better.
kay
@Brachiator:
I’ll try it shorter. I don’t think it’s wise to for liberals to respond to conservative screeching “they’re going back to a law enforcement approach!” by agreeing with that.
It’s not even remotely correct, if we’re reading Holder’s statement, or looking at Obama’s actions, and not adding anything of our own to that, and that’s what conservatives want to talk about.
Conservatives don’t want to talk about individuals or a specific set of facts, they want to scare the crap out of people with broad strokes, because the specifics are not all that scary. Why are we helping them do that?
RememberNovember
I love how Ghouliani was so against trying the ’93 WTC terrorists in a military tribunal.
Military Tribunal=code for NIMBY wingnuts who waterboard for fun.
I love how McVeigh/Nichols were sentenced at a military tribunal, Ted Kosinksi too.
wait, they weren’t.
It’s because KSM is a brown skinned man. Nothing more than oblique racism from in the spotlight opportunists.
RememberNovember
Worked then. Took a whopping six months. JTTF and law enforcement rather than an a bloated DHS approach.
John Cole
@MNPundit: Rim shot!
David in NY
What I hate is the wingnut arguments, “They might be acquitted!!,” or “They might not get the death penalty!!” Well, I suppose that’s so. It’s also so in a military tribunal. Military tribunals are not fixed, either — they require a principled decision at the end. The only proceeding that doesn’t require such a proceeding is summary execution, which is what these guys really want.
But we didn’t subject even the Nazi war criminals to summary execution, much less guys like McVeigh, who committed a very similar act of terrorism. We certainly won’t here.
Little Dreamer
Question: perhaps I’m wrong, but, since al Qaeda isn’t a country, how exactly would a military tribunal work? Can enemies who are not aligned with another nation’s military force be militarily tried legally?
kay
“Civilian federal courts are the proper forum for terrorism cases,” they wrote. “Civilian prisons are the safe, cost effective and appropriate venue to hold persons in federal courts.”
“Likewise the federal prison system has proven itself fully capable of safely holding literally hundreds of convicted terrorists with no threat or danger to the surrounding community,” they wrote. “We are confident that the government can preserve national security without resorting to sweeping and radical departures from an American constitutional tradition that has served us effectively for over two centuries.”
That’s all you have to say. I’m glad someone said it, but I would be happier if liberals had said it, instead of Grover Norquist.
Why liberals allowed themselves to be snookered into a debate with Rudy Guiliani about the relative merits of approaching terrorism as a law enforcement problem versus a national security issue is beyond me.
He invents a ridiculous frame, and we agree, happily, to his terms.
Molly
@Carol: “The argument that the trial would be a “platform” for his views seems ludicrous to me. ”
Exactly. Another piece of the Magneto syndome. KSM talks, and sways the masses to blow up…more things! Geez, just more cowardice. Who cares if the man talks and talks and talks? Sticks and stones, sticks and stones.
He’s just a man. He sits his ass on a toilet the same way all of us do.
MNPundit
@John Cole: I’m sure Tunch played a positive role somehow.
kay
@Molly:
I don’t understand it at all. Using that logic, all trials are an opportunity for a “platform” for the defendant, and they all have to be held in Cuba, in secret. I can’t even imagine where this line of thinking takes us. We can’t try gang members, or drug dealers, or religious nuts of any stripe, or we’ll just encourage membership; it’s just endless.
Talk about throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The accused might say something so we can’t hold a public hearing?
Christ. Just shut the country down. It’s over.
russell
Right the f*** on.
My only disagreement here is with your claim that conservatives used to be braver. They were always bed wetters.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
Morally speaking the terror bombing of wedding parties that he continues to allow in Afghanistan and Pakistan is problematic, to say the least. So a date in the docket at the Hague might be in order, but I don’t believe in miracles.