Soccer Dad

Safe or clean

When I first heard that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 plotters were planning to plead guilty for their crimes, I thought it was a good thing. I figured that they'd end up getting a well deserved death penalty. It reminded me of David Bernstein's comment about Sheikh Yassin after Israel killed him.

"The day in which I will die as a shahid [martyr] will be the happiest day of my life." So I guess it's win-win.

However Walid Phares warns of a danger.

First, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his comrades will use the so-called confessions deal to build a psychological environment for a martyrdom case: "istishaad." They aren't interested in saving their lives (at first, although they think they could) but in providing a maximum damage to their enemy through the tribunal proceedings. They will claim the court is not legitimate, the entire Guantanamo process as illegal and that they are ready to die as Jihadis in the path to Allah. Their first target is to grant themselves, in the eyes of millions of militants around the world the status of "Shuhada," martyrs, even though they could survive it.

The "confessions" turned declaration of victory will be picked up by Al Qaeda and other jihadi groups and transformed into vital material for propaganda: videos, audio and texts. The "show" inside court will be used for indoctrination purpose around the world. A myth will be set in motion and emotional reactions to the "story" will be mutated into future revenge operations.

From there on, leave it to the architects of jihadi propaganda: statements made by the defendants will be used by operatives online, in the chat rooms but also on Al Jazeera (by callers and guests), and in other medium to widen the radicalization of youth in the Arab and Muslim world and within the West as well. An Al Qaeda "control room" will use the feed from the Guantanamo trials to produce a victory in their war of ideas against democracies. The fate of the 9/11 detainees isn't the issue to Al Qaeda. By pledging loyalty to the "mission" through the so-called "confessions" or statements they have already sacrificed themselves ideologically. What KSM and his comrades are offering to their "brothers" around the world is an unbeatable series of images, footage and audio -- pure gold for Al Qaeda propagandists and ideologues.

Phares does not offer any alternatives or saying (explicitly) that they ought not to be tried. However the Washington Post clearly will offer to help. In its editorial on the topic, the editors of the Post write:

The world is watching, which must please Mr. Mohammed. And he must know that the United States is as much on trial as he is.

The editorial is a laundry list of complaints against how the Bush administration conducted itself regarding Guantanamo.

However William McGurn, points out that the imperfections in the system that bother the editors of the Washington Post so much are the results of circumstances, not bad faith.

What the American people need today is a sensible policy that recognizes three facts: that terrorists present a unique challenge to our rules of war; that capturing and holding terrorists is different from capturing and holding criminals or prisoners of war; and that the men and women who set up Guantanamo did so not because they were out to shred the Constitution but because, faced with some very imperfect choices, this was thought to be the best way to protect the American people.

It's true that Mr. Obama repeated his pledge to close Guantanamo during his recent "60 Minutes" interview. But he also declined to set a date. No doubt he is now realizing a hard truth. While senators can say what they please and go to sleep untroubled, presidents cannot escape the consequences of their decisions.

Reuel Marc Gerecht goes even further. He points out that the problems with the system of handling terrorists apprehended abroad, aren't the result of the Bush administration's evil intent, but of bi-partisan consensus. Consider the much maligned rendition program, for example.

Which brings us back to rendition, which, properly understood, is what Americans do when they realize that active counterterrorism against jihadists prepared to use mass-casualty weapons is an ethical, juridical and operational tar pit. It isn't an ideal solution -- American intelligence officers have no control of the questioning, and Washington can become beholden to foreign security services -- but it's a satisfactory compromise. Just ask Samuel R. Berger, the national-security adviser for President Bill Clinton, who no doubt worked through all the pitfalls when he first approved extrajudicial rendition.

Earlier Gerecht points out:

And the internal-security services of our allies in Europe are, on the whole, vastly better today than they were in 2001. Thanks to intrusive surveillance methods (many of which are outlawed in the United States), they are much more efficient in pre-empting the plots of holy warriors traversing their borders.

The enlightened Europeans are more intrusive than us knuckle dragging Americans! Who knew?

I don't know how to prevent KSM and his co-conspirators from using the legal proceedings against them as propaganda. It would be nice if our media and political class stopped using those proceedings to judge us and instead worried whether the procedures were keeping us safe.

Crossposted on Yourish.

Posted by SoccerDad at December 16, 2008 5:28 AM