Are the editors of the New York Times aware that the World Trade Center towers were, in fact, in lower Manhattan?
On its face it is an absurd question, but when you read their editorial this morning you have to wonder. The Times worries that President Obama is making responsible decisions with respect to trying some of the terrorists in U.S. detention and on other related topics (the president's decision not to release photos of alleged detainee abuse). When it comes to the military commissions, which certainly have their flaws, the Times writes:
We do not object to convening military tribunals to judge and punish crimes committed in war. That is a well-established part of American and international military justice. The problem is that these tribunals, unlike traditional ones, did not just cover prisoners captured on the battlefield. They covered anyone whom Mr. Bush declared beyond the reach of law with the preposterous claim that the whole world is now a field of battle.
Indeed, most Guantánamo prisoners facing the tribunals were captured far from any real battlefield, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of 9/11, and other top terrorism suspects.
And where, exactly, was KSM's battlefield? The Times advances the absurd notion that because terrorists like KSM were not picked up in Afghanistan, while fighting with an AK-47 or some such, the military commission system cannot apply. So, in the Times's view, a low-level al Qaeda foot soldier who commits a war crime is an appropriate candidate for a military commission, but a mastermind like KSM who oversees the killing of 3,000 American citizens on U.S. soil should be tried like an ordinary criminal. This misunderstands the entire nature of the war al Qaeda and its allies are waging on Western Civilization. Indeed, the Times does not believe we are in a war at all.
Republicans like to mock the notion of trying terrorists as criminals, but that is what they are. Treating them as warriors not only demeans civilian and military justice, but it gives terrorists the martyrdom they crave.
Actually, the Times wants to give KSM what he craved. When KSM was captured he reportedly told his CIA interrogators, "I'll talk to you guys, after I get to New York and see my lawyer." That is, KSM knew that he could behind the same civil liberties and rights that the Times believes he should be granted. If he had been given such protections, KSM would have undoubtedly taken many more of al Qaeda's secrets to the grave.
And you can bet, too, that if KSM was granted a high-profile prosecution in the Southern District of Manhattan he would have seized the opportunity to proclaim his martyrdom before the whole world. Talk about a propaganda victory.
The worldview endorsed by the Times has been picked apart, in meticulous fashion, by Andy McCarthy, who justifiably calls it Willful Blindness.
