American Elephants

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo detainees will be tried in New York in civil court, presumably with the same rights as common American criminals. The decision is not only shocking, but entirely unnecessary.

Mr. Holder said that these people should be tried in court where they committed their crimes, a statement that suggests that the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor should have been tried in civil court in Honolulu. This is absurd.

Rudy Giuliani, who knows a thing or two about New York and 9/11 and the law, runs through the problems of Obama’s decision in a video from Neil Cavuto’s show. It’s long, but worth it, for all of the consequences are not readily apparent.  And there are real consequences.

Andy McCarthy, who prosecuted the first World Trade Center bombing trial, observes:

Today’s announcement that KSM and other top al-Qaeda terrorists will be transferred to Manhattan federal court for civilian trials neatly fits this hidden agenda. Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witnesses — intelligence sources — must expose themselves and their secrets.

A major problem seems to be that the Left just doesn’t get “terrorism”.  They sneered constantly at Bush’s “fearmongering,” for clearly 9/11 was a “one-off” event that would never be repeated.  Victor Davis Hanson points out their error and their flawed assumptions, in an essay on our 9/10 mindset.