The political dimensions of the KSM transfer

If the trials of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers and of the “20th 9/11 hijacker,” Zacarias Moussaoui are any indication, the federal court trial wii be a propaganda circus for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his co-defendants, abetted by what likely will be ideologically sympathetic lawyers. While at Guantanamolast year, KSM demanded to plead guilty to the military commission, be sentenced to death, and executed. Taking him at his word, and assuming that the government is confident of its evidence, KSM is guilty and will be sentenced to death, anyway. What has he to losebut to turn the trial into a political spectacle that will bolster the morale of al Qaeda supporters and other terrorists and serve as a useful recruiting tool for future jihadists?

I have never understood the liberal argument that keeping detainees at Guantanamo and having terrorists tried by duly constituted military commissions according to formalrules of evidence causes otherwise peaceable and rational Muslims from around the world to flock to the jihadist cause. Jihadists’ reliance on suicide attacks and other terrorist tactics, and their extreme brutality towards captives, does not indicate the presence of particularly rational minds and placid personalities. I would be most surprised that true jihadists, and not the Western liberal reification of such, care one whit about Guantanamo and military commissions, except maybe in a completely different manner from that imagined by the liberal mind. Guantanamo offers amenities that many jihadists can only dream of enjoying in their own countries. The conditions of confinement at Gitmo, and the trial by American military courts trying to prove their bona fides as impartialjudicial tribunals, are far more humane than what those jihadists would find if imprisoned and tried in their own countries for the results of their violent proclivities. After all, if they weren’t fighting the American “crusaders,” they’d be busy killing their fellow Muslims while fighting the Egyptians, the Pakistanis, the Saudis, the Syrians, etc.

If, however, and this is a big “if,” jihadists are at all influenced by the fate of the Guantanamo detainees in the manner that liberals believe, they will be at least equally influenced by fate of their fellows kept in the Metropolitan Detention Center (the harsh conditions of confinement at which already were the subject of an attempted money damage action by one Maher Arar), tried under heavy guard in what will become a fortress-like massive federalcourthouse with the defendants paraded around in prison garb and shackles, and eventually executed or sent to an isolated supermax prison. TheseIslamic holy warriors, as they see themselves, don’t care about the details of American criminal procedure and constitutional law. The visuals for the proposed process are more likely to inflame passions and serve as recruiting tools than anything that would have come out of Guantanamo.

The shift of the trial looks more to have something to do with placating the rabid Left base of the administration and the conference-and-cocktail-party-attending transnational legal and “human rights” elite with which the administration feels such affinity. The morally and economically corrupt United Nations bureaucracy and the kleptocratic elites back home that they represent will approve of this as a sign of American docility in the face of foreign criticism. These elites can engage in such a minuet of stylized moral posturing and be awed by their own importance. The more practical-minded jihadists will be less impressed.

Speaking of a political dimension to this decision. There has already been musing, by myself and others, that this represents a conscious and reprehensible way for the Obama administration to bring to light the details of the difficult decisions the Bush administration had to make about capture, interrogation, detention, and trial of these terrorists and other enemies in the difficult months after 9/11. Despite its veiled threats in the late Spring to go after CIA personnel, the administration does not dare go after Bush administration officials directly, lest Obama, Holder, and company produce a political civil war in this country and seal their electoral fate. Nor will the American public turn against the Bush administration if KSM, his cohorts, and their lawyers make an issue of waterboarding. None of those parties are sympathetic victims and any political spectacle in the courtroom will only remind Americans just what kind of repellent creatures they are. If anything, the Obama administration will come off second-best.

But by opening this up to the sure attempts by the terrorists’ lawyers to make as much of this information public as they can and to turn the proceedings into a political and media trial of U.S. post-9/11 policy and of Bush administration personnel, the Obama administration thinks it can achieve the same result while avoiding political accountability. Then, when the information is released, they will count on the transnational legal Left and their allies in various European judiciaries to “try” various American officials for “human rights abuses” in absentia in kangaroo “trials.” Defending the U.S. against terrorists will, per se, be evidence of such abuses, with the object of weakening American resolve in the future.

That tactic is part of the payoff to keep the increasingly restive loony Left in Obama’s coalition quiescent, a Left that has little to show for its enthusiasm for what they saw as the Community organizer-in-Chief. But it carries some risk. Indeed, the legal and political risks for the administration in this move are considerable. There are so many things that can go wrong, from a physical attack to a legal acquittal to political reaction against disclosure of sensitive evidence that this is more likely to underscore the fecklessness of Democrats on national security matters than to erase doubts. By making this announcement so close to the terrorist attack at Fort Hood, the administration does not instill confidence that its political tonedeafness is not a symptom of a greater incompetence.

Andy McCarthy at “The Corner” on National Review Online agrees and provides further detail about the political dimension of the administration’s decision.