I am quoting from part of an article that came out on Fox News today (11/18/2010):
The White House is pushing back against criticism of its commitment to prosecuting some terror suspects in civilian courts after a federal jury convicted former Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani on only one of 285 charges.
Ghailani was convicted of conspiring in Al Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa and faces a sentence of 20 years to life behind bars. The Justice Department has said it will seek the maximum punishment.
White House chief spokesman Robert Gibbs said Thursday that the administration will use “all the tools at our disposal” to try Guantanamo Bay detainees. But Republicans have seized on the Ghailani verdict as an example why all terror suspects should be prosecuted in military commissions.
“It’s time for the administration to listen to the 9/11 families and the American people and change course by putting all terror trials through our military commission system,” Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said in a written statement.
Now this raises a very important question in my mind. Is the question to do the just thing or to simply convict anyone who is accused of terrorism?
Yes, I know some of the counter-arguments. And, there is a slight bit of validity to them. It is true that there are times when all available military intelligence ought not to be revealed in open court. But, guess what? The British are able to try presumed terrorist in civilian courts and have for years. And they do it because they have a secrets act that allows for certain evidence that is presented in court to be suppressed under a very serious penalty of law. Is the British system perfect? No, not any more than the American system is. But, both they and the Israelis have shown that it is not necessary to have secret military courts for every trial of presumed terrorists, like the Germans and the Soviets used to have.
We do, indeed, become the very communists and fascists that so many in the USA claim to hate when we imitate their court methods. Just read the Gulag Archipelago and you will see what happens when secret courts are allowed. I am a Latin American. I know what secret military courts mean. They mean the paredon the wall in front of which you stand right before the firing squad pulls the trigger. And that is what our American conservatives are requesting. They are not requesting justice. They are requesting revenge, even if the person upon whom the revenge is perpetrated is not the guilty party.
But, I have an even more major problem. Why are there Christians who are so adamant that being a Christian means that one must support secret military tribunals? Why do American Christians want to behave like the fascists, like the communists, and like the banana republic dictators that my mother fled to seek political asylum in this country? Why are there Protestant Christians who want to return to the Inquisition-like courts of the middle ages in which torture was used to get a confession, and you were guilty before evidence was presented? Why would a Roman Catholic even wish to support returning to such a time in their history? I think it is because every time that someone is found not guilty because there is no evidence to convict, it calls into question the very rightness of the policy of detaining suspects for years without trial and without access. And it, therefore, calls into question the morality of those who supported such a policy. And, American Christians do not well tolerate their morality being called into question.
“They are not requesting justice. They are requesting revenge, even if the person upon whom the revenge is perpetrated is not the guilty party.”
Exactly.
If the men held are true POWs–they have the Geneva Convention and that should be followed–including perhaps exchange of prisoners to the country of which they are soldiers with the stipulation that they give an oath not to fight again. This has been done in the past. If they are not POWs, then civil authority has to be supreme. I don’t think you can have it both ways. That being said, classified information that may imperil other troops in said regions should not be demanded in open court. Or just send them back to their country of origin with the stipulation that those countries be responsible to monitor the criminal acts of their own citizens.
Sadly and tragically, so many Americans think we are above all that. Judicial shortcuts? Secret military tribunals? We can handle this. We won’t abuse them. We’re AMERICANS. Well, hate to tell y’all, but Fr. Ernesto is right. We are but a very short distance from becoming what we say we despise.
There is also another issue. My Senator, Lindsey “Opie” Graham, has been beating the same drum as Hatch. The premise is: we are at war. Okay, if we are at war, where is the Declaration of War, passed by Congress? If we are at war and no such declaration exists, then we are prosecuting a war unconstitutionally. However, if this is not a war per se, then these trials should indeed be held in civilian court, not before military tribunals. Therefore, Opie, Orrin, and those among our national legislators who think like you do: have the courage of your convictions and get a bona fide Declaration of War passed. If you are not willing to do that, then stop talking about this “war”. It is not a war. It is something else.