February 12, 2010, Full retreat
One wishes simply that I could say something about the Obama Administration other than "I'm disappointed, but not surprised." And thus, the apparent decision to scrap civilian federal court trials of 9-11 plot suspects in New York, and quite possibly, relegate the trials of Ron Jeremy Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and four others to military commissions altogether. The apparent political subtext seems to involve hanging Attorney General Eric Holder out to dry, by blaming him for the White House's decision to use the federal courts for its show trials in the first place, and of course, to propose the show trials for downtown Manhattan without doing any political advance-work or gravy-spreading. It would seem that the political cost of keeping campaign promises and upholding any principles at all is just too high for this President. Disappointed... but not surprised.
Some of this, of course, comes in light of some rather pathetic "local opposition" from, among others, our Lord Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the frequenty party-switching billionaire a**hole who merrily welcomed the ultimate security nightmare-- the 2004 Republican National Convention-- to New York City, back when it suited his then party affiliation. Naturally, some are objecting to civilian trials of five alleged September 11th plotters and terrorists based upon a fanciful and over the top security plan estimated at $200 million. WTF?
The thought that our public officials seem to seriously believe that OBL will actually launch a rescue mission, like out of some awful action movie, just makes me question their fitness for office. The City has been in a state of security madness going on over eight years; let me, the guy who regularly goes to work halfway between the New York Stock Exchange and the former World Trade Center site, assure everyone out there that we can deal with the increased inconvenience of trying five alleged miscreants. Really we can. Grow a pair, New York, and grow a pair, America. OK, I can dream.
Once again, many (such as myself) were fooled, or at least, lulled by, the rather forceful pronouncements of the purported constitutional law scholar candidate who told us he would restore our nation's commitment to the rule of law. As I said, Barack...fool me once, man, fool me once... The fact is, it just wasn't possible with any intellectual integrity whatsoever to justify railing and campaigning against the arbitrariness of military commissions as opposed to civilian trials, and then to propose simultaneous dual-standard of justice of civilian trials for the "slam-dunks" and military commissions for the more "troublesome" cases. By going full retreat on every principle it purported to campaign on... the Obama Administration won't have to justify this untenable situation any longer.
Of course, troubling as reversion to the military commissions is, there's at least still some hope out there that the cancer operating on our legal system that the so-called war on terror has been thus far can be contained to just the unfortunate bastards at Guantanamo and America's other offshore gulags. It seems no one quite understands the danger of such a cancer operating within our borders serving to quite easily pave the way to full autocracy in no time flat. And in this light, we must consider, with appropriate alarm, the multiple tears in our constitutional fabric, of late... ranging from proposals for "indefinite detention" in a facility in Illiinois, to the rather bizarre claims (raised by among others supposedly "moderate" Republican senators) that "the Constitution only applies to [White, Christian, native-born] American citizens," and hence, the Christmas under-pants bomber should be denied all Constitutional rights and sent to the gulag for appropriate torture and lawyer-free interrogation. And we can rest well knowing that the best "justification" for actually complying with the United States Constitution by the actually-defensive-about-it Obama Administration is "well, Bush tried people in the courts too."
Pathetic. I'll leave the last word to that soft-on-terror pinko, the late Barry Goldwater who said ""Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."