|
 acarias
Moussaoui is getting better than he deserves. In fact, his trial
in Alexandria, Virginia can best be thought of as Patrick Leahy's
revenge — the fruit of the Democrats' assault on the idea of
military tribunals.
Moussaoui is
tailor-made for a tribunal. If, as seems likely, the charges against
him are true, he infiltrated the United States to commit an act
of war.
He wasn't wearing
a uniform or carrying a weapon openly, and was deliberately targeting
civilians, all of which make him an unlawful combatant under the
Geneva Convention. As such he has no rights whatsoever, except perhaps
to be summarily executed.
If he thought
the evidence compelling, President Bush would be perfectly justified
in ordering Moussaoui shot tomorrow. Instead, of course, in an exercise
in high-mindedness and decency, the U.S. is setting up military
tribunals for just such cases.
But even this
has been judged too harsh for Moussaoui — he is going to sit
in Alexandria, Virginia and enjoy the full panoply of legal rights,
protections, and privileges of an American citizen.
Yes, he will
probably be convicted. Yes, he will probably get the death penalty.
And, yes, five years or so from now, he may well be executed.
But why should
a barbarian get the benefit of our exquisitely civilized justice
system? Why should a war criminal be tried under the rules we have
devised for policing our own civil disputes and crimes?
If it makes
sense to try Moussaoui in Alexandria, then it makes sense to bring
every al Qaeda prisoner in Guantanamo Bay there too, and for that
matter Osama bin Laden as well.
The difference
between Moussaoui and the rest is not one of principle, but of geography;
Moussaoui happens to be here already.
The Bush administration
says that it determined it could convict Moussaoui without revealing
intelligence sources. I suspect the political heat from the Democrats
and an old-fashioned bureaucratic turf battle — the Justice
Department doesn't want to relinquish these prosecutions to Defense
— had something to do with it as well.
The irony here
is that the Bush administration opted for a civilian trial only
because it thinks it has such an airtight case. In other words,
Moussaoui gets a civilian trial because we know he's a war
criminal.
This seems
a rather backwards way to go about handling these cases. Does this
mean that only the guys we think might not be guilty get
military tribunals?
It seems clear
that the Moussaoui trial is a kind of reverse show trial, a way
for the Bush administration to demonstrate to the Democrats and
the op-ed writers that it isn't so dictatorial after all.
But if we take
the administration at its word, that seems to suggest that protecting
intelligence was the primary purpose for proposing the tribunals.
In which case, why didn't the administration spare us the tribunals
and just propose new, better rules for keeping intelligence sources
out of the open courtroom?
Because the
tribunals were always about much more than that. Would we bring
bin Laden here for a trial, even if we could convict him without
revealing intelligence sources?
The very idea
seems offensive. Even William Safire in his original column calling
the tribunals a dictatorial excess strained to find creative ways
to kill bin Laden even if he surrendered — just to avoid trying
him here (now Safire changed his mind, and wants bin Laden, if captured,
to be read his Miranda rights and get a full-blown civilian trial).
But the very
act of trying bin Laden here would be a miscarriage of justice.
He deserves only to be killed on the battlefield. If that for some
reason proves impossible, a military tribunal is the next best thing.
It would swiftly
and fairly evaluate the evidence, then dispatch him to his eternal
reward — without opting him into the American social and legal
compact.
He has no right
to it any more than a Barbary pirate would have in the 18th century.
Like bin Laden,
Moussaoui deserved only to be killed on the battlefield, which he
brought here to the U.S. in violation of all the rules of war. As
it turned out, his stupidity and clumsiness kept him off Flight
93, but a military tribunal could have at least given him his tawdry
and evil martyrdom within a matter of weeks.
Instead, he
sits in Alexandria, for a trial that, even if it is handled professionally
and efficiently, should be considered a travesty.
|
