Justice Denied

In God We Trust

Justice Denied

IBDEditorials.com

War On Terror: Eric Holder's move to try the 9/11 masterminds in Manhattan makes it official: This administration has reverted to pre-9/11 "crime" fighting.

Amid all the talk during the attorney general's surreal press conference of the "crime" committed eight years ago, the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon wasn't even mentioned.

Lest anyone forget, the military headquarters of the United States was attacked that day along with the Twin Towers.

An entire wedge of the Ring was gutted when the Saudi hijackers slammed American Airlines Flight 77 into it. Nearly 200 military personnel were killed, along with the passengers and crew of the hijacked jet.

The jet was a weapon used to attack the very center of our military. That was not a "crime," as some say. It was an act of war.

And 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with the four other al-Qaida terrorist co-conspirators Holder wants to try, are no mere criminals. They are enemy combatants — and should be treated as such.

Yet this administration has adopted the same crime-centered mentality as the last Democratic administration. The one that treated al-Qaida's first World Trade Center bombing as a "crime." And al-Qaida's attack on the U.S. embassies in Africa as a "crime." And even al-Qaida's attack on the USS Cole as a "crime."

All were prosecuted in U.S. courts. A lot of good that did.

While President Bill Clinton was busy preparing indictments against the terrorists, al-Qaida was already plotting its next move. It hit the Pentagon just nine months after Clinton and his crime-fighters left office.

Maddeningly, this administration is repeating the Clinton administration's mistake.

KSM and the other terrorists, er, "defendants" aren't even U.S. citizens. They don't deserve all the rights afforded citizens in our civilian court system. They shouldn't be allowed to use our courts as a platform to promulgate their ideology of hate. Which they will, sure as Osama bin Laden is smiling right now.

This will only serve to inspire more homegrown terrorists — and stab at the hearts of the relatives of 9/11 victims.

Holder clucked that the "trials will be open to the public and the world." And they will turn into circuses, playing right into the hands of the enemy.

These trials will drag on for years, perhaps even decades, as defense lawyers file endless motions and appeals. Meanwhile, valuable intelligence about interrogation techniques and other methods we've used against al-Qaida will be revealed to the enemy during trial discovery.

This move to a civilian court makes no sense at all, except viewed through a political prism. Maybe the White House wants to make its Jan. 22 deadline to close Gitmo. Or maybe it's keen to publicly differentiate itself from the previous administration, which was considerably tougher on terrorists.

Either way, it's an unwise move. It will only remind people how much America has shrunk in the last nine months.