Having wondered about the evil version of 11-dimensional chess being played upon Attorney General Holder in my previous post, I can now continue with my original question.
WTF is Lindsay Graham thinking?
Sen. Lindsey Graham, along with cosponsor Joe Lieberman (of course), submitted an amendment to a joint appropriations bill for Department of Justice, the Department of Commerce and some science spending. The amendment to this bill would disallow the spending of money for trials of 9/11 terrorists on U.S. soil. This was a direct response to AG Holder’s decision in November 2009 to hold the civilian trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed in the Southern District of New York. This kind of reaction IS EXACTLY WHAT OSAMA BIN LADEN WANTS.
Why is Lindsey Graham laboring to empower bin Laden?
Let me explain a bit. I recently read the book by the wife and son of OBL,“Growing up Bin Laden” which was the recent subject of an FDL Book Salon. Not only did the book have new information, it placed things we’d already heard in various news accounts and put them in context and explained how it all worked in the mind of OBL.
OBL thinks of his followers as soldiers, as brave warriors for a new Islamic caliphate. He started out during the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan raising money for supplies for the Mujahedeen fighting there. These fighters were not just Afghans; they were young idealistic men who had come from all parts of the Muslim world, in order to defend a Muslim nation against an invading secular superpower.
Later, because corruption meant that the supplies often never reached their intended beneficiaries, he personally escorted the supplies, with an elaborate security detail, and distributed the supplies himself. Still later, he would hang around after the distribution to participate in some of the fighting. When the Afghans drove the Soviets out of their country, they were publicly praised as heroes, but many found that they their own governments had quietly cancelled their passports and they could not return to their homes to resume their educations and careers. They were trained to fight, but had no enemy left; they were called heroes yet denied the right to return to civilian life. They were trapped in Afghanistan with no means of support. OBL continued to feed them and gave them employment.
In Saudi Arabia he was treated like a returning victorious general. And he loved it. He had done public speaking in connection with his fundraising and now was being asked to speak about a return to manly honor via military means, jihad.
According to the book, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and threatened Saudi Arabia, OBL went to the Saudi royal house and offered to bring his “army” into Arabia to defend the homeland. Now if you are the royal house, do you really want some guy with a private army, personally loyal to only him—rather than inspired by nationalism—marching his own personal army into your kingdom? I wouldn’t. What’s going to happen with them when the war with Saddam is over?
So, they sort of pocket vetoed that idea and instead allowed the U.S. to come into Arabia and set up military bases, bases that had women military members. This is apparently what set OBL off. That infidel women would be allowed to fight to save Holy Arabia and Muslim men would not was the ultimate insult—to OBL—upon the dignity of a Muslim manhood. Shortly thereafter OBL was exiled to Sudan. Later, Sudan kicked him out and the Saudi’s froze his assets in their country. OBL was forced to go live in Afghanistan, the place for men without a country.
His entire self-worth and that of his followers is tied up in believing that he is a military man, not some pathetic fugitive that no country wants and who has to hide out in caves.
Bush/ Cheney spent seven years feeding OBL’s ego with their chickenhawk “war on terror” and their color-coded threat levels and their endless bleating of “be afraid, be very afraid”.
When Lindsey Graham talks about men being captured on a battlefield, he cannot be talking about KSM, who was captured hiding in a root cellar, just another criminal fugitive. There was no battlefield, except in John Yoo’s memos because he needed a “state of war” to attempt to justify torture. Never forget, the entire premise upon which Yoo bases EVERTHING is that the President has extraordinary powers when acting as Commander-in-Chief.
Look, I don’t know that many JAG officers, but every single one I have ever met, has favorably impressed with both lawyerly skill and with devotion to the Constitution. I am not slamming the military justice system’s ability to give a fair trial. Heck, in some ways their system is fairer, since it allows the defense to get discovery out of the prosecution’s witnesses pre-trial. I am, however, refusing to countenance elevating common criminal like Khalid Sheik Mohammed to the level of a military man.
KSM is not a soldier, nor is OBL. They are merely criminals. Losers who cannot hack it in the civilized world and whose doubt in their own manhood is so great, that they have to blow up buildings and kill and frighten women and children to make themselves feel manly. Just like those draft dodgers, Bush and Cheney.
Holder made the right call with the KSM trial. It is a potentially game changing decision that could go miles toward both restoring the world’s faith in American justice and American ideals AND in discrediting OBL and his stupid pointless movement. You know, for a guy who is a construction contractor by trade, you’d think it would have dawned on OBL by now that he is not BUILDING a caliphate, he is merely destroying some buildings and airplanes and killing a lot of innocents. That’s not going to get him into Paradise.
The best way to destroy OBL (short of capture, that is) is to expose him to the world for what he is, a fugitive criminal, sometimes reduced to hiding in places usually reserved for rats and other vermin. This realization will dishearten his followers and close off the flow of new recruits. As long as we continue to elevate these knaves and place them on the pedestal that should be reserved for our own military men and women and those who bravely defend their own homelands in uniform, we give them an honor and privilege that their own base actions belie.
KSM is not a soldier captured on a battlefield. He did not wear the uniform of any state. He did not operate under the authority of any government. His actions were not part of the social contract and not authorized by any legal entity. The difference between death in war and the crime of murder is that the soldier who kills on the battlefield kills ONLY as directed by government authority.
Al Qaeda is just an overgrown street gang with fancier weapons and a catchy religious marketing hook. If you extend the courtesies of military status to al Qaeda, how can you deny such to MS 13?
So, Lindsey, stop denigrating our own military and elevating KSM to that status of soldier which OBL covets so much. They are gangsters and murders, nothing more. They are particularly vicious gangsters, but not soldiers—never soldiers. Lindsey, knock it off, or the next thing you know, the Crips and the Bloods are going to want in on this military tribunal stuff with all it extra rights for the defense team that we don’t give in civilian courts, it will become a status symbol for all the criminals.
