Guest Editorial posting:



Why we should call for the summary execution of KSM

by CHRISTIAN BROWNE

After 11 years, KSM and his fellow terrorists have at last been brought to trial. The very first proceeding in the trial, the arraignments of the defendants, commenced on Saturday at 9:23 am. What should have been a simple proceeding lasted 13 hours, marred by the endless antics of the terrorists and their attorneys, including a female defense attorney who appeared in a burka and demanded that other women in the court dress likewise in order not to offend the religious sensibilities of the murders.

The military prosecutor predicted that this circus would persist for years, allowing the terrorists a platform to make a mockery of the judicial process we offer them and to heap additional suffering upon the families of the victims of terrorist attacks.

To what end? In June 2008, KSM was brought before a tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. He announced at that time that he wished to enter a guilty plea so he could be “martyred.” He expressed the same desire again in December 2008. In a criminal proceeding, the accused always has the option of entering a plea of “not guilty” and demanding a trial or entering a guilty plea and accepting his sentence. So, as is apparent, when one pleads guilty and admits his crime, there is no need for a trial. Instead of years of pointless proceedings to try issues not in dispute, the Court should simply say:

“The Court hereby deems your previously entered plea of guilty as accepted and shall now impose sentence. The sentence of the Court is that you be taken hence to the place of execution and that you there be hanged by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on your soul. Next case.”

It is ironic that this debacle of a trial begins on the heels of President Obama’s obscene self-congratulatory celebration of the anniversary of the death of Osama Bin Laden. While the president tries to pass himself off as the greatest commander since Alexander, the KSM trial reminds us that the president is a man who built his political career on decrying Gitmo and accusing his own country of “torturing” KSM and his fellow killers. Obama’s first act as president was to announce the closure of Gitmo.

It was the president who delayed the KSM trial by an additional four years. It was his Justice Department that sought to bring this outrageous circus-trial to federal district court in Manhattan and launched a witch-hunt against CIA operatives and government lawyers for their conduct of, and participation in, the enhanced interrogation program, even after these public servants had previously been cleared of any wrongdoing.

Of course, we now know that only three men were ever waterboarded, and then only briefly and under carefully controlled circumstances. We know that the intelligence gathered from these men, and other terrorists held at Gitmo, contributed mightily to the successful search for Bin Laden, ultimately enabling Obama to give his “gutsy” order and parade Bin Laden’s head on a political pike.

Regardless of Obama’s image propaganda, the fact remains that, more than a decade after 9/11, the families of the terrorists’ victims, and nation at large, must endure a lengthy and absurd exercise to confer “due process” on men who scorn the very notion; men who have no interest in the “justice” we extend to them and who proudly trumpet their guilt before the Court that is charged with trying that very issue.

It need not be so. In mid-June 1942, two parties of Nazi spies came ashore on Long Island and in Florida. By June 27th, all eight men who had infiltrated the country had been arrested. They were tried before a military commissioned appointed by President Roosevelt between July 8th and August 4, 1942. All were condemned to death. The president commuted the sentences of two men; the other six were executed on August 8, 1942, four days after their convictions.

President Obama fancies himself another Roosevelt. As such he ought to emulate his predecessor’s penchant for dispatching swift justice to war criminals. Prolonging a phony justice process only compounds the already unspeakable injustice KSM perpetrated. He has confessed his guilt. We should execute him without further delay.

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