It has been decided that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried on U.S. soil in a U.S. court room, just as if he had held up a liquor store or the Try N' Save.
In the wake of 9/11, Bush the Great Satan Junior put a $25 million bounty on Obama Bin Laden’s (oh, sorry, that was a typo) head, calling on any mercenary in the world to bring us his corpse.
After the decision to treat KSM like a common street thug, I am beginning to wonder if that attack had occurred on 9/11/2009 instead, if the Magician would have put out an All Points Bulletin with strict orders to bring Obama bin Laden (ooops, sorry again) in alive so that he could stand trial in a U.S. federal court, afforded the full rights and liberties of a U.S. citizen, much like KSM will be.
I do understand that there is a difference between Obama bin Laden (oh, look, did it again…sorry) and KSM, but this is as close as you can get to OBL, folks. Is KSM any less a terrorist than OBM? Was Goring less of a Nazi than Hitler?
Unfortunately, the decision has been made and there is nothing that we can do about it. America voted for hopey changey and that is what has been delivered to our doorstep…delivered just as easily as the invitation for every terrorist in the world to be in New York City during these upcoming trials.
Under the Bush administration, they were terrorists, but under the Obama administration, they are federal criminals. That is not just a play on words, folks, but in fact, two very different categories of criminal.
While I absolutely agree 100% that every American citizen should be given a fair trail for committing crimes in America, I do not, however, agree that an act of war committed by a foreign nationals, especially acts committed primarily against U.S. civilians, should not fall under the same category as a U.S. citizen who has committed a federal crime.
Again, this is not just a matter of semantics, but a matter of us creating a dangerous precedence; a matter of changing how the Western world has dealt with terrorism from September 11, 2001 until now.
If you refer back to Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, it reads, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
This defines what a citizen is in the context of the 14th Amendment, which has been in place since we had to re-define citizenship and the rights afforded to citizens and non-citizens following the Civil War. Under this wording, a foreign national does not have the same rights afforded to a U.S. citizen, including our right to a fair trial, tax-payer provided defense attorneys, etc., until the point at which they are brought to and housed within the jurisdiction of a U.S. state, either voluntarily, or against their will.
That is the reason why Gitmo was at Gitmo and not on U.S. soil. Frankly, the U.S. constitution does not apply to you until you are on U.S. soil as defined by the constitution. Gitmo, and the rest of our military bases around the world, are not governed in relation to foreign nationals as being covered under the U.S. constitution. Whether you agree with Bushie or not, this is why the terrorists, aka enemy combatants, were housed at Gitmo. That is also why you try war criminals and terrorists in a military tribunal and most definitely not on U.S. soil. Why in the world would you want to give the people that are fighting against you…the people that are trying to kill U.S. citizens the very same rights and liberties of a U.S. citizen?
I don’t know, and I wouldn’t think you would, but that is a question we are going to need to ask our President. What The Magician has done by bringing these terrorists to trial in a federal court on U.S. soil is immediately change their classification from a terrorist and enemy combatant to simply a foreign national who has committed a federal crime. He has reduced 9/11 from an act of war and barbarism against the American people to a federal crime committed against the people who were murdered that day. This act by The Magician moves this from a military matter of war to a civil matter of federal crime, providing these terrorists (oh, sorry, criminals) with the same liberties and rights that we all have as U.S. citizens in a federal courtroom. What a fantastic reward for masterminding the death of 4,000 of us! Honorary citizenship!
This President has made these terrorists honorary citizens of the United States, just as we do with any foreign nationals that we catch committing a crime against us within our borders. Access to tax-payer funded courts, judges, lawyers, resources, and jails (yes, some serve out their sentences here because we don’t want them to be mistreated when we send them back home to their own jails). The right to a fair trial for a foreign national who has committed a crime on our soil may make us a better country, Mr. Magician, but these guys aren't students who stayed here too long on an expired student visa and robbed a 7-11 -- these are the fundamentalists who masterminded the 9/11 attacks, and you have just humanized, and yes, even Americanized them in a way that we will be paying for even long after you have left office.
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