Trial of 9/11 Terrorists

I've been wanting to write about this for a few days now, but I haven't gotten to it. There's a lot going on right now, personally.

But someone posted a comment on-line about how he believed that that AG Eric Holder wanted Kalid Sheik Mohammad to go free, to give America a black eye for torture and the like. I think that's ludicrous. My response to that is this:

In my opinion, if America deserves a black eye, we should get one. I'm not in favor of getting one just to get one, but to the extent that we violated our own laws, we SHOULD be properly chastened. I don't want to see that come at the expense of justice for KSM, but we shouldn't have tortured him, and the fact that to date no one has been punished or even chastised for that violation of our own principles says that we still, as a nation, do not actually care to hold true to the things which make us great, and that pisses me off. Was KSM's crime worse than the crime of waterboarding him? Certainly. And he should pay for it. But they're our laws, and if we willfully ignore our own laws and our own Constitution, that's pretty bad, too.

It's high time we held these trials, not for the terrorists, but for US. For us to remember that there are certain principles we hold more strongly than vengeance. For us to remember that if we don't hold to our own morals, we can hardly expect people to take us seriously when we moralize to them.

I think these trials should be held. I think they should be held fairly and openly and with as truly impartial a jury as possible. I think that last point can't be accomplished 4 blocks from the former site of the WTC towers. And if we can't make a conviction, because the evidence is sketchy or the actions taken by our government are deemed illegal violations of rights, or whatever, then that's not an indictment of the Obama administration for allowing the trial to continue, it's an indictment of all of America for sitting back and allowing torture to be undertaken in our names, and for (in many although not all cases) loudly defending the process as right and proper.

If KSM is found not guilty, or guilty but given a light sentence, that's chickens coming home to roost. And the people of NYC (particularly the victims and their families) will be the victims again, but it won't be the victims of our legal system or our current administration, but of the illegal and unconstitutional actions of the previous one.