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Via Amanda Terkel, Sarah Palin objected to the forthcoming KSM trial thusly:
The trial will afford Mohammed the opportunity to grandstand and make use of his time in front of the world media to rally his disgusting terrorist cohorts. It will also be an insult to the victims of 9/11, as Mohammed will no doubt use the opportunity to spew his hateful rhetoric in the same neighborhood in which he ruthlessly cut down the lives of so many Americans.
What’s an actual insult to the victims of 9/11 is the idea that America is not strong enough to withstand the blatherings of a mass murderer. For me, the prospect of KSM grandstanding at his trial falls into I-wish-a-motherfucker-would territory. I want to hear how KSM builds a case against America, because everyone will hear how laughably conspiratorial and clownish it is. Think of what a cathartic moment it will be when America sees the face of the man considered to be UBL’s most efficient henchman and he delivers a pitiful harangue to a bank of cameras. No one will be emboldened to do anything but laugh. The only downside will be his inevitable discussion of how CIA operatives tortured him.
My hope for the KSM trial is that it does more than all this. It should forever shatter the pernicious myth that al-Qaeda is composed of supermen — supermen against whom America has no choice but to alter its character and most precious laws in order to confront. I suspect we’ll have an Eichmann-in-Jerusalem moment — and sorry for the unfortunate Nazi/al-Qaeda analogy; al-Qaeda are not the Nazis; but I couldn’t really think of any other parallel — except instead of the banality of evil, we’ll see the lunacy and vanity and self-absorption of it. That’s because al-Qaeda’s weltanshauung depends on a myth that holds America to be implacably determined to snuff out the glory of Islam. In reality, most Americans couldn’t give a fuck about Islam and only started to know the first thing about it because of 9/11. But that America — an America bearing no resemblance to the actual America — will be what KSM seeks to counter-indict. It’s farcical, and farcical in ways that can only benefit the real America.
This is what Sarah Palin is afraid of. She hasn’t, I think it’s safe to say, thought it through. Glenn Greenwald, in a post that surpasses his usual high standards, diagnoses her very well: she’s given in to terrorism.
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I totally agree
When (and why) did we become a nation of such cowards as to be afraid of some like KSM?
I’m thinking Jerimiah Wright to the tenth power.
Fear is the stock and trade, of those who would control your lives.
What else did you expect from this very un-American person?
But fear is what leads them to keep the truth in the shadows. And understandably so. They do not desire their methods to be exposed to the masses. For then, the true nature of their own crimes shall be scrutinized.
And that is what they fear the most.
Of course the averaage American doesn’t give a ff about Islam. That’s because they’re unaware of the U.S. foreign policy travesty wrt Islam. If KSM were smart, he’d keep his rant to U.S. foreign policy, where he has a very good case.
Who’s afraid of KSM?
The bedwetter party.
I’m Scaredey.
Actually, when compared to the previous administration, al-Queda IS composed of supermen
It depends on what he rails against when given his platform… which he never will. There’s plenty of reasons for Arab people who have been oppressed by American capitalism and installed puppets and despots in their lands to criticize.
Imagine bringing up the false pretense of the Gulf War with the lying PR campaign by the ambassador’s daughter about incubators… or the faked reports of armies massing on the Saudi border. or Abu Graib, or extraordinary rendition, or rape and pillage, or protecting the oil and displacing 4 million Iraqis, the many bombings of civilians at weddings and so forth and failure to stop Israel from several massacres and expansions onto occupied territory. America has not behaved very well in the eyes of the Arab world and if he puts America’s behavior on trial as well it could be interesting.
And then there is the inconvenient facts that 911 was not what we were told. There is NO DNA evidence that any of the 19 hijackers were in those plans and there are claims that 6 of them are still alive. The towers could not have collapsed down as a result of fire, but were exploded somehow. This is not speculation but what forensic analysis of the evidence that the 911 commission had actually shows. The report was a pathetic narrative built on false science and lies.
I don’t think American wants a trial where this all is on the table.
I love this post and of course I’ll be linking to it, but I wanted to make one small correction. You see Sarah Palin isn’t REALLY afraid of what KSM will say or do during the trial. What she is REALLY afraid is that a Democratic administration will do what a Republican administration didn’t. And that is show that our system of justice is stronger than any terrorist in some far off land living in a cage. And also that we will NOT show cowardice by bending to their will by not giving them a fair trial and thus becoming the caricature that they try to make out of our country. And finally that a Democratic administration will show more deference to our founding fathers than Bush or Cheney would have ever dreamed.
You see once KSM and his cohorts are dragged in front of a jury and are handed down the death penalty, then they lose the super villan with super powers status that Bush, Cheney and just about every Republican in Congress has given them for the last 8 years. And guess what, if there are no more boogey men then Republicans will have a hard time finding someone to fearmonger against when they are pimping their national security cred.
As with most things that have to do with Republican criticism of moves that the Obama administration makes, this has almost nothing to do with what they are actually saying and everything to do with what they see as their political futures. See also, health care, cap and trade, gay marriage…etc
Dang I thought that the judge was supposed to be in charge of the courtroom.
I agree !
Let the American public see these people for what they really are
Word on the street is that all this fainting couch drama is because the Bush Administration’s torture tactics might be exposed in civilian court.
The preening ” cocks of the walk ” strutting around with their chests puffed out and spewing such things as ,bring ‘em on will also be exposed for what they really are
I simply don’t understand the cowardice of these people- and that they aren’t called cowards to their faces. The only proper response of an American is “I AM AN AMERICAN, AND I AM NOT AFRAID!”
It’s laughable really, watching all these macho cowboys pissing themselves with fear of the bogey-man. These are the guys who insist on keeping a loaded gun in their nightstands, and who hear a noise in the night and shoot their own kid on his way to the bathroom for a drink of water.
Once again, a GOP fradey cat exposes that the so calle d “daddy party” is really the party of draft dodgers, chicken hawks and cowards.
As opposed the the actual men with spines, like Spencer, who are not afraid to ACTUALLY GO INTO WAR ZONES, armed only with a pen and courage and who are not afraid that their ears will be injured by hearing the ravings of lunatics and murders.
Cowards like Sarah Palin and Mitch McConnel and Peter King and Dick Cheney want all of us to cower under our beds in fear, so that their cowardice woun’t be thrown in dramatic relief.
I don’t understand the cowardice either.
It’s like they’re saying, “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Unless they’re really really scary.”
How they you be a true citizen of this country and think like that?
Fucking peasants.
Funny how we were able to try the original WTC bombers, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Robert Rudolph, and many other terrorists in the federal courts in this country without mishap or untoward incident. Wonder what might be different about these inmates……
I have a theory about why the wing nuts are so freaked out about the trial. The conservative world view requires a boogey man, a central bad guy onto which all threats can be projected. With an adequate bad guy, they can cast fear and anxiety into society and get away with a reactionary agenda. Once it was communists, now it is terrorists. But the bad guy has to be super bad to work for them.
By putting KSM and others are trial as simple criminals and treating them as normal thugs, their stature as ultimate bad guys is diminished and people won’t be as afraid of them and as willing to give up everything else, any cost at all, in the pursuit and ‘war’ on terrorists.
If the Justice Department gets away with having an actual trial of these actual criminals and giving them a sentence through the normal legal system, it will take away the prop that the conservatives have been using for all these years to do their fear mongering and keep people under control.
Which is why it is SUCH a good idea. :-)
If anybody knows how “to grandstand…in front of the media to rally [her]disgusting [Talibangelical] cohorts” it’s Failin’ Palin.
And let’s not forget Palin’s “death panels”. Talk about “…spewing [her] hateful rhetoric…to cut down the lives of so many Americans” by IED’ing efforts for health care reform and a public option, Palin is the proven master at it.
Am I openly comparing Palin and her trailer trash follwing to terrorist thugs? You betcha…
I hope TheraP responds to your comment.
I think keeping the face and bent personality of KSM out of the public eye, allowing him out of the shadows only as a caricature, is essential political theater for the national security state. That’s because, as in personal and family counseling, the monster in the living room keeps growing when it stays in the shadows. When it has a name, a place a date, a hurt, a harm, a fix; when it’s removed from the realm of the head on pillow at night and sees the light of day, it’s often very much smaller. It’s manageable and it can sometimes be cured.
Keeping KSM and those like him out of a public courtroom is essential for Mr. Cheney’s view of the world to win. It’s essential to keep the public in awe and fear, to keep it obligingly paying taxes without questioning to what use they are put. It allows Cheney and his successors to continue to build the national security state with no questions asked, no policies reviewed, no limits applied.
My guess is that KSM is no more frightening than the CEO of a tobacco company or an energy company, or a drug kingpin. Seen in the light of day, none of them are as mighty as the law. Keep them in a secret world, positions reverse and we live in fear, not hope.
Keeping KSM out of a public courtroom is also essential in conveying the feeling that only unrestrained extreme measures will contain his threat. God only knows how much smaller his threat might be, and how much less power the state could irresponsibly wield, were the criminal investigatory and justice system is seen to work, day in and day out.
Sherlock Holmes can’t exist, we don’t need him, without Professor Moriarty.
First time poster. Long time reader.
Thank you Jane and team for all you do. Thanks for the great site and hard work. You make a difference.
IMO this is another strategic “agenda” mistake by President Obama and his crack team led by Rahm Emanuel. It makes me so angry that there is no sense politically as to when to introduce issues or the political reality of the decisions being made.
This issue along with immigration are can’t win issues for Democrats heading into the 2010 election cycle.
There is no upside to trying these guys in the US.
The focus should be on passing real health care reform with a public option, jobs, prosecuting the criminals in the financial sector that toppled our economy, and meaningful banking and credit card regulation.
These are the issues that concern the majority of middle class Americans.
You people fixate on Palin way too much.
I think you people are all closet Republicans.
Sadly, No
A trial isn’t a seminar on international relations, so it’s not likely that KSM would either be allowed to, or particularly want to, explain why AQ did 9/11.
Which is a shame, because obviously even people like Spencer Ackerman, people who are obviously not fools or jingoistic lunatics, very typically simply take for granted a very foolish and jingoistic understanding of AQ. Or perhaps, you could say more accurately that most Americans have accepted the idea floated in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, that it was simply out of bounds and beyond the pale to even attempt any understanding or explanation for why AQ would have done 9/11.
They weren’t trying to frighten us out of support for Israel, or any other of our arguably imperialistic projects. Had that been their aim, yes, 9/11 would have been a cartoonishly stupid means to that end, since obviously the best way to get Americans to buy into imperialist projects like Zionism is to convince them that there are malignant forces out there in the world threatenting to slaughter Americans, forces which need to be fought with fire and sword, and that “isolationism”, which is the reigning ideology’s term for the avoidance of permanent friends or enemies that Washignton urged on us, is not a viable alternative.
AQ did 9/11 to get us to invade and occupy Islamic countries. They wanted us to buy into the foolish imperialistic project of invading and occupying Islamic countries. Their idea, foolish or not, is that Muslims need to rediscover their true and lost greatness in armed struggle against the West. For now, at least, the pracitcal advantages enjoyed by the West dictate that the struggle be limited to guerrilla wars. They knocked off one Western empire, the Soviet, by getting it into a guerrilla war in Afghanistan, so they figured the same setting could be used to knock off the US empire, all with the underlying goal of getting Muslims all over the world to unite in supporting this struggle. Of course you could dispute the morality of killing civilians to provoke a predictably stupid reaction from the US, but you’ld have trouble doing that if you have Dresden and Hamburg and Hiroshima in your recent past, and no evidence of acknowledgement that there is the least thing morally wrong with terror bombing, much less targeting civilians who contribute to the economy of an enemy state.
Sure, AQ ideology is murderous stupidity. But it is considerably less murderous and less stupid than our own. More to the point, our ideology is our own, we are responsible for what is done in its murderously foolish name. The idea that our ideology might be threatened by a trial is not wrong, if not terribly realistic, I just think it wrong-headed to view any threat to our murderously stupid reigning ideology as anything but a good thing.
Shrub’s behavior shouldn’t be seen as normal, much less a standard. The US government, leaving aside the military, employs hundreds of thousands of people in several dozen or more powerful agencies. It can walk and chew gum at the same time. It can tend to the people’s business on jobs, health care and education, as well as run its courts of law. It did it for decades before Shrub came to town and trashed the place.
What exactly are our brave troops fighting to preserve if not our constitution and the freedoms contained therein? If America discards our system of justice because it can’t handle trials of those who oppose us with terror, then the terrorists have won.
I have to say that its kind of sad that you look at the world in terms of pure politics and not say what is right and what is wrong. The only thing that will keep us accomplishing everything you are worried about AND bringing these assholes to justice is people like yourself not supporting both moves. I don’t have my head in the clouds and I understand there are such things as “political realities” but justice should NEVER be discarded in the pursuit of a political agenda.
People said after the House passed a cap and trade bill that there was NO WAY they would get a health care reform bill through too. Maybe those folks aren’t actually all that keen on what is realistic and what isn’t, huh?
I’m not afraid of KSM
glad to see “terrorism” treated as the criminal offense it is.
I think justice could be served through the military courts.
I think introducing cap and trade before health care reform was a mistake too.
If health care reform had been immediately introduced first, before the economy and jobs collapsed and before the Republicans had their footing with teabaggers, it would have been passed by now with a public option.
A winning success on health care would have made cap and trade easier.
Instead, we end up with 2 weak bills. No one is happy and progressives don’t turn out in 2010.
I think Rahm Emanuel is singlehandely burying President Obama, Democrats, and our agenda.
JMO
For a graphic picture of the 101st Diaper Brigade, go here.
Who’s afraid of KSM?
Kit Bond.
I’m going to move this up to its own post.
The Right’s reaction has been predictably ridiculous, of course. Greenwald as well as many others (our gracious host included) have been great on that, but Glenn had much more to say on the announcement itself and the mixed picture that it was. I encourage everyone to check out his arguments here and think hard about them, which is definitely not to say accept them in their entirety without careful analysis. But as always, he makes a powerful case for his view. In any case, it’s a view without which one’s picture of the developments this week is not complete.
I must be missing something in the many assumptions about what’s going to happen at trial. Why do people assume we will hear directly from KSM, i.e. will he be put on the stand? In murder trials the accused rarely testifies. Also, why are people assuming that admissions before torture — to arresting military officers and to FBI’s Ali Soufan — will be admissible as evidence? Do we know Miranda rights were read? I would assume not, but then again I know nothing.
when America sees the face of the man considered to be UBL’s most efficient henchman and he delivers a pitiful harangue to a bank of cameras.
I don’t think so. Do any Federal courts actually allow cameras?
He won’t get to do the Law&Order press conference on the courthouse steps, either, since I doubt he would get (or make) bail. In fact I’d guess his attorney won’t even ask.
===============
Thanks to whoever stuck McVey’s name into the post upthread. That really makes the point, doesn’t it?
This is excellent news! The issue isn’t whether Khalid actually is or isn’t guilty. The issue is whether the People of these United States are SO terrified of KSM, that we have to subvert our own Constitution’s guarantee of “due process” and “right to trial by jury” to any person who is accused of a crime.
If, in fact, KSM is found guilty, then may he receive the New York justice that he deserves. BUT… I want to first make sure that he IS in fact, guilty as charged. That can only be done through a civilian trial, not through a circular firing squad (aka military tribunal). I’m smiling because I feel like AG Holder basically flipped the bird at Dick and George!!!
but, aren’t any of you considering the facts that KSM is twenty feet tall and has special ‘Allah Powers?’