With regard to the Nidal Hassan / Fort Hood attack, I earlier referenced the September 10th mentality that allowed him to get away with spouting the views of the enemy while actually being a member of the U.S. military. Well, as of today, the rewind to September 10th, 2001 (or even earlier) is officially complete. The Obama administration has decreed that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the attacks on the U.S.A. which took place on September 11th, 2001, is going to stand trial in a civilian court in downtown Manhattan, like a common criminal.

He is not a common criminal. He is one of the leaders of a supra-national movement of Islamic jihadists that is making war against the United States. The September 11th attacks were acts of war, planned and carried out by combatants who wore no uniforms, did not fight under any flag and showed no regard for the conventions and rules of war. In short, they were and are illegal enemy combatants — exactly the designation given to them by the previous administration. Trying such people in a civilian court is absurd and will produce a travesty on multiple levels. And if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is given the privilege of being tried in a civilian court, then there is no longer any coherent legal justification to deny the same privilege to any other illegal enemy combatant. And yet, either oblivious to incoherence or desiring it, the Obama administration apparently plans military tribunals for other combatants.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the enemy, and judging by his remarks from Guantanamo, an unrepentant and determined enemy. He is responsible for the deaths of 343 New York City fire fighters, 60 police officers, and over 2400 other innocent people in New York City, in addition to the 125 people killed at the Pentagon and the deaths on United 93. He would do it again. He is the enemy, not a criminal. He deserves to be treated as the enemy, and not granted all the rights and privileges of an accused criminal in the United States. The return to treating deadly enemies of this country as criminals — and only after they have committed their crimes, mind you — is guaranteed to produce the same fruit that that policy produced before September 11th, 2001. Somewhere, in a cave, the surviving leaders of al-Qaeda are laughing their heads off.

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Addendum 1:31 pm: Andrew McCarthy, who prosecuted the Blind Sheikh in 1995 for inciting terrorism (in relation to the first attack on the World Trade Center) makes my points and many more in his great column today: September 10? It’s Worse Than That.

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