Dear Friend and Reader:
Slipping under the radar during the memorials for the Fort Hood shootings was Attorney General Eric Holder’s November 13 announcement that the U.S. Department of Justice was bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Ramzi Bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi to civilian trial in New York City.
Perhaps you may have heard of them. They’re accused of conspiring to attack the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. With the Attorney-General’s announcement, last Friday’s Planet Waves edition arrived presciently and was aptly named “Beyond the Reactionary Floorshow,” about the Saturn-Pluto square.
Holder’s announcement feels like we’ve walked into another world. We’ve been told what to think about the attackers for so long and relinquished our civil liberties in the face of the 9-11 incident that the mere thought of actually bringing the 9-11 conspirators to trial is a reality shift. That the men are even getting a trial in any court in the US is in itself stunning. It’s taking a while to adjust to following the rule of law again.
A civilian trial will hopefully shed some light if not find the truth in this chapter of our history, starting that summer of 2001. The question now: Are we ready for it?
The arguments for and against moving with a civilian trial and instead of a military tribunal for these men boil down to this: Was theirs an act of war or a crime? The opinion divide between these two choices defines the political contours of the left and the right for the last eight years, one side fighting for transparency and the other for utter control of information. It feels good just having an open argument about the relative merits of both court systems for this trial. It feels good to have an open argument, period. It beats being branded a traitor for questioning the government’s motivations for going to war.