Conor Rogers, Editor
Ideology: Center-Right | Writing from: Washington, DC

The Department of Justice will pursue prosecution in federal court of the five individuals accused of conspiring to commit the 9/11 attacks. Eric Holder, US Attorney General


Growing up only a short drive from Manhattan I’ve always considered New York to be my home city, my backyard, and something that belonged, with particular importance and especially after 9-11, with particular honor to the people in and around it.

As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center have always resonated with our generation, but especially with those of us who grew up in New York’s shadow. We lost our friends, neighbors, coaches, and family members. I can’t claim to have a special or more valid opinion on the Khaled Sheikh Mohammed trial because of my New Jersey residency, nor can I stake claim to having been more impacted than the rest of the country was by the attacks. America and our ideals, not just New York, got attacked.

However, I can speak as someone who has not forgotten what happened, why it happened and who it happened to. There are daily reminders in my hometown, all around the area I grew up in, and the city that I worked in dedicated to what happened eight years ago. Perhaps, living near the site of the attacks allows me to remember more clearly what happened, and unlike other areas of the country, be especially wary of it happening again.

3,000 DEAD IS AN ACT OF WAR, NOT A CRIME.

After the terrorist attacks, there was a general sense that America had ‘woken up.’ Indeed, we had been woken up as a nation by a threat that we had largely ignored; regardless of the fact it had already taken a swipe at the very same towers in 1993 and our embassies in 1995 and 1996. Each time an attack happened, we treated it like a crime, hunted down the perpetrators, and it quickly left our news cycles and our collective consciousness. Our counterterrorism was nonchalant, and our society viewed fundamentalism as something that could be contained by laws, prosecuted and locked up. As New York’s iconic towers came down during my sixth grade history class, that towering myth was torn down with them.

Some do not understand why there is such uproar over putting a man on trial for a deed that he obviously committed. We are sure that Khaled Sheikh Mohammed organized and planned the September 11th attacks, among many other massacres. There is no danger that Mr. Mohammed will get off scot-free, that the charges will be dropped, or that he could be declared completely innocent.

So, why the frenzy? To try Mohammed in a criminal court is to treat his act as criminal, and coming from a young administration that has already ceased using the phrases ‘terrorism’, ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ and ‘war on terror’ this serves as confirmation for many who, like myself, view the struggle against terrorism and against the oppressions of fundamentalism as the most important international (and moral) task facing our nation.

A TRIAL BY JEERS?

Trying Mohammed in a criminal court is not necessary, and one could argue that he does not deserve to be treated as even the least respected criminal by the United States. He is by every definition of the word a war criminal, prisoner of war and enemy of our state. He is a mass-murderer of the worst kind, and is anything but criminal. Our criminals invade our homes, rob our citizens and perpetrate common offenses. They do not organize large-scale acts of war that rob our citizens of their innocence, invade our national security and launch our nation into war.

Even if the trial goes ahead as planned, can Khaled Sheikh Mohammed even get the best of the American justice system as Eric Holder and Barack Obama claim? How can a man who struck fear into the hearts of every citizen in the country get a truly fair trial? How can a foreign national who was once near public enemy number one get a jury of his peers? He cannot possibly be given the premise of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ that he should be afforded under our justice system. In a nightmare scenario, any number of things, from a 2001 blog post by a juror, to a challenge of venue to even evidence uncovered at Guantanamo could cause the unimaginable – a mistrial, and a terrorist gone free. This very trial is in and of itself a miscarriage of our own justice system.

WHY?

The larger question surrounding what’s likely to be one of the highest profile court cases of our time is: why? Why civilian court? Why now? Why mastermind Mohammed and not the hundreds of other prisoners? Why New York?

As the conspirator in an act of war, Mohammed should be a trial by our military, as a prisoner of war. Yes, there is ample precedent for trying non-citizens in American courts, but Mohammed has never stepped foot inside our nation. He did not commit a crime in our nation; he committed a crime against our nation.

To sidestep into politics for a moment: why now? As Obama seeks to close Guantanamo, he has done a politically-odd thing in trying the second-most-hated man to Osama Bin Laden. Was this a move to shore up his rapidly impatient left-wing base, or an earnest move by the Obama administration in the interest of justice?

Bringing this trial to New York was salt in the wound of the very city he attacked. This trial gives Mohammed a larger megaphone than any Al Qaeda spokesman has he ever had, mere blocks away from the site of the attacks he planned. The bombers of New York, Washington, Madrid, London, and Bali have exactly what they want: a relaxed United States of America.

New York is the city that bounced back, and more importantly, a resilient and proud place that survived worst terrorist attack in world history in a way that only New Yorkers could. To treat the terrorist attacks of September 11th, and their perpetrators, as criminals, rather than an act of war committed by fundamentalist terrorists demeans the importance of what happened, and perhaps more dangerously, reflects the very attitudes that our country ‘woke up’ form on that September morning.

There is a temptation, always, to return to a peaceful mentality, to wish war away and to ‘scale-back.’ The mentality of the September 10th world was calmer, and more pleasurable – but it was this exact relaxed mentality that allowed the attacks to occur. No matter our economic problems, healthcare debates and political media cycle; a simple fact does not change: there is a network of people around the world and inside our own country that want to bring us down. Treating these people like criminals will not make them criminals – but treating them like terrorists can – and has – stopped them for the past eight years.

War is terrible, and being at peace is infinitely better than war, but being at peace with war itself is one of the most dangerous moves this country could make. Our President is on the road back to that very mindset, back to September 10th.

When we swore to never forget, we didn’t just mean the victims, we meant why it happened. When we said never again, we meant it, and we still do.