<p>I am interested to know how Service Academy graduates feel about the defense counsel for the alleged 9/11 schemers being a Federal Academy alum..... is anyone else surprised to hear it is a federal academy graduate representing them?</p>
<p>To quote Voltaire…</p>
<p>I may disagree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it</p>
<p>Why the concern that a federal academy alum would be defending? Do we believe in our Constitiution and the best system of justice known to the world, or don’t we? The question raised had the taint of questioning defense counsel’s patriotism. Do we not remember our history lessons wherein John Adams represented the lobster backs that fired on a civilian crowd at the Boston Massacre. Then again Mr. Adams was from Massachusetts and we all know how that state can’t be as patriotic as Pennslyvania…See how silly it all sounds when you start injecting politics and nationalism in front of the Constitution and justice.</p>
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<p>Not for enemy combatants under the rules of the Geneva Convention. </p>
<p>They are to be tried under the military’s system of justice, a far cry from the Constitution.</p>
<p>**Minoru Genda, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor, a naval base on U.S. soil, when America was at peace, and killed nearly as many Americans as the Sept. 11 hijackers, was not brought here for trial. He was an enemy combatant under the Geneva Conventions and treated as such.</p>
<p>When Maj. Andre, the British spy and collaborator of Benedict Arnold, was captured, he got a military tribunal, after which he was hanged. When Gen. Andrew Jackson captured two British subjects in Spanish Florida aiding renegade Indians, Jackson had both tried and hanged on the spot.</p>
<p>Enemy soldiers who commit atrocities are not sent to the United States for trial. Under the Geneva Conventions, soldiers who commit atrocities are shot when caught.</p>
<p>When and where did Khalid Sheikh Mohammed acquire his right to a trial by a jury of his peers in a U.S. court?</p>
<p>When John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln, alleged collaborators like Mary Surratt were tried before a military tribunal and hanged at Fort McNair. When eight German saboteurs were caught in 1942 after being put ashore by U-boat, they were tried in secret before a military commission and executed, with the approval of the Supreme Court. What makes KSM special?*</p>
<p>*From [Is</a> America at war, or not?](<a href=“Home | WND”>Is America at war, or not? | WND | by Patrick J. Buchanan)</p>
<p>If we want to be hyper-technical, then when was it that Congress declared war, as only the Congress may do. Back to the original post, the issue was whether an Academy alum should be defending a terrorist, not whether a terrorist can be tried on American soil.</p>
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<p>You made a post about the Constitution and our system of justice being the best in the world - I agree, but why would KSM deserve to be tried under our US system of justice, defended by a SA lawyer, instead of being tried in a military tribunal?</p>
<p>Should an academy alum be defending him? </p>
<p>Only before a military tribunal. </p>
<p>Not in a US Court.</p>
<p>Or are you of the opinion that we are NOT at war?</p>
<p>Luigi:</p>
<p>You ask two very good questions:</p>
<p>“I agree, but why would KSM deserve to be tried under our US system of justice, defended by a SA lawyer, instead of being tried in a military tribunal?”</p>
<p>I believe he earned that right through birth - “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”</p>
<p>I actually have no gripe with KSM being tried either by a Military Tribunal or a US Court that is deemed appropriate but believe the trial is more rightly placed in a civilian court. I believe th catagorization of terrorists, especially those who cannot and are not affiliated with a legal sovreign poswer, as enemy combatants conveys on them an import and increases the risk they will be seen as martyrs for their causes (Radical Islam or otherwise). I also believe they should be given every opportunity to mount a vigorous defense, as I believe, everyone who is subject to the death penalty should, that way the chance of them being released on appeal is significantly less. In fact I actually liustened to former Representative Harold Ford defend the Death Penalty and talk about how this should be done and he convinced me. It was an interesting moment, a staunchly conservative populist, registered Republican initially arguing against the death penalty due to its general inneffectiveness and the fact it costs significantly more than “Life Without Parole” vs. Congressman Ford, a blue dog Democrat who was getting ready at the time to run for the US Senate, explaining to me why the Death penalty should be law in every state and how to implement it so my concerns would no longer be issues.</p>
<p>That half hour of my life convinced me the US Court Systems can work and the Death Penalty should be law, al be it modified and implemented in a different manner than today, throughout our nation.</p>
<p>Should an academy alum be defending him? </p>
<p>I have no issue with any well qualified member of the bar representing him, so long as he mounts a sound and vigorous defense if KSM want to plead Not Guilty or so long as he provides sound legal consel which I’m sure he/she will. It’s how our system of justice is suposed to work and if we abandon our core principles in fighting the purveyors of these heinous acts, then they have already won much of the battle and accomplished many of their goals. I’m not a “the ends justify the means” guy.</p>
<p>Or are you of the opinion that we are NOT at war? </p>
<p>Actually no I don’t believe the current ongoing military actions in Iraq or Afghanistan are wars in the constitutional sense, as has been pointed out no declaration of war has been issued. Of course to do so would have been problematic especially in a failed state such as Afghanistan was in 2001. We could of course declared War against Iraq and some would argue it is only because of dplomatic pressures we did not but I don’t agree with that statement. In any case as a nation we are certainly schitzophrenic on the issue of whether we are at war or the so called Global War On Terror is any more or less a war than the War on Drugs. </p>
<p>I hope no one misunderstands this to mean I do not whole hertedly support our soldiers, sailors, coast guradsmen, and airmen who are prosecuting the direction of our Civilian Leadership in any of those places including but not limited to: Iraq, Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa or South America, as well as our USCG Personnel and Customs and Border Patrol Agents who also are at risk every day protecting our borders closer to home.</p>
<p>I just don’t share the furor and concerns of so many of my conservative brethren on whether or not KSM whould be tried by a Military Tribunal or Civil Court here in the US, and I actually think long term it’s best to try him as the cowardly criminal he is instead of lionizing him as a global terrorist mastermind for the reasons I’ve stated above.</p>
<p>Using your rationale, to extend the rights of the US judicial courts to KSM (and all the governmental and Constitutional protections that come with it) is to extend them to every military combatant now at GITMO, and every one captured in Afghanistan or Iraq next week or next month or next year.</p>
<p>Can you imagine the slippery slope you want to go down, actually having to require every US soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan to read the Miranda warning to every Al-Queda they capture, having to provide access to lawyers for every one of them, having to reveal sources of intelligence when they seek to confront the evidence against them at trial, etc.</p>
<p>All of these possibilities will be avoided by simply using the Geneva Convention and trying KSM and his other 4 defendants as military combatants.</p>
<p>Will the US prosecutors exclude Muslims form the jury pool? If so, that could be grounds for mistrial. All it takes for him to walk free is one person (Muslim or not) that is sympathetic to his cause or beliefs. Remember, OJ walked free against overwhelming evidence because of prosecutors mistakes and juror nullification. </p>
<p>Because of this decision to try KSM in a US Court, he could be walking around Kabul next summer by using the very system he hates, laughing at us while planning the next mass murder of our soldiers and citizens.</p>
<p>Luigi:</p>
<pre><code>The basic things here we disagree upon are whether or not we are or are not at war. You wish to maintain we are and that the GWOT be treated and use the basic tenets of war. You want to basically then extend that and say since we are at war, anyone who doesn’t want us (our forces) in Afghanistan is an enemy combatant. I respectfully disagree on the point that we are at war - these “people” (terrorists) are not enemy combatants, they are simply very, very terrible people and criminals.
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<p>My opinion is (an I’m very thankful today I live in a nation where I can express it and we can disagree) is we started down this slippry slope the minute we started to move captured suspected terrorists out of Afghanistan and Iraq. I fel we should have detained them in theater and let the new Governments of their nations deal with their criminal proceedings up to and including summary executions if that’s what their Constitutiions, Courts and Tribunals wanted to do or even letting them free. If our basis for staying in Afghanistan is to provide humanitarian and military assistance to the fledgling government of Afghanistan then we need to do so under those pretensces and the constructs of International Law. Once again my toitally conservative populism comes up here - I’m at my core non-interventionist as much as possible. Further if anything I feel from an International Law perspective in Afghanistan we are now going to find our nation in the middle of a Civil War and I don’t think we should all be so certain we have chosen the “right side.” There’s a lot of controversy and questions now surrounding President Karzai. Of couse the fact that historically Afghanistan has been less of a nation and more of a confederation of tribes and clans won’t help things at all.</p>
<p>Interesting that similarity is shared by a number of “hot spots”: Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia, Chechnya and Afghanistan… perhaps there is a lesson or two to be learned here.</p>
<p>I would gladly go back and debate your points as there are answers to all those questions but I don’t feel a Forum focused on the US Merchant Marine Academy is the place, and as such if you’d like to continue this discussion just PM me as I’ suspect many in the wider audiance probably don’t come here to spend time reading about this topic there are far better places onn the WWW to do that.</p>
<p>If you believe that every Al-Qaeda member captured in Iraq and Afghanistan should be tried under our civilian court system in the United States rather than a military tribunal as an enemy combatant, then we’ll continue to disagree.</p>
<p>If they are not the enemy, why are we using the United States military to fight them, find them, and kill them? I don’t recall the police referring to “terrible people and criminals” as “the enemy.” But that’s what the military calls them. We are fighting an enemy in a war.</p>
<p>When a US Marine rifle platoon is attacked by snipers, would you equate the perpetrators with some liquor store robbery suspects in Cleveland? Because that’s what you are giving them, the exact same status.</p>
<p>If they are just “bad people” that we want to arrest, why isn’t the FBI or Interpol out there bringing them to justice?</p>
<p>I cannot fathom our soldiers fighting in (not a war, according to you) some battle, and while they are rounding up captured enemy fighters, they have to pause and read them their Miranda rights, assign them defense lawyers, arrange for speedy trials back in the USA, and give their defense team all available intelligence and evidence (known as “discovery”) against them, and attempt to find an impartial jury of “their peers” to try them under the US Constitution.</p>
<p>It (bringing captured Chinese soldiers back for trial) wasn’t done in Korea (not a war according to you) and it (bringing captured NVA soldiers or VietCong back for trial) wasn’t done in Vietnam (not a war according to you.). Why should we do it now?</p>
<p>As for the topic we are discussing? A valid thread was started in this section, and we are discussing it. </p>
<p>No, I don’t believe that an Academy graduate should be defending him in court, because I don’t believe he should be in court in the first place.</p>
<p>Luigi:</p>
<pre><code>My points exactly and yes we do disagree on them. Merely repeating our points here or reapmlfying them really isn’t a discussion. Here’s the summary and I think you summarized yours very well: " No, I don’t believe that an Academy graduate should be defending him in court, because I don’t believe he should be in court in the first place."
Mine: I do think they are entitled to a trial and I guess since you are pushing me to a definative conclusion - I don’t think the military should have been deployed to either Iraq or Afgahanistan and I guess that does play into my thought process and conclusion on the subject. That said I now whole-heartedly belive we should finally finish what we started in the 1980’s in Afghanistan and in the 1990’s in Iraq and as such I fully support the continued deployment and if necessary augmentation of those military forces in those fledgling nation states.
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<p>That said historically and constitutionally neither Korea nor Vietnam are listed as Wars, they are conflicts. The difference if theres is one is that in both those cases we overtly took sides in a Civil War that was driven by stark differences in political ideology vice religion. As such it was a lot easier to see a path to an end. Interestingly since you brought them up look at the results. Technically the Korean Conflict/War between both North Korea and South Korea is not fully settled. As for Vietnam after a decade we threw in the towel, I would also say when we look at the conflict and it’s history on most accounts we also basically admit with little regret or issues we were supporting a government that was relatively morally bankrupt in South Vietnam merely because we were closer to their ideological perspective then the North. However in the end that wasn’t enough to keep us there nor was it enough for that side to win.</p>
<p>Clearly those two examples don’t bode well nor do they seem to be the examples we should be seeking to emmulate, though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t your point. Mine is and was that unlike WW II for example where our Congress Declared war in the Axis Powers, no declarations of war were approved by Congress and issued in either Korea, Vietnam, Bosnia, Iraq or Afghanistan. Do you disagree with that statement?</p>
<p>Finally I have no issue with an Academy graduate defending a terrorist at either a Military Tribunal or in a US Federal Court. I believe all people are entitled to due process and would have gladly voted that way were I on the Supreme Court when the Dredd Scott case was heard.</p>
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<p>Your beliefs, that our military shouldn’t be fighting overseas, leads you to believe that enemy combatants fighting our soldiers should have full and equal US Constitutional rights when they are taken prisoner. Unbelievable. If it was a “war” that you agreed with, would your beliefs be any different?</p>
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<p>I can read a history book, I understand the difference between a declared war and an undeclared war. I also understand that they are both wars. </p>
<p>Were the ones shooting at us (the “enemy”) during these “conflicts” taken back to the USA for full judicial-system trials, or were they held as enemy combatants? I only bring it up to refute your red-herring that an undeclared war does not invoke/trigger the provisions of the Geneva Convention. (It does - read Common Article 2 and Common Article 3).</p>
<p>Do you believe that each and every Taliban and Al-Qeada fighter we capture in Afghanistan or Iraq deserves to be brought back to the US for a full judicial-system trail with all the rights and guarantees under the US Constitution? Or just the leaders like Khalid Sheik Muhammad? </p>
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<p>An Academy grad defending him in military court martial would be 100% acceptable, and even encouraged in my opinion.</p>
<p>Luigi:</p>
<pre><code> You raise a couple of interesting questions that further delineate our differences on this issue.
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<p>“If it was a “war” that you agreed with, would your beliefs be any different?” - Short answer, yes, probably. Longer answer my issues with treating them as POWs, etc. is to some degree I feel that’s what they want and in addition to giving them something else to demonize our culture by, it also legitimizes them as more than what they are in my view.</p>
<p>"Were the ones shooting at us (the “enemy”) during these “conflicts” taken back to the USA for full judicial-system trials, or were they held as enemy combatants? "</p>
<p>I’ll answer that in two parts reverse order to how you asked it - they weren’t generally taken anywhere, they were held in POW camps in theater, like I said before that was/is part of the first slippry slope that was tred upon here, in my opinion. I haven’t looked it up but since you brought it up how many of the POWs captured in Korea or Vietnam were tried and convicted by Military Tribunals for war crimes or other similar offenses - let’s discount the trials, if any for crimes against other POWs while in captivity assuming we can agree at least that something such as that isn’t germain to this debate. Further looking at Bosnia those that have been subjected to International Justice were tried in the Haugue - like Milosovic for crimes against humanity. Looking at WWII, I agree you can point to Nurenburg which was a military tribunal howerver, those monsters had not been extracted from their country and held in a place like GITMO for four years and one could also argue that at the time of the Nuremberg Trials the Nation-State of Germany had not yet been reconstituted so they couldn’t be tried there. </p>
<p>Of course had these prisioners not been extracted from either Iraq or Afghanistan in the first place and their Governments agreed they should be tried by Military Tribunals as their own Courts System were unsuitable for such efforts at the time this matter would have also been quite simple. Further if before reinstalling the Iraqi or Afghanistan Governments the overseeing Provisional Authorities had tried them locally either using a Provisional Court or Military Tribunal again this would have been simpler as well and I’d have no argument either way.</p>
<p>My simple stupid conclusion is that the root of our disagreement is not whether a Service Academy graduate should act as a defense attorney for them but wheter there should be a trial vs, Military Tribunal. In that regard I’d say I’m being the pragmatist accepting that decision has already been made, while you are arguing that such a course a) need not be taken and b) is wrong headed. On the other hand I’m looking at the whole conduct of the “wars” and concluding this is yet another possible mistake in a series of them, then arguing that if we are going to argue and stand on principles lets go all the way back to the simplist ones and one or two I think we should hold most dear - a) we don’t torture anyone; b) we believe justice should be impartial and implimented with due process in a manner that provides someone with a speedy day in court regardless of whether that court is a Fedral Court, intenrational Court or Military Tribunal. So because of the fact I think we failed miserably on those two items I’m willing to step back and see if we can recapture some of those things which make us fundementally “Americans” from the terroritsts who to some degree won when we started to waiver on those core values. </p>
<p>Either way I think we agree that now we are in this we need to finish it and that means we Americans are now in the business of “nation-building” and how we go about working with the good people in Iraq and Afghanistan needs to be evolutionary.</p>