Obama’s Broken Promises – by Andrew Cline | FrontPage Magazine

Obama’s Broken Promises – by Andrew Cline | FrontPage Magazine

Last Friday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the United States would try Kahlid Sheikh Mohammed and four other suspected terrorists in a federal court in New York City, not a military tribunal. The same announcement contained the news, subsequently under-reported, that the U.S. would try five other terror suspects in military tribunals, not civilian courts.

President Obama followed that bombshell with another: his admission on Wednesday that he won’t close the Guantanamo Bay prison by Jan. 22, as he had promised earlier this year.

The back-to-back announcements show that Obama continues to be torn between his campaign rhetoric and reality. If terrorism is a crime, why not try all suspects in civilian courts? The administration’s decision to try some terrorists in military tribunals is an acknowledgement that the tribunals are not inherently unjust, and that at least some acts of terror are acts of war.

If the tribunals are not unjust, as Holder tacitly admits, then why not try all terror suspects there? Strangely, Holder acknowledged on Wednesday that the 9/11 attacks were an act of war. His explanation for trying KSM and other terrorists in federal court was that the act of war committed on that day was also a federal crime. Said Holder:

“…the 9/11 attacks were both an act of war and a violation of our federal criminal law, and they could have been prosecuted in either federal courts or military commissions…At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is in federal court.”

Really? Holder cannot possibly be ignorant of the fact that the risks of failing to obtain justice are higher in a civilian criminal trial, where the government must expose sensitive secrets to public scrutiny if the defense requests them. And the defense certainly will. That fact alone can hamstring the prosecution. How in the world is the United States more likely to prevail in a criminal trial than a military one? It isn’t. Holder’s statement is an obvious rationalization.