The failure of lawfare, again
Image via WikipediaThe mixed verdict in the case of the first Guantánamo detainee to be tried in a civilian court on Wednesday quickly re-ignited a fierce debate over the Obama administration’s effort to restore the role of the traditional criminal justice system in handling terrorism prosecutions.There is more.
Ahmed Ghailani will face between 20 years and life in prison as a result of his conviction on one charge related to the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa. But because a jury acquitted him on more than 280 other charges -- including every count of murder -- critics of the Obama administration’s strategy on detainees said the verdict proved that civilian courts could not be trusted to handle the prosecution of Al Qaeda terrorists.
"This is a tragic wake-up call to the Obama Administration to immediately abandon its ill-advised plan to try Guantánamo terrorists” in federal civilian courts, said Representative Peter King, Republican of New York. “We must treat them as wartime enemies and try them in military commissions at Guantánamo.”
Adding political force of such criticism, Mr. King is set to become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee in January, and he promised to use oversight hearings to pressure the administration over its handling of terrorism trials.
Several other soon-to-be-powerful Republican lawmakers – including Lamar Smith of Texas, in the incoming Judiciary Committee chairman – made similar statements denouncing the use of civilian courts to prosecute terrorism cases.
Still, some proponents of using the regular court system rejected potrayals of the verdict as a disaster.
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The lawfare model for dealing with the war being waged against us has been an abject failure from the beginning when it was tried by the Clinton administration. It deters no one. After the first African embassy trials al Qaeda went on to blow up the Cole and make the 9-11 attacks.
Yet this administration and proponents of lawfare have this strange belief that trying the enemy in civilian courts somehow conveys legitimacy to our efforts. But, capturing and interrogating the enemy develops intelligence we would not get in the lawfare environment and also does not reveal US intelligence to the enemy as it did in the first African embassy trial when we revealed we were intercepting bin Laden's satellite phone conversations to tie him to the attacks. He quit using the phone then and we lost our chance to gather information about the planned 9-11 attacks or the Cole attack.
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