Common criminal or "warrior?"

It's important to remind ourselves that not only do pricks like Cheney and other Republicans act as advance men for al Qaeda when the fulminate about failed undie-bombs representing a "victory" for the increasingly marginal group, they also play directly in to the terrorists' hands when they demand military tribunals for a bunch of murderers.

It's no surprise that al Qaeda members would want to be seen as soldiers at war with the United States. Terrorist groups always want to be seen as warriors. Just think of the names they give themselves: the Lord's Resistance Army, Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Righteous"), or the Irish Republican Army, to name a few. The warrior mystique helps them to recruit glory-seeking young men to join their cause. It helps them justify the killing of their enemies and portray all of their victims as casualties of combat. It enables men like Osama bin Laden to portray themselves not as outlaws hiding in caves but leaders of great armies, confronting the world's superpower on a global battlefield.

When KSM was first brought before a military panel in Guantanamo, he reveled in the trappings of military justice. After confessing to the September 11 attacks, he said: "I did it, but this [is] the language of any war." In war, he said, "there will be victims." He then compared himself to George Washington, and said that if Washington had been captured by the British, he too would have been called an "enemy combatant."

It makes sense that a man who plotted the murder of innocent people from a refuge thousands of miles away would want to be seen as a soldier in a war. But why would politicians who claim to be tough on terrorism want to give him that status, as many Republicans do today? Why on earth do they think that facing justice in a civilian court, where the United States prosecutes murderers, rapists, drug dealers, pimps, and yes, terrorists (over 300 during George W. Bush's presidency), would be some sort of privilege?

Even if KSM stands accused of war crimes, it doesn't necessarily follow that he should be put before a military tribunal. The War Crimes Act, passed by Congress unanimously in 1996, gives federal civilian courts jurisdiction to prosecute grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in wartime -- in other words, war crimes. Sen. Lindsey Graham, who is leading the Republican fight against civilian trials, says that the United States has never put combatants captured on foreign battlefields in civilian courts. That is flat wrong. The George H. W. Bush administration did that to Gen. Manuel Noriega, head of the Panamanian armed forces who was captured during the U.S. military invasion of Panama. Noriega demanded the right to be tried by fellow officers in a military court. The Bush administration conceded that he was a prisoner of war, but tried him before a civilian court anyway to drive home the point that he was nothing more than a drug trafficker.

Exactly. Giving KSM a military tribunal is precisely what he wants. Trying him in a civilian federal court would deny him the argument that he is "a warrior." He's a thug and a murderer and should be treated appropriately. That self-proclaimed war-criminal Dick Cheney doesn't understand that just speaks volumes about the people who ruled this country for eight long years.

Meanwhile, Eric Holder is most certainly in the right in pushing for KSM to be tried in federal court, but the Times has a fascinating profile of Holder in which he admits he could use some help in the political arena.

And while I certainly sympathize with those who lost a loved one in the World Trade Towers, their misplaced need to see the plotters at Guantanamo Bay is a product, I think, of their need to elevate the crime to something sacred. I understand that. Their wife, husband, child, father, should not have died for nothing but the egomaniacal insanity of a bunch of wanderers living in Afghanistan. But it's wrong -- it doesn't honor the dead, it honors the murderers.

As the judge in the Richard Reid trial put it, these guys just aren't "that big."

"You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist. ... So war talk is way out of line in this court. You're a big fellow. But you're not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders."