All Sheikhed Up

It's a common source of late-night talk-show humor: the bland, and unintentionally funny, headlines that often appear in small-town newspapers. But we are in the big city, so what are we to make of a headline like this: “Conviction predicted in 9/11 case”. In other words, both President Obama and Attorney General Holder are predicting – just like Karnak – that the alleged 9/11 conspirator known as KSM, or the Shabby Sheikh, will be convicted. Or, as one of my favorite movie lines goes, “Give him a fair trial then hang him!” Obama and Holder are even “confident” that this will be the outcome, despite the unease from many quarters as to the wisdom of giving KSM a civilian trial as opposed to a military slam-dunk. Quoth Holder: “Failure is not an option.” Well... if failure is not an option, then you'd better not put him on trial, had you? I mean... the point of putting someone on trial is that we are not assuming that he is absolutely, positively guilty until all the evidence is presented... and that there is always a possibility, however remote, that he will be found innocent and, the day after his acquittal, be spotted in some Lower Manhattan watering hole in an expensive pin-striped suit, smoking cigars and sipping fine Scotch, with a blonde on each arm.

But this is impossible! It cannot be tolerated! It cannot even be allowed into one's consciousness! Well then, I say again – why put him on trial? Why not just hold him as a POW for as long as the “war on terror” lasts, i.e. for a few more centuries? That's what “W” woulda done, right? Gitmo is the best thing that ever happened to the “no controlling legal authority” crowd. It's the gray zone to end all gray zones – a kind of purgatory where we can send anyone and do anything, and no one has any basis for stopping us. Truly, an ideal situation – and here's Obama all ready to shut it down, and send its guests to Illinois, where... well, where the situation is pretty much the same, as far as that goes.

But this is to ignore the underlying theme of all the protests and complaints about having the trial within a stone's throw of Ground Zero. All good conservatives know that all good liberals think that anyone who is suspected of a crime – no matter how enormous – is more of a victim than a perpetrator. In fact – logically – the greater the criminal act, the more of a victim the perpetrator must be... by definition. (Which is why it's a miracle that Bernie Madoff has to spend even one day behind bars.) We saw this mind set in action, for example, in the O.J. case – or cases (you know, the one he won, and the one he didn't). We saw it with Michael Jackson. And don't even get me started on Mumia! So what conservatives – and New Yorkers – and Rudy Giuliani – are really worried about is that the liberals who surround Obama and will be not only surrounding, but also in charge of, the KSM trial, will figure out some way to get him off! And who could stop them? All it takes is a crack team of defense lawyers (I understand O.J.'s are available), a mush-brained judge (no problemo), and an error-prone prosecutor backed up by a few dozen members of the L.A. Police Department, and the deal is done. Wow – talk about irony. Talk about “blow back!” I don't suppose the 9/11 conspirators realized that, among other things, they were setting up a kind of acid test for just how liberal a place New York City really is. Here we have a city where the mayor would have no problem being the grand marshal of a gay rights parade... and where refusal to eat the brown M&Ms is considered a “hate crime”... but now they're confronting the spectre of many decades of mindless liberalism, much of which originated – both in theory and in practice – right on their doorstep. This is a city where “victim's rights” are put in the same class as people who bomb abortion clinics or who want art museums to quit funding scatological and blasphemous “art”. And now – an administration headed up by the most purely liberal claque since the New Dealers terrorized the land is saying, in effect, “OK, New York, time to step up and deliver.” Deliver, that is, an inevitable guilty verdict even though the trial is to be scrupulously fair and impartial (and non-racist, and non-homophobic, and... etc.).

And in fact, Holder has not shrunk from the prospect of a negative outcome: Even if a suspect were acquitted, “that doesn't mean that person would be released into our country”. Well then, what would be his status? And why don't we just put him into that status now, and avoid a lot of trouble and expense? So yes, the problem is not just one of venue, or procedure; everyone can see who's in charge, and who will be running the show – and, based on their track record, they don't like it one bit.