Khalid Sheik Mohammed and U.S. Justice

News & Analysis …

The BBC reported this weekend that senior U.S. Republican officials are protesting the Obama administration’s move to try 9/11 suspect Khalid Sheik Mohammed and four others in New York. While Democrats approved the move, members of the GOP said that the move puts U.S. residents at risk. No date has been given for the trial. News outlets and bloggers in response examined whether the U.S. would be able to handle the security, and whether the Mohammed and the other suspects can find justice in a U.S. trial.

NPR |  “New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says his city is ready to handle the trial of the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. His comments followed the Obama administration’s announcement Friday that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others would be transferred from the prison at Guantanamo Bay to New York to face prosecution. The city may be prepared to tackle the security and logistics of such a trial, but the emotional challenge may be more difficult. … It would be hard to find a New Yorker who didn’t feel their world change that day.”

ThinkProgress |  “The U.S. justice system apparently isn’t good enough for former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (who believes that the White House has a “Department of Law“). Last night she went on Facebook and posted a message calling the Obama administration’s decision ‘atrocious.’”

Lawyers, Guns & Money |  “Obama and Holder are not trying to reestablish the rule of law, they are engaged in a game of political chicken with their real constituents (the transnational Left) and, because they blinked, they owe a tribute of American lives to their overseas masters. The problem with such paranoid stylings is that 1) Mohammed and his compatriots were tortured and 2) the entire world already knows that. What can these men say against the United States that hasn’t already been published by international news syndicates?”

Center for American Progress |  “I worry, however, that the Obama administration may unintentionally hand Al Qaeda a propaganda tool should it—as Holder strongly suggested—seek the death penalty for these men. It is in the strategic interests of the United States to deny these most heinous Al Qaeda terrorists what they want most: martyrdom. Al Qaeda will exploit an execution by the U.S. government as a significant propaganda victory, no matter how fair and legitimate the trial. Life imprisonment, however, would cause Mohammed and his co-conspirators to be forgotten, like Ramzi Yousef and other terrorists currently wasting away in obscurity in U.S. jails, a far harsher punishment for these terrorists than execution.”

Glenn Greenwald @Salon |  “Obama is certain to be bombarded with all sorts of right-wing idiocy and fear-mongering as a result of his decision to bring 9/11 defendants into the U.S. in order to give them trials.  Doing that is clearly the right thing to do:  trials and due process is how civilized countries treat people who are accused of engaging in terrorism.  Given how Democrats and Republicans will talk about this decision, media coverage will almost certainly fixate on the narrow question of whether (a) 9/11 defendants should be given trials in the U.S.  or (b) we’re all now Endangered because these Omnipotent Monsters are being brought into our communities (in handcuffs, shackles, and maximum-security prisons).”

Best of the Web …

Relationships 2.0: Are you my real friends or are you just virtual?  |  What Tami Said

When I began writing online about the things that are most important to me, I soon found a small group of cyber-friends who inspire me, who write things that seem like they tumbled from my own mind, who share some of my beliefs, opinions and obsessions and challenge others, who crack my shit up on the regular. I found my tribe–folks who speak my language–online. We e-mail, DM each other on Twitter, recommend each other for writing jobs, meet up to run 5Ks, give advice, send notes of encouragement to one another, share family pictures, sometimes even talk on the phone. I have not met most of my virtual friends in person, yet what I derive from these relationships is important to me. In fact, I credit my cyber-relationships with sparking some important personal growth over the last two years.

But Taylor cautions that I shouldn’t mistake the virtual relationships I cherish for real relationships. … Is Taylor correct? For all the in-depth conversations with like-minded folks in forums, for all the Twitter conversations that last too late into the night, for all the personal e-mail exchanges with virtual friends, are we losing the true meaning of “relationship?” Or, is new media redefining what relationships are? My online friendships may be quite different from my in-real-life ones, but I think they are equally as valid.

Once Common, Now Disappearing  |  Kottke.org

From a book called Obsolete, a list of things that were once common but not so much anymore: blind dates, mix tapes, getting lost, porn magazines, looking old, operators, camera film, hitchhiking, body hair, writing letters, basketball players in short shorts, privacy, cash, and, yes, books.

God, the Army and PTSD  |  Boston Review

In a 2004 study of approximately 1,400 Vietnam veterans, almost 90 percent Christian, researchers at Yale found that nearly one-third said the war had shaken their faith in God and that their religion no longer provided comfort for them. The Yale study found that these soldiers were more likely than others to seek mental health treatment through the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) when they came home. It was not that these veterans had unusually high confidence in government or especially good information about services at VA hospitals. Instead, they had fallen into a spiritual abyss and were desperate to find a way out. The trauma of war seems to be especially acute for men and women whose faith in a benevolent God is challenged by the carnage they have witnessed.

Of course, not all veterans with mental health concerns are led to VA hospitals by a loss of faith: many simply want to get a night’s sleep without being terrorized by nightmares. Whatever kind of assistance they are seeking, it has been in increasingly short supply. The decline in resources for veterans’ mental health services started in the 1980s, as part of a nationwide effort to move psychiatric patients into outpatient treatment. The number of inpatient psychiatric beds fell from 9,000 in the late ’80s to 3,000 by 2008.

During the Iraq war, however, the great difficulty veterans experienced in getting psychiatric care—greater than before—was not a product of cost-cutting, but of conviction: many Bush administration officials believed that soldiers who supported the war would not face psychological problems, and if they did, they would find comfort in faith. In a resigned tone, one prominent researcher who worked for the VA, and asked that he not be identified because he was not authorized to speak to the press, explained that high-ranking officials believed that “Jesus fixes everything.”