Michel's Commentary

11/27/2001  888WebToday   What if Osama bin Laden manages to survive this present war and is taken alive? It is not clear what will happen to him then, or even who will have jurisdiction over him.

Suppose he is remanded to a U.N. War Crimes Tribunal, as Slobodan Milosevic has been.  Doubtless that will be the start of a long legal ordeal and could go on for months or even years.  Milosevic himself is even now protesting that the tribunal appointed to try him is illegitimate and biased.  He is refusing to choose a lawyer to defend him because that would imply that he accepts the authority of the tribunal.  We could expect similar delays from Osama bin Laden.  What's more, while the war being waged against bin Laden has the approval of the UN; it is not being fought under UN auspices.  A final consideration: UN tribunals cannot inflict the death penalty, and our national sense of justice would be satisfied with nothing less than that for the man who murdered 6,000 innocent Americans.

Suppose, then, that Osama is handed over to the US military tribunals whose creation has been proposed by President Bush.

These tribunals will operate outside of the normal guarantees for the fair trial that American citizens enjoy under our Constitution, and the principles of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence.  A two thirds vote of the jury will be sufficient to convict.  The defendant will not be entitled to a defense counsel.  The preponderance of the evidence will be enough to convict, rather than the stricter standard of guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt."  The death penalty would be allowed.

President Bush's proposed military tribunals are already being attacked by critics both on the left and the right.  Liberals like Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont think they send the wrong message and set a very bad precedent. We should be true to our own principles of individual rights, Leahy argues, even when punishing murderous tyrants, indeed, especially then, so as not to obscure the distinction between what we stand for and what they stand for. Nor do we want to put ourselves in a position of having approved the summary execution of alleged "war criminals" if American serviceman may have to stand trial in the future in foreign countries on the same charge.  On the right, columnist William Safire, writing in the New York Times, has denounced the President's proposal as a "kangaroo Court" and even "Stalinist."  Conservative Republican Congressman from Georgia, Bob Barr says that such an exercise of executive power by Presidential decree "takes your breath away."

Leahy wants Osama and his crew to stand trial in America in a regular American court, with all the rights of American citizens guaranteed them. But this, of course, is subject to the same objection involved in trying them before a UN Tribunal:  it would mean a long, drawn out legal ordeal.

Let us pray that Osama bin Laden achieves the martyrdom he is said to covet. Perhaps the generous bounty that has been placed upon his head will help him.  His death in battle would solve everything.  It would not only spare us a protracted trail, it would relieve us of the necessity of having to maintain this monster during his confinement.  So better dead than fed.

Those are my thoughts .....

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