Opinion: In Today’s Pages: Bin Laden’s chauffeur, Beijing TV and Anaheim’s Disneyfication
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Neither columnist Rosa Brooks nor The Times’ editorial board is too impressed with the military commission conviction Wednesday of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who confessed to being Osama bin Laden’s driver. Brooks wonders if regular federal courts could do a better job of putting the really bad guys (as opposed to those who chauffeur the bad guys) in prison for good:
But are these guys really the worst of the worst, evil terrorist masterminds who so threaten ‘the continuity of the operations of the United States government’ that they couldn’t possibly be tried in U.S. civilian courts?After 6 1/2 years -- after detaining hundreds of people at Guantanamo, after trying interrogation techniques adapted from the Chinese and the KGB, after countless protests from the International Committee for the Red Cross, after alienating close allies and creating a cause celebre for our enemies -- have the military commissions really been worth it? .... Odds are, if the administration had stuck to the tried and true federal court system, it’d be home now -- and most of the Guantanamo detainees suspected of serious crimes would have been tried and convicted by now too.
The editorial board laments that Hamdan’s military trial ‘fell short of the highest traditions of American justice,’ given that he wouldn’t be set free even if his appeals are successful:
As an enemy combatant, the Pentagon has said, Hamdan and others so designated can be incarcerated until the end of the so-called war on terror. (Hamdan can appeal the verdict under the Military Commissions Act and might also benefit from a Supreme Court decision in June granting habeas corpus rights to detainees, though that decision involved prisoners who had not received a trial.)This page has argued repeatedly that, given the length of the confinement of detainees at Guantanamo and the open-endedness of the war on terrorism, it would be preferable to try accused terrorists in the civilian judicial system, where an expeditious trial is guaranteed. That system, it should be remembered, produced the conviction of Omar Abdel Rahman, the ‘blind sheik’ accused of plotting to bomb the United Nations, and a life sentence for Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. But if Congress and the administration insist on maintaining a separate judicial system to try alleged terrorists, it needs to be fairer and more transparent, and an acquittal must mean more than a return trip to a prison cell.
Also on the editorial page, the board assails John McCain for his nuclear-based energy plan (which it calls ‘an insult to voters’ intelligence’) and offers cautious praise for a new state law that requires convicted taggers to scrub away their mess:
Judges must be careful. In the upside-down culture of the street, removing graffiti can be deemed a sign of disrespect and draw deadly retaliation from criminal gangs. Taggers can and should be punished -- but not with their lives.
On the Op-Ed page, TV critic Heather Havrilevsky expresses skepticism that NBC can pull off the usual global pep rally while covering the Olympics in Beijing:
No matter how much China and its accomplices struggle to feed us upbeat, cheery distractions along the way, each tidbit sours on further investigation. Beijing has really cleaned up its act for the big event! Yes, indeed, it did -- by temporarily shuttering factories, forcing cars off the roads and building enormous walls around areas the government considers eyesores. The Olympic village is thriving, as promised! Oh yes, and it’s filled with food that the Chinese government says is ‘perfectly safe.’ Mmm, that sounds delicious. Journalists will be given unprecedented access to this glorious ancient land, so long shrouded in mystery! Just don’t try to access the websites of groups like Amnesty International while you’re in the country, and don’t go poking around where you’re not wanted, like those Japanese reporters who took a beating in Xinjiang province Monday.
Elsewhere on the Op-Ed page, think-tankers Ernest Cowles and Tim Hodson analyze recent local elections in California to show that we’re not opposed to every new tax. Columnist Patt Morrison hopes that public and private employees who work in Anaheim’s thriving tourism industry don’t get all the local flavor squeezed out of them by outside hospitality consultants:
If I were visiting Orange County from, say, Japan, and the waiter called the seared ahi ‘gnarly,’ or a motorcycle cop slipped and called me ‘dude’ -- well, I’d be tickled. I’d take home a more authentic California souvenir than a pair of board shorts from a surf styles chain store in Downtown Disney.Now that’s sweeeeet.
On the letters page, readers criticize McCain for going negative on Obama. Gregg Scott of Los Angeles writes:
If these campaign commercials are affecting people’s opinions more than the actual issues, this country is in more trouble than I thought. I don’t need a commercial to tell me that with McCain as president, we will be involved in endless wars in faraway places. That strategy did not work for the Roman Empire, and it won’t work for us either.
Image credit: Donna Grethen/TMS