Andrew C. McCarthy:
These legal proceedings, then, are simply theater. For the Left, that means projecting shopworn themes under the guise of thoughtfully pondering the purpose of the jihadists’ procedural maneuvering. Is KSM scheming to challenge our new president’s redoubling of Islamic outreach? Is he daring Obama to kick off the promised era of good feeling by executing Muslims, even as the new administration backpedals from campaign commitments to shut down Gitmo and withdraw from Iraq forthwith? Or is he, as the ACLU speculated for the New York Times, trying to draw attention to the asserted folly of abandoning the 1990’s model of civilian terrorist trials in favor of “a failed commission process”?
Yes, it’s the silly season.
What we don’t yet seem to grasp, even after all that’s gone on these last two decades, is that our politics and our law are of interest only to us. They matter nothing to jihadists. It’s a fatuous exercise in self-absorption to suppose otherwise — and a foolish one since it demonstrates for all to see that we still don’t get it. The delusion that we can change our enemies by changing ourselves is what makes the useful idiots useful.
Indeed.
For radical Islam, it’s not about us; it’s about them. KSM isn’t about us. He’s about KSM. There is no system we can devise, nothing we can do or not do, no one we can elect or anoint, that will alter how we are perceived by the millions who share the jihadist worldview, if not jihadist methods.
Why are there not more commentators like Mr. McCarthy?
