Khalid Sheikh Mohammed & Timothy McVeigh
The next phase in the investigation and prosecution of alleged Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is the decision by federal authorities as to whether to treat him as an enemy combatant, which could qualify him for a military tribunal and a restricted defense, or as a common criminal, tried in an American federal court with all of the safeguards and guarantees that procedure implies.
Both scenarios could lead to a death penalty or life imprisonment, but the implications would be radically different.
As far as we’re concerned, there is no question as to which is the proper course of action.
The Obama administration embarrassed itself with the initial intention of trying 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a New York City courtroom, only to reverse itself in the face of overwhelming public and law enforcement pushback. And that embarrassment was deserved. KSM, as he has come to be called, is a foreign national who attacked the United States from overseas in a highly organized and complex plot. He was apprehended overseas and brought to American interrogation and retribution. He is the classic definition of a foreign enemy combatant.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is a naturalized American citizen who, with his late and apparently influential older brother Tamerlan, committed a distinct act on American soil. Yes, it was politically motivated, and yes, it had international implications. And yes, it was an act of terrorism. But in that respect, it was more closely aligned to Timothy McVeigh’s protest bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City than it was to the organized 9/11 horrors. So far as we can tell, the Tsarnaev brothers were not connected to an organized foreign group. And once the bombing occurred, Dzhokhar went back to his college and acted like any normal student – eating, drinking, working out, meeting with friends. This is the behavior of an ordinary sociopathic criminal more than a committed terrordst.
We need to treat Mr. Tsarnaev like any other detached murderer, and by that we mean bombers like Theodore Kaczynski, snipers like David Berkowitz and arsonists like Hector Natal and Hector Morales who were just convicted in New Haven, Connecticut. As far as imposing the death penalty if and when he is convicted, we have no problem with that. The only mitigating factors of which we can conceive are his young age and the degree of coercive influence of his brother. And like Aurora mass murderer James Holmes, if you want to keep him in prison for many decades, fine. It will just cost a lot and be a lot of trouble, but so be it.
We keep talking about the need to get back to normal and not let terrorists feel they have won by upsetting our lifestyle and sense of ourselves. The best way to do that, under these unfortunate circumstances, is to treat Tsarnaev like what he is: a common criminal.
Let us show him that the American values he apparently felt motivated to attack are far stronger than whatever misguided cause he thought he was furthering.
UPDATE: This afternoon the White House announced that Tsarnaev, in fact, would be tried in a civilian court.
