An Important Ruling

Earlier this week, I read about an appeals court ruling that I thought was a very important one. I'd planned to post about it, but the Wall Street Journal beat me to it, with an editorial that captures my reaction better than I could have done myself:

You probably haven't seen it reported, but the Guantanamo trial system for enemy combatants won a big victory earlier this week. A military appeals court overturned a much-ballyhooed decision in June that had dismissed all charges against Omar Ahmed Khadr, an al Qaeda operative captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2002 after killing an American serviceman with a grenade.

The June decision was widely portrayed as a repudiation of the Bush Administration's antiterror legal policy, so perhaps this should be described as vindication. Under the 2006 Military Commissions Act, a panel called the Combat Status Review Tribunal makes a threshold determination of whether or not terror detainees are enemy combatants, before they are moved into military tribunals. Judge Peter Brownback ruled in June that the Review Tribunal had only screened for "enemy combatants," not "unlawful enemy combatants," thus giving his court no jurisdiction.

Never mind that "enemy combatant" is defined in a way that is inherently "unlawful" -- i.e., someone who is part of an international terrorist organization and engages in hostilities against the U.S. in violation of the laws of war. The legal hitch was not using the magic word "unlawful."

The appeals panel agreed that the Review Tribunal had not specifically determined that Khadr was an unlawful enemy combatant, but it also ruled that it wasn't obliged to. Rather, it said Judge Brownback ought to have considered the unlawfulness of Khadr's conduct under common courts-martial procedures, as defined by the Military Commissions Act. To do otherwise, let alone dismiss the charges, was "contradictory to the statute's clear structure, wording, and overall intent."

There's little doubt how the coming trial will turn out. There is a video, for instance, of Khadr preparing explosives to be used against American forces. But in the media's current terror narrative, it's only worth celebrating when the Bush Administration's judicial rules are overturned. When they're upheld, almost nobody notices -- so we thought you'd like to know.

How so many Americans believe we should coddle our enemies, and grant them the same rights as American citizens, is beyond my ken. Even more astonishing to me is how so many Americans don't even seem to realized that we're engaged in an existential war with radical Islamic fundamentalists. The American media, reflecting and amplifying this left-leaning bias, was very quick to report (and laud) the lower court ruling that limited our country's ability to prosecute its enemies. That ruling generated giant, joyful headlines across the country.

Reading the last couple of sentences back, I'm filled (again) with wonder at the self-destructive – suicidal, really – beliefs of my fellow countrymen.

The appeals court ruling, by contrast, is virtually uncovered in the lamestream media. I found one brief mention on Fox News, and a few mentions in the foreign press (mostly as a disaster report there). I found out about the ruling not through the lamestream media, but rather through one of the law blogs I read daily. This is so sad – an important ruling that helps this country defend itself, and the media just doesn't seem to care. Of course, the real problem is that the appeals court ruling doesn't fit their narrative at all, because that ruling vindicates the Bush administration's original position vis a vis the Guantanamo detainees' legal status.

Sigh…