Treating Terrorists as ... Terrorists

June 11, 2002

by Steven Plaut

Perhaps the most significant aspect of the news about the FBI’s arrest of an Al-Qaida "activist," who was part of a plot to explode a "dirty radioactive" bomb in the US, is the fact that the United States decided to treat this holder of US citizenship as a combatant and not as an ordinary criminal.

There have long been two main views of how terrorists should be treated. The first holds that they should be regarded as mere criminals, civilians subject to habeas corpus, due process, rights of representation by lawyers, rights of appeals, Miranda warnings, etc. The second holds that they should be treated as enemy combatants. In the latter case, they may be shot without Miranda warnings, they may be denied habeas corpus, they may be held without trial indefinitely. No lawyers. No civilian judges. No nothing.

Let us make clear up front that it has always been the Israeli approach to treat terrorists ONLY via the first approach, the civilian/police/judicial approach. Israel has court martialed its own soldiers and security force agents when they dared to shoot enemy terrorists captured at the site of atrocities they have just perpetrated. Terrorists who have just shot up school buses or cafes full of civilians have the right in Israel to be Mirandized, to have a fair trial before civilian judges, with legal representation by the finest Marxist attorneys Israel can produce, to cushy prison conditions and liberal visiting policies, and of course they are always protected from the death penalty. I emphasize that all these "rights" hold even when the terrorist is NOT an Israeli citizen. They only exceptions have been the holding of two Lebanese Shi’ite terrorists without trial, because they had been involved in the disappearance of Israeli MIA Ron Arad, and the rare use of "administrative detention" for Palestinian terrorists when Israel prefers not to release the identity of witnesses and informers against them.

The Americans know an enemy terrorist when they see one and no one was suggesting that Al Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan be treated like ordinary street corner stickup hoodlums in Los Angeles, read their rights and given civilian trials. A touch of Oslo Lemminghood did later show up in the US, but only when the terrorists were shipped to Guantanamo Bay prisons, where the bleeding hearts of the anti-American Left demanded the terrorists be granted cushy internment conditions, gourmet food and high-quality medical treatment of which ordinary Cuban civilians can only dream.

Today’s decision is noteworthy because the US decided to treat an Arab terrorist holding US citizenship as an enemy combatant, with all that this implies.

The US has quite simply decided it is at war, and in war you do not play silly little posturing games with the enemy. In war you fight the enemy - you do not coddle him. In war, people holding your own citizenship who support the enemy or collaborate with the enemy are regarded as traitors and treated accordingly. Winston Churchill threw Oswald Mosley summarily in prison, and did not try him. Many demanded that Mosley be executed. He should have been.

Israel is also at war, but its leaders are too pusillanimous to declare so. This is why Israel insists on continuing to treat terrorist mass murderers as common civil criminals. Where it jails perpetrators of mass atrocities rather than giving them the death penalty or summarily executing them on the spot. Where Avigdor Feldman and the rest of the Lawyers for a Second Holocaust spend their days trying to get Arab murderers of Jews off on technicalities. Where Israel refuses to take any action at all against the families of suicide bombers. Where Israel’s only way of dealing with terror is to ask the terrorist squad leaders who send out the mass murderers in the first place to kindly take action and arrest the terrorist foot soldiers and then to kindly reform themselves. Where Israel has yet to take action of any sort whatsoever against a single traitor openly collaborating with and supporting the enemy. Instead, Israel gives the traitors amongst itself who openly support the enemies of the country subsidies, Knesset seats, and tenure.

Israel’s problem is that its leaders are afraid to declare that war exists. They have been taught over the past Oslo decade that pretending that war does not exist is the surest path to peace, and even Ariel Sharon clearly is now solidly part of this school of thought.

Will it take the explosion of a dirty radioactive bomb to make these people come to their senses?

In fact, NEITHER of the two paradigms for dealing with terrorists are the correct one. While treating them as enemy combatants is better than allowing them to enjoy civilian due process, rules, and protections, this is also an erroneous way of dealing with terrorists. Terrorists must NOT be granted Geneva Convention privileges and POW rights. They must NOT be held in humane conditions, with Red Cross visits. They must NOT be protected from capital punishment.

Terrorists must be treated under a third paradigm, a special one reserved for them. Terrorists must be treated inhumanely. They SHOULD be tortured. They must be denied human dignities, for behaving without human dignity is the very basis for their behavior. People who murder groups of children are not entitled to any privileges or shows of humanity. They are beyond the pale. They are garbage. Treating them as such makes a huge powerful statement to the world.