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A Foreign Plot, a Common Criminal Trial

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We learn from the criminal complaint that the Times Square jihadist bomber (and no, no member of the administration has used the words “Islamic extremist” or “Islamic terrorists,” so we are left again with a “crime,” the motive of which the president would like to ignore), Faisal Shahzad, “had received bomb-making training in the militant strongholds of western Pakistan.” The complaint further explains that he returned in February after a five-month visit to Pakistan. And while Janet Napolitano assured us that this was a “one-off” bomber (one bomb? or one lone wolf?), it now seems that he was not alone:

Pakistani officials identified one of the detainees as Tauhid Ahmed and said he had been in touch with Mr. Shahzad through e-mail, and had met him either in the United States or in the Pakistani port city of Karachi.

Another man arrested, Muhammad Rehan, had spent time with Mr. Shahzad during a recent visit there, Pakistani officials said. Mr. Rehan was arrested in Karachi just after morning prayers at a mosque known for its links with the militant group Jaish-e-Muhammad.

So how do we deal with such a person and with the network that surrounds him? Democrats are delighted he was Mirandized and will head for federal court, and Eric Holder went so far as to insist that even this incident had not driven a stake through KSM’s New York City trial: “Unfortunately, New York and Washington, D.C., remain targets of people who would do this nation harm. And regardless of where a particular trial is, where a particular event is going to occur, I think that is going to remain true. And it is why we have to be especially vigilant in New York as well as in Washington.” Regardless? Apparently our attorney general sees zero increased risk to the city that has now been targeted again.

Republicans weren’t so pleased with another display of the Obama team’s fetish for the criminal-justice model:

Republicans quickly called [the Mirandizing and federal-court venue] a mistake. “My own preference would be that he be tried in a military tribunal,” Representative Peter T. King of New York, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, told Fox News.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, Mr. Obama’s Republican presidential opponent in 2008, said it would be “a serious mistake” to give Mr. Shahzad his constitutional rights until he had been fully interrogated. “Don’t give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it’s all about,” Mr. McCain said on Don Imus’s talk show.

As the net sweeps in Shahzad’s accomplices and we learn more about the web of international connections, we will again face a key question: why does this administration insist on treating the perpetrators as criminals rather than the entire enterprise as an act of war? Apparently, we’re dealing with an administration convinced of its own virtue and wisdom and unwilling to deviate from its predetermined course. Unfortunately, ideology is not “so yesterday” with this group.


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