Posted on 06/11/2002 9:52:22 PM PDT by Pyro7480
Lefts Next Cause Célèbre: Taliban Jose
FrontPageMagazine.com | June 12, 2002
JOSE PADILLA, aka Abdullah al Muhajir, should be an instant folk hero among the American left. For an ideology that craves victims, hes a twoferMuslim and Hispanic. His ethnicity alone makes him far more compelling than John Walker Lindh, a white kid, and a rich one at that. Unlike Taliban John, Taliban Jose has serious mass-market appeal: The reformed gangbanger found religion behind bars and set out to see the world, only to be busted on a technicality by The Man when he returned to the U.S.
True, hes also a convicted felon and, by all indications, an al Qaeda sympathizer who wants to devastate Washington, D.C., with a "dirty bomb" laced with radioactive materials, but his murderous intentions wont deter those most likely to take up his causeit never has before.
Within hours of Attorney General John Aschrofts announcement that the FBI had apprehended Padilla and detained him at a Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., the usual suspects rushed to defend him. The American Civil Liberties Union dashed off a press release denouncing the Justice Departments decision to classify Padilla as an "enemy combatant," thus depriving him of legal rights and protections accorded to run-of-the-mill criminals. Anthony Romero, the ACLUs Executive Director, complained that the government "has failed to justify why our traditional system of American justice should not apply in the case of Jose Padilla."
The ACLU reasons that "if the government has sufficient evidence of criminal conduct of a United States citizen then it should charge him in U.S. courts," but thats the problemwhile Padilla clearly appears to be a terrorist, "sufficient evidence" of the sort to convict him criminally doesnt exist. The FBI apprehended him as soon as he stepped off the plane from Pakistan to Chicago, well before he was able to determine the logistics of the attack that al Qaeda officials reportedly authorized him to launch.
According to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Padilla had yet to form "an actual plan." The feds "stopped this man in the initial planning stages"a marked improvement over their inability to thwart Sept. 11 despite numerous promising leads, but a severe liability for any prosecutor charged with trying Taliban Jose in a court of law. Without a concrete planan intended target, an effort to secure ingredients for a "dirty bomb"theres no evidence that could persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt. If the FBI had decided to press criminal charges, Padilla would most likely have never even gone to trial, securing a quick release and another chance to go about his merry work.
The Justice Department reportedly came up against a court-imposed deadline to file criminal charges or else release the Puerto Rican jihadist from custody. Wisely, it decided to opt for "enemy combatant" status instead. Now the government can hold Padilla indefinitely, and his access to an attorney will be limited, much to the chagrin of the ACLU.
This is a protest that, even by ACLU standards, attains new levels of absurdity. If Taliban Jose doesnt qualify as an "enemy combatant," its hard to imagine who would. Wolfowitz says that the al Qaeda operative "researched nuclear weapons and received training in wiring explosives while in Pakistan, and he was instructed to return to the United States to conduct reconnaissance operations for al Qaeda." Ashcroft reports that "multiple, independent and corroborating sources" indicate that Padilla was "involved in planning future terrorist attacks on innocent American civilians in the United States."
That evidence may be too flimsy, and its sources too unreliable, to secure a conviction or even an indictment, but it seems more than adequate to demonstrate that Padilla is a threat to the American peopleand, yes, an "enemy combatant." That title could also apply to both John Walker Lindh and Zacarias Moussaoui, the "20th hijacker," but in those cases, the Justice Department declined to make the designation, most likely because officials believed they could secure criminal convictions, and didnt want to unnecessarily antagonize the civil-liberties crowd.
This time, its not so easy, and protecting the civil liberties of an Osama-loving gangster necessarily takes a backseat to safeguarding the American public from catastrophic attack. The left wont see it that way, but the left will always complain. It regards failure to prevent a terrorist attack as proof of a right-wing conspiracy, and success as a civil-rights violation.
There will, no doubt, be more traitors like Taliban Jose. Radical Muslim groups stand much to gain by developing an American fifth column, and the obvious recruits are disaffected inmates in U.S. prisonspassport-holding reprobates with a history of violence.
President Bushs remark that "you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," applies to American citizens as much as it does to foreign governments. The Taliban Johns and the Taliban Joses out there are clearly against us, and the extreme sensibilities of civil libertarians only make their efforts easier.
Chris Weinkopf is an editorial writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Daily News. To read his weekly Daily News column, click here. E-mail him at chris.weinkopf@dailynews.com.
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But the larger problem is that the feds are taking the easy way out - which, while it looks good now, will come back to bite us later. Based on the precedent, there's nothing stopping them from coming up to YOU on the street this afternoon, while you're in traffic, hauling you off and keeping you bagged and under wraps for as long as they want to, simply for writing something on FR that they didn't like! There's no difference!
We've been quoting Benjamin Franklin ("They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety") for the past several weeks, but now comes the time to put your money where your mouth is. By allowing Padilla to be carted off and held without due process, nor access to his mouthpiece (however repugnant you might think she is), we are doing nothing short of giving up some of our own liberty. Is that what we REALLY want here?
All I'm saying is that we need to demand that the feds do all legwork necessary to get this guy, and not to set things up so that he can be freed (and all the work head down the drain) because of a technicality; and right now, because the feds are taking the easy way out instead of doing the hard work necessary to get it done right, we are headed in that direction!
Exactly right - just imagine - President Hitlary (gag! retch!) demanding from Jim everyone's personal information that posts on FR, simply for calling her Hitlary. Using this precedent, she could "round up all the usual suspects" -- in this case, all of us, and throw away the key, simply because she didn't like what we said.
Do we really want to open that Pandora's box?
Thinking about it all during my run this afternoon, I thought of how ill prepared the Western democracies are for the kind of warfare that al-Queda is waging. I mean, can you imagine the uproar if the 19 hijackers were singled out on the morning of September 11 and arrested? "Box cutters? You can't hijack an airplane with boxcutters! Preposterous!" There'll be demonstrations across the country and some of those who perished on that day would be among the demonstrators carrying "Racism!" and "Fascism!" signs. How do you prevent crime and terrorist acts? Our perfect Constitution and perfect Bill of Rights are mighty imperfect in this area. Look, the Israelis shoot to kill individuals they suspect of having bomb belts on their bodies. Should they read them Miranda Rights first? What to do?
I tend not to believe the Clinton's about anything, however McVeigh was convicted by a court of his peers.
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