This past Sunday morning, I took to my blog, The New York Conservative, to opine on the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (“KSM”) and his fellow terrorists. The full text of the post is available further below.
The New York Conservative was a blog hosted by Google Blogger. I started the blog in February of this year and had posted 17 columns prior to the KSM entry, commenting on political matters and issues affecting the Catholic Church. I would post my entries on Facebook and occasionally would email a link to friends or other interested parties. I received no complaints about the blog whatsoever.
On Monday, the pro-U.S. security group Secure American Now posted a link to my KSM piece on its website. The link received numerous hits and generated multiple comments on the Secure America Now page.
However, a few hours after Secure America Now linked to the New York Conservative, I received a form email, no reply possible, from Google Blogger informing me that the New York Conservative had been deleted. The email classified my blog as “spam” in violation of Google’s terms of service. There was no further explanation. My URL was dead; all of the content, everything I ever posted, was gone.
I made two telephone calls to Google to protest and demand a reason for the deletion of my blog. The Google representatives told me that Google does not provide “live support” for Google Blogger, meaning you cannot speak with anyone at all about the deletion. The representatives directed me to the Google Blogger website, where the company extols its commitment to free speech and its great reluctance to censor its bloggers.
Obviously, I do not know why Google deleted my blog, but it’s awfully odd that The New York Conservative was summarily executed after a post in which I called for the summary execution of KSM. Could it be that Google found the post politically incorrect and therefore offensive? Could it be that Google thought the post was dangerous because it had potential to incite Islamists?
Given the company’s self-proclaimed devotion to free speech, I think Google ought to explain why it deleted the blog. If calling for the legal execution of the confessed mastermind of the murders of 3,000 people on American soil is too controversial a topic for Google Blogger, perhaps the famously progressive company should re-think its proclamation of support for the free exchange of ideas on its platforms.
Below, you can read my near-identical reproduction of the text of the post which brought about this debacle:
After 11 years, KSM and his fellow terrorists have at last been brought to trial. The very first proceeding in the trial, the arraignments of the defendants, commenced on Saturday at 9:23 am. What should have been a simple proceeding lasted 13 hours, marred by the endless antics of the terrorists and their attorneys, including a female defense attorney who appeared in a burka and demanded that other women in the court dress likewise in order not to offend the religious sensibilities of the murders.
The military prosecutor predicted that this circus would persist for years, allowing the terrorists a platform to make a mockery of the judicial process we offer them and to heap additional suffering upon the families of the victims of terrorist attacks.
To what end? In June 2008, KSM was brought before a tribunal at Guantanamo Bay. He announced at that time that he wished to enter a guilty plea so he could be “martyred.” He expressed the same desire again in December 2008. In a criminal proceeding, the accused always has the option of entering a plea of “not guilty” and demanding a trial or entering a guilty plea and accepting his sentence. So, as is apparent, when one pleads guilty and admits his crime, there is no need for a trial. Instead of years of pointless proceedings to try issues not in dispute, the Court should simply say:
“The Court hereby deems your previously entered plea of guilty as accepted and shall now impose sentence. The sentence of the Court is that you be taken hence to the place of execution and that you there be hanged by the neck until dead. May God have mercy on your soul. Next case.”
It is ironic that this debacle of a trial begins on the heels of President Obama’s obscene self-congratulatory celebration of the anniversary of the death of Osama Bin Laden. While the president tries to pass himself off as the greatest commander since Alexander, the KSM trial reminds us that the president is a man who built his political career on decrying Gitmo and accusing his own country of “torturing” KSM and his fellow killers. Obama’s first act as president was to announce the closure of Gitmo.
It was the president who delayed the KSM trial by an additional four years. It was his Justice Department that sought to bring this outrageous circus-trial to federal district court in Manhattan and launched a witch-hunt against CIA operatives and government lawyers for their conduct of, and participation in, the enhanced interrogation program, even after these public servants had previously been cleared of any wrongdoing.
Of course, we now know that only three men were ever waterboarded, and then only briefly and under carefully controlled circumstances. We know that the intelligence gathered from these men, and other terrorists held at Gitmo, contributed mightily to the successful search for Bin Laden, ultimately enabling Obama to give his “gusty” order and parade Bin Laden’s head on a political pike.
Regardless of Obama’s image propaganda, the fact remains that, more than a decade after 9/11, the families of the terrorists’ victims, and nation at large, must endure a lengthy and absurd exercise to confer “due process” on men who scorn the very notion; men who have no interest in the “justice” we extend to them and who proudly trumpet their guilt before the Court that is charged with trying that very issue.
It need not be so. In mid-June 1942, two parties of Nazi spies came ashore on Long Island and in Florida. By June 27th, all eight men who had infiltrated the country had been arrested. They were tried before a military commissioned appointed by President Roosevelt between July 8th and August 4, 1942. All were condemned to death. The president commuted the sentences of two men; the other six were executed on August 8, 1942, four days after their convictions.
President Obama fancies himself another Roosevelt. As such he ought to emulate his predecessor’s penchant for dispatching swift justice to war criminals. Prolonging a phony justice process only compounds the already unspeakable injustice KSM perpetrated. He has confessed his guilt. We should execute him without further delay.