Obama and Guantanamo

President George W. Bush's handling of the war against the Muslim extremists who destroyed the World Trade Center seven years ago -- murdering 3,000 civilians -- must await the judgment of history.

He will be judged to have made mistakes. How can it be otherwise? But it's almost as certain his performance will get somewhat better grades than indicated by his current abysmal "popularity ratings." After all, there have been no follow-up attacks on these shores. It's unlikely that's because the terrorists have now embraced their "feminine sides."

It's easy for those on the sidelines to criticize every move of an administration faced with such an "asymmetrical" conflict. Americans start out with an instinctive -- and understandable -- dislike of rounding up suspects in the dead of night, holding them without bail and without formal charges, interrogating them in the absence of counsel.

But that's because Americans tend to see the foreign nationals held at Guantanamo as civilian "defendants," wondering why they're not granted the rights we ourselves would expect if charged with a civil "crime."

Arguing that the treatment of these enemy combatants doesn't comport with the military conventions agreed to at Geneva and The Hague is an interesting exercise.

Are we at war, or not? If not, perhaps the Congress should declare war. But against what state? Surely we cannot declare war against "Islam," which would be ridiculous ... even as it might fulfill our enemies' fondest dreams.

What is it the laws of war say one can and should do with "plainclothes" irregulars who disguise their identities, once caught killing one's own troops and even civilians "behind the lines"? All the laws of war say the commanding officer at the scene can line them up against the wall and shoot them without ado -- without even the pretense of a "trial."

We shot most of the Nazis who snuck ashore from submarines during World War II. Will Mr. Bush's critics concur that is what should be done with the terrorists now held at Guantanamo?

Soon, the question will be more than hypothetical.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the al-Qaida attacks, and four co-defendants stunned onlookers at Guantanamo this week by offering to plead guilty to orchestrating the Sept. 11 attacks.

Yet Mohammed has sought "to use the American system to enable him to complete his martyrdom operation" since he was first arraigned, explains Lisa Hajjar, a legal sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. At their June arraignment, Mohammed and fellow defendant Ramzi Binalshibh told the court they welcomed martyrdom.

The offer to plead guilty "is a manipulation that should have been very clearly and obviously anticipated," Ms. Hajjar tells Bloomberg News. "We just give him the chain and he keeps yanking it."

Will President-elect Barack Obama -- de facto standard-bearer of those who have criticized President Bush's handling of these matters -- accept the guilty pleas and simply execute the five confessed plotters of the Sept. 11 attacks? Or will he bring them to these shores for a "criminal" trial?

During the campaign, after all, Sen. Obama suggested he would scrap the military tribunals currently in use at Guantanamo, saying detainees should be tried in civilian courts or before a military court-martial that affords more legal safeguards.

At Guantanamo this week, Mohammed and his co-defendants showed their disdain for the legal process. They "seemed to view the proceedings as a joke," said Hamilton Peterson, whose father and stepmother were killed on United Flight 93 that crashed in Pennsylvania after it was hijacked on Sept. 11. "With all this due process, they were mocking it," said Peterson, one of nine relatives of victims of the 2001 attacks who witnessed this week's proceedings.

How would a criminal trial on U.S. soil deal with defendants determined to make a mockery of our system of justice, and unafraid of the ultimate penalty? Would we put on trial, in public, men who are bound and gagged? Would they, instead, be allowed to strut and bellow to their hearts' content? They would surely draw top-drawer defense talent from the law faculties of Yale and Harvard, who would start by demanding that Washington prove all applicable laws were followed in their extradition and the scheduling of "timely trials."

Heck, why not just skip all the intermediaries and simply give them daytime cable talk shows? Or should we, instead, give them "bus fare" and send them home to see what they can dream up next?

Such are the choices that will soon confront president-elect Barack Obama, the Harvard lawyer. He and his party have been free enough in their criticism of Mr. Bush's handling of such matters. Perhaps they now have a simple solution, both firm and just.

Perhaps.