And now...the rest of the story

The first alleged criminal to go on trial for "war crimes" is bin Laden's chauffeur. There has been a lot of talk about how a war crimes trial in a military court is different than a trial in a normal civilian court. The popular answer among government mouthpieces is "there would really be no noticeable difference." Now let's examine the reality of the situation.

For starters, in the real world a defendant is tried by a jury of his or her peers. In this case, that jury will consist exclusively of military personnel. How, exactly, is that a jury of his peers? A more disturbing idea is that these military people have a terribly biased view of the situation. To be fair, no one in the U.S. (or probably the world) could possibly give any of these people a fair trial because of their own biases and the nature of the allegations. But this seems patently ridiculous that the service men and women who are involved in the war, who have been hammered day in and day out with messages of anti-terrorism, and who have friends that have been killed in "terrorist" acts are going to be the ones to judge him.

Next, in the real world, a defendant is considered innocent unless the evidence can prove he is not. Thus, the onus is on the prosecution to prove culpability. In this case it's exactly reversed. The onus has been put on the defendant to prove his innocence and the evidence is considered absolute, a priori truth. There is very little that the defending lawyers can do to question such evidence because it is already accepted as absolute and infallible. So we have implemented a guilty until proven innocent policy.

In a normal trial, the defendant has complete access to the evidence being used against him and the methods used to gather it. In this case, because of the "sensitive", "secret", or "national security" nature of the evidence, equal access to information is not necessarily guaranteed. This crap wouldn't fly in a civilian court and it shouldn't be allowed to fly here.

So don't let anyone fool you. These trials are very different than civilian trials. Right now the cards appear stacked in the government's favor. The one good thing so far is that the presiding judge has ruled that evidence gained by torture or coercion will not be allowed. This farce of a trial should be far more concerning to the general U.S. populace than it is. If we can do it to foreigners, how long is it before similar measures are used in the name of security on American citizens? I'm not saying it will become the method du jure for civilian courts, but abuse of government and judicial power inevitably turns on the citizens it was initially supposed to protect. History is full of examples and there is nothing that suggests this situation is any different. Bringing the perpetrators of murderous acts to justice is a laudable goal but not at the expense of our ethics. If our ethical behavior and sense of fair-play is consumed in the pursuit of actual or supposed justice, we only become the thing we seek to destroy. We become the terrorists. I wouldn't say we're quite there yet, but we're really pushing the boundaries and walking headlong into that blurry gray fog where the ends always justify the means.