I don’t know why I’m even bothering to respond to someone who does not understand the difference between KSM and Cheney. Cheney took special pains with ROE’s to minimize civilian casualties. KSM’s goal was civilian casualties.

I find this torture fetish is typical among those who oppose the death penalty. Sooner or later they all seem to adopt this inhumane rhetoric.

Your comments are literally appeasement. There is no slur here, merely a technical description of what you advocate. You write that killing him would provoke a view of him as a martyrdom. You wish to avoid such a provocation. You wish to appease.

You ask whether he is worth more alive or dead. Of course, a better way of asking is this: to a young and entrepreneurial al Qaedist, woudl he have a better chance for advncement overseeing an operation than brings KSM home a hero, or overseeing an operation that bring his bones home to a hero’s welcome? The answer is the former, of course. We will, as we always do, provide his remains to his family for burial.

Brent Grace makes a salient point but I wonder to what degree these “tribal people” identify with or even care about KSM?

Chirol et al, regarding the overstatement of martyrdom. I disagree. As I suggested above KSM in lifetime solitary confinement will, imo, be much more difficult to effectively mythologize than KSM dead.

Lirelou that’s an appreciative bit of hyper-realist sentiment, but I question it’s validity given the obviously convoluted nature of the case at hand. This is clearly not a case of pure domestic justice but a strange intermingling of war and the justice system. I don’t think it can be so black and white.

I also find the casually proffered suggestions that he should be mistreated in jail appalling. The images from Abu Ghraib, and those we never saw from Guantanamo, secret prisons etc, were shocking and disgusting to every right-thinking person, though not by many from the right. Some of those who were tortured were guilty too. It’s still wrong, not least because it turns those who undertake torture into monsters. Dostoevsky said ‘The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.’ We’ve seen recently just how civilized the US really is. The fact that otherwise reasonable and compassionate people so quickly and easily call for the death or abuse of someone is disquieting.

While I’d agree there are perhaps more fitting punishments for him, most would be cruel and unusual under US law unfortunately.

Can’t compare him to Mandela or Lenin, those were domestic rebels. Not like the guy has a massive following inside the US.

One consideration we need to make is this: what message will the execution of KSM send to the world? And not just to AQ (those guys are nuts anyway) or the E.U. (a lost cause on many fronts) but instead to the uncommitted villagers in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan or any other South/Central Asian or middle eastern country. If we let him off easy, if we demonstrate that we don’t have the wherewithal to deliver retribution to a man who participated in the murder of 3,000 of our countrymen, then the people we need on our side will wonder just what kind of country America is. They will view America as a nation of weak people who are not worth cooperating with (if we won’t kill to protect our own people…).

On the other hand, KSM’s execution will be an act that average people in tribal societies will respect. They will see that America values the lives of our sons and daughters and brothers and sisters enough to kill to protect them. After all, the execution of a murderer is an expected and reasonable outcome to a person from a traditional society.

About six months before 9/11 I worked with a man from Somalia. We once got to talking about the relationship between Somalia and the U.S. and I asked him if people in Somalia hated the U.S. He protested that most people in Somalia love the idea of the U.S. and many would like to move here, but that Somalians don’t respect our county because they saw us as afraid to protect our own people. From Mogadishu to bombing of the U.S.S Cole, the people there got the idea that when America is pushed we back down, and that we “let a man in a cave push us around” (Bin Laden – again, this was pre 9/11). To a society where every adult male is expected to participate in securing the community through what we would call a militia, failing to react with force when someone kills a member of your community is puzzling.