By Warner Todd Huston ——Bio and Archives--June 2, 2009
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The investigation was in its preliminary stages, authorities said, and was based on the suspect’s travel to Yemen and his arrest there for using a Somali passport.Sadly, the FBI could not move fast enough to prevent this act of terrorism. Whether Muhammad was a lone actor or not, the FBI had procedures it had to follow, procedures that prevented it from acting quickly. Were this a military matter, Muhammad could have been scooped up quickly preventing his murderous actions. The only difference between this incident and that of foreign terrorists is that this man is an American citizen. In this case, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad absolutely had to be afforded his Constitutional rights and the FBI had to follow procedure. It would be a mistake to jettison our civil rights for our own citizens out of a fear of terror. But, regardless, it is a fact that the FBI could not prevent this terrorist act from happening here in the U.S. when it involved a single U.S. citizen. Imagine the mess we’d be in by applying American civil law procedure to foreign terror cases? When faced with terrorists with infinitely greater resources in money and personnel to use the sort of procedures that couldn’t even stop a lone gunman here in the U.S. is a recipe for disaster — and that is quite aside from the fact that foreigners are not citizens under our Constitution. Bush was right to consider the case of foreign terrorists as a military matter. Let’s face facts here, shall we? Even if we wanted to impose our procedural rules on foreign cases it is often times impossible to lead an American styled investigation in the battlefield settings where many foreign terrorists are apprehended. There is no possibility of conducting an evidence gathering investigation that would satisfy American legal rules on the battlefield and it is an absurdity to assume it is possible. While this case is not a legitimate reason to suspend civil rights for Americans, it is a prime example that extending our rights to even more terrorists who aren’t citizens would bring disastrous results. We couldn’t even stop this one, lone guy in our own nation. How are we going to stop whole terror networks in foreign lands using the same useless procedures?
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.