New York is preparing for a military lockdown that will stretch from Midtown to the tip of Manhattan, approximately 10 square miles of city, into an armed camp of police officers, SWAT teams, federal agents and National Guard reservists. New York City puts up with a similar dose of martial law every year in the fall when the United Nations General Assembly convenes.
The recent decision by the Justice Department to try the 9/11 terrorists in New York, steps from Ground Zero, is playing into the hands of state and city politicians. President Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo by January 22, 2010 will now be an excuse by Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who just won an unprecedented third term by an extremely narrow margin, outspending his rival 16 to 1) to submit the victims’ families to yet another form of exploitation.
The reality is that the city is bracing itself for the worst holiday shopping season on record and projections are bleak. Michael Niemira, chief economist at the International Council of Shopping Centers, said he expects holiday sales on a national level will rise about 1 percent from last year, a historically weak performance due to consumers now squeezed by tight credit and rising unemployment. New York City, a traditional epicenter for holiday shoppers has morphed into a megalopolis of shuttered shops and untenanted retail outlets never seen in recent memory.
The mayor’s plan to slash $1.75 billion in city spending in the face of a crisis runs concurrent in his support for the Obama administration to hold the 9/11 terrorists trial in the city despite continuous appeals from many relatives of the victims.
Geraldine Davie’s daughter Amy O’Doherty, 23, killed in the attack on the World Trade Center, was quoted saying “to put us through this again is unconscionable”. New Yorkers are not as gullible as Mayor Bloomberg would like them to be.
Five men will face a kangaroo court in New York for the insidious purpose to stimulate the city’s economy. New York will be the nucleus where multiple federal agencies and all branches of the military will encamp and be a spectacle for all nations to see. A large contingent from the international and national media will be present and all the world’s focus will be on New York again.
A trial will take place where the accused have already confessed to their crimes and have professed their willingness to be martyred. What the Bloomberg administration fails to disclose to the rest of the country is that the city’s economic shortfall due to a projected bleak Christmas shopping season will be offset by a surge in demand for hotel rooms, restaurant reservations and Broadway tickets during this event.
The President and attorney general Eric Holder have shown a degree of naivete in face of the demands of the city’s political clique who has demonstrated once again its insolence to the rest of the country and to the victim’s families. The lack of oversight and responsibility during the Madoff, AIG and Lehman Brothers transgressions, where no politician from the city has yet to be held accountable for, has done nothing to influence our present administration to think otherwise before putting their trust in Bloomberg and Co. A member of the Judiciary Committee, Charles Schumer of New York, is already pressuring the Obama administration to reimburse NY for $75 million in extra security costs. That is just the start. The Obama administration has now fallen into the trap.
By reversing and trying to correct the transgressions of the Bush years, the administration is propagandizing a new policy that all trials related to terrorism, i.e. involving enemy combatants, will take place in US courts and not in military tribunals. Many see this as a trend toward political correctness and a rectification of America’s image to the world. Rudi Giuliani, the previous mayor of New York, who had rallied and inspired the city during the September 11 attack was quoted as saying “Shaikh Mohammed should be treated like the war criminal he is and tried in a military court. He is not just another murderer or even a mass murderer. He murdered as part of a declared war against us- America”. Andrew McCarthy, the former federal US prosecutor who led the case against Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, further said “It’s a massively stupid decision (to hold the trial in New York) when we’re at war with them”.
The basis of our judicial system is for the court to try a defendant who is presumed innocent and attain a conviction for the crime once the evidence has proven to be otherwise. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed makes no such presumption. He is a defendant who has confessed to his crime and has publicly stated that he has no regrets about his involvement. Any student in jurisprudence will infer that the Foley courthouse will soon be turned into a kangaroo court.
US Senator John Cornyn R- Texas made the guileless statement that the trial will needlessly compromise the safety of our citizens. He is obviously not familiar with New York City political chicanery- a legacy inherited from Tammany Hall, that the fundamental denominator of New York politics is money above safety. The uncanny ability of New York politicians to wrest money from the federal government is a sophisticated art form.
The Obama administration has failed to see that the mayor and his associates are simple spokesmen for the city’s mercantile class where everyone from the top down are in line with their palms up for federal money. President Ford’s memorable quote “Drop Dead”, when refusing to give federal government financial assistance to New York in 1975, cost him the election. No President has uttered those fatal words since.
If the trial is held in New York City it will be the victims’ families who will submit to another form of outrage and have the sacred memory of their loved ones exploited for purely monetary purposes.
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