Although he hasn't held elective office in over 8 years and has had multiple setbacks professionally since then (none worse than his embarrassing performance in running for President two years ago), former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani will always have the goodwill amongst New Yorkers and Americans for his performance as Mayor in the days and weeks after the 9/11 attacks.
Couple that with his former time as a Federal Prosecutor, and it was no shock that three Sunday morning public affairs programs featured him to comment on Attorney General's Eric Holder announcement last Friday that that alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be tried alongside four accused Sept. 11 co-conspirators in a Manhattan federal court “just blocks away” from ground zero.
“Why? We generally don’t bring people back to the scene of the crime for justice,” Giuliani argued. “What the Obama administration is telling us loud and clear is that…the war on terror is over.”
Giuliani countered that the man known as KSM should have a trial by military tribunal, a stricter process than civilian court that has tried a series of other foreign terrorists.
But the hosts of all three programs he was on all queried Guiliani for seeming to now have a different perspective than in the 1990's, when he applauded the fact that the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center was handled in federal court in New York.
"I’ve already said in retrospect, as many have, that that was a mistake," the former mayor responded. "Basically the Obama administration is repeating the mistake of history…It's part of Barack Obama deciding that we're not at war with terrorism any more….The terrorists haven't stopped goaing to war with us."
On ABC, Guiliani said Friday's decision by Holder is "part of a whole package of the way the President looks at the war on terror….the delay in Afghanistan is a political strategy, on (Major Nidal Malik)Hasan, he doesn't get it. .."
Being equally critical on CBS' Face The Nation was Michigan Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra, who dubbed the Holder plan to try KSM in NYC "ideology run wild."
But Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy from Vermont followed up the Representative on Face, and said that Holder is right. Leahy added that the trial(s) will show the "rest of the world that the U.S. acts out of strength, not out of fear," and compared KSM to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
But host Bob Schieffer replied that McVeigh was not classified as an enemy combatant – but Leahy interjected,"If someone murders Americans in America, they should be convicted in America."
And back on Fox, Rhode Island Democratic Senator Jack Reed tried to bring some sanity to the debate, saying that the Obama Administration is simply following upon the same logic that the Bush Administration employed in prosecuting Zacharias Mousawi in civilian court. "What was a statesmans-like decision on the part of the Bush administration can't be a political decision from the Obama administration, " the Senator said.
The consensus: There isn't any, other than this: Whatever critics want to call Obama (and they've called him pretty much everything under the sun in less than a year ), this move was not done for political expediency. Nor would sending any prisoners from Gitmo into a facility in the U.S., which his administration is considering doing in Illinois.
Back to Guiliani-Time; He said earlier this year that he was thinking of running for Governor of New York, which NY GOPers desperately want him to do. But some analysts have suggested Guiliani made those hints when he saw incumbent David Patterson's poll number falter. But now that there is serious belief that NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo may get in the race (with considerably higher poll numbers than the beleagured Patterson), the former mayor continues to equivocate. He had said he would make up his mind after the elections held two weeks ago. Now he simply says he's still considering a run.
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2009.