TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Andrew Cohen bravely, breathlessly, cuts down straw men arguments against trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civilian courts.

There’s perfectly valid arguments against public, civilian trials for captured al Qaeda war criminals. In our judicial system, defendants have the right to discovery: they can request the prosecution’s evidence. In this case, it is evidence on how Mohammed was found and captured, and on how we know he was involved in the September 11th plot. It is not just evidence — it is information on how we collect intelligence on al Qaeda (a group that is incredibly difficult to penetrate).

That’s dangerous information to release, as it could compromise our intelligence gathering across the world. So why should we provide a civilian trial for a monster of Mohammed’s stature, someone who spearheaded an attack on the U.S. which murdered 3,000 civilians and beheaded Daniel Pearl, but not al-Nashiri, who planned the U.S.S. Cole attack?

Holder has said that they will try Mohammed in civilian court because the September 11th attacks happened on U.S. soil and victims were mostly civilians.

That doesn’t make the attack an inherently criminal matter. If another nation had bombed New York and Washington, D.C., it absolutely wouldn’t be considered a criminal matter — it would be an act of war. And that’s precisely what September 11th was: an attack against the U.S.

Treating the attack’s conspirators as criminals changes the understanding of what happened, and their motivations. Their motivation is not simply to murder. Al Qaeda’s goal is to destroy the U.S., and in the power vacuum that would create, build an Islamic nation stretching from north Africa to China, governed by a renewed caliphate and Shari’a law. One only needs to read Sayyid Qutb to see their desires. September 11th was part of a concerted strategy, and to treat them as criminals is to deny just how threatening al Qaeda, and the movement they represent, are.