Mayor-For-Life of New York City, Little Mikie Bloomberg, has taken time out of his campaign to take the fun out of Fun City to appeal to President Obama to move the trial of the guy who masterminded the 9/11 attacks on New York City out of New York. They call it a change of venue, something normally done when a court of law determines that a defendant cannot obtain a fair trial in a certain jurisdiction. Well, Little Mikie has no such concerns for Khalid Sheik Mohammed, alleged al Qaeda mastermind behind the suicide bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
No, Little Mikie, the Little Billionaire Who Could, he’s concerned about the excessive cost of security involved in such a sensational trial. He’s also afraid of the unrest that might occur in New York City, and also the inconvenience and the trauma. Which leads one to wonder if he remembers how very sensational, traumatic and inconvenient were the events of 9/11/01. To New Yorkers, it was our worst day ever, when two hijacked jets toppled the twin towers, killing around 2,500 people. It was also our best day ever, when New Yorkers responded to death and disaster magnificently, performing acts of heroism and sacrifice without a second thought, and help and good wishes poured into our town from every part of our stricken nation.
For Khalid Sheik Mohammed, it was his finest hour. Years earlier, he had been given the green light and the funding by Osama bin Laden to carry out his audacious plan, to recruit and train 20 young fanatics to hijack 4 commercial airliners and crash them into New York and Washington. The plan succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings, with 19 out of 20 of the hijackers taking part in the plan and 3 of the 4 jets finding their deadly marks. They killed close to 3,000 people and opened up a new chapter in terrorism. Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Osama bin Laden were heroes to illiterate deluded fanatics all over the Muslim world and jumped to the head of the Most Wanted lists of every law enforcement agency on earth.
Well, Mr. bin Laden, having been let off the hook by his old business associate Bush The Younger at Tora Bora years ago when he told American soldiers to stand down, is still at large, pursuing a very successful inspirational video career somewhere in the mountains of Pakistan. Not so for Mr. Mohammed, who has been in Federal custody for a few years now. He is finally being brought to trial for his crime, fittingly in Federal Court in Manhattan, the scene of the crime, but Little Mayor Mikie wants to move the trial elsewhere. Well, fuck him and the horse he is too short to ride in on.
And fuck the president for caving in to Mayor Little Mikie, who does not speak for New Yorkers and never has in his 8 years as mayor. LIke many wealthy men who enter politics, he did so only to straighten us out, figuring that a man with the ability to earn billions of dollars knows best in all things, and so uses his office as a forum for telling people how to behave and what to think. Little Mikie’s ego is so bloated that he even took it to the extreme of telling us what we can and cannot eat. This guy’s even more egotistical than former New York Mayor Giuliaini, who has been making a living selling his own fictional account of the events of 9/11, casting himself as a hero even though New Yorkers know he was just one more frightened New Yorker stumbling around lower Manhattan that day while abler men saved lives and gave theirs.
New York City is where this trial belongs, costs or no costs, sensation or no sensation. This is where thousands of survivors of this attack live, those who escaped death in the greatest rescue and evacuation operation since Dunkirk. This is where thousands more gather every year to mourn their dead, both the innocent victims and the heroic first-responders who gave their lives to save thousands. This is where Khalid Mohammed must face justice. The worst has already been done to New Yorkers, and we survived and thrived. What’s a little inconvenience or a few rallies by fringe groups? That sort of thing is merely part of life’s rich pageant around here, and frightens no one, with the exception of little Mayor Mikie.
Little Mikie is unreasonably frightened of the use of salt, tobacco and trans-fat by people other than himself, so it stands to reason that other things will frighten the little fellow too. New Yorkers deserve a better mayor, a braver man. Bloomberg and Giuliani now make it two in a row now who have used the office of Mayor to push their own narrow moral agendas that have little to do with governing New York and a whole lot to do with scolding its citizens, not a one of who needs life coaching advice from demagogues. New Yorkers have already seen the worst that Mohammed can do, and we trust our Police Department to keep our city safe while we put this monster on trial. Let the world see that we are not afraid of men such as this, delusional jerkoffs who think they enjoy broad popular support. Or maybe Little Mikie figures this town isn’t big enough for two such men and wants Khalid Mohammed out of town. Bullshit.
Let him have his day in court and face his accusers in the place where he committed his crime, since that is how America does things. Let him say whatever he wants to say, it can make no possible difference. What he did will always speak loudest, and the voices of the dead louder still. Moving the trial someplace else will deny the dead the justice they are due. The trial will bring none of them back to life, will not rebuild the shattered towers or restore the world to its pre – 9/11 sensibilities, but it will remind the world that the people who commit acts of savagery will answer for them in court. They will get a fair trial, with representation by an attorney and their rights respected until proven guilty, because that is how civilized people run their courts of law, openly and fairly with a single set of rules for all defendants.
To run and hide is to hand Mr. Mohammed another victory and deny New Yorkers some measure of justice, almost a decade after the crime. President Obama needs to tell little Mikie to go snoop around somebody’s dinner table for unhealthy ingredients and leave justice to the big boys. America needs to be America, not only to show the rest of the world, but to show ourselves that the things we stand for, the institutions we have created and the rights we afford our people are not flimsy things to be discarded when inconvenient or traumatic. The Bill of Rights is not the Bill of Suggestions, and our courts of law are not optional institutions to be substituted with other extra-Constitutional judicial venues created on the spur of the moment during times of crisis. These are some of the things that make America America, and if holding Mohammed’s trial in New York City is the harder thing to do, well, New Yorkers have never backed down from hard times or hard choices. This is no time to start. Unlike Little Mikie, few New Yorkers need to grow a spine.