In the End, You Still Have the Paperwork

If you were a president with a 28% approval rating, and your entire legacy was based on questionable tax cuts and a war that shouldn't have been declared, wouldn't you use the aftermath of a terrorist attack that happened on you watch to the best of you're advantage?

And I don't mean by saying "9/11" in every foreign policy speech, or using the terrorist attacks to justify going into Iraq. I mean actually resolving the terrorist attacks in the manner that America was founded: via the rule of law.

I ask because according to this story, it's not happening:

At the end of a tattered, sunbaked runway dotted with large green tents here is a building aptly called the Expeditionary Legal Complex Courtroom, surrounded by coils of concertina wire, where the most notorious alleged terrorists in U.S. custody are supposed to face charges related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Nearly seven years later, however, not one of the approximately 775 terrorism suspects who have been held on this island has faced a jury trial inside the new complex, and U.S. officials think it is highly unlikely that any of the Sept. 11 suspects will before the Bush administration ends.

To me, this contradicts the promise Bush made when he said that the perpetrators would be brought to justice:

"I think it's a near-impossibility that these cases will be in court before the end of the administration," said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch, who has observed numerous court hearings on the island.

"Some of the detainees haven't even seen their lawyers yet, there's incredibly complicated issues about access to evidence and discovery, and as we've seen with every single case to date, it's incredibly hard to move through a system that lacks established rules and precedent," she said. "Every little detail ends up being contested, because it's an entirely new system of justice."

It reminds me of a scene from the movie "Hot Fuzz:" the two British cops are watching American cop movies and the more experienced one mentions that while all of the gun-shooting, high-octane action and fighting looked cool, the amount of paperwork needed afterwords (assuming here that a police precinct would allow the things that occurred in "Bad Boys II" or "Point Break" to happen) would be monumental.

It's a similar thing here: the Bush Administration and their war supporter we keen on the fighting aspect, particularly because they knew that the American military would be able to win against an Iraqi one. But the cleanup? The transition to a more democratic government? Insuring that Afghanistan wouldn't regress? Bringing the people we believe conspired 9/11 not just to a jail cell, but to actual justice (which would be the best signal to the world)? All these things were not part of the plan.

They never wanted to deal with the paperwork, and they will.