Worthless

Seven years in, the conviction of bin Laden’s chauffeur/mechanic is apparently supposed to rank as one of the Bush administration’s great victories. Assuming that victory includes developing a legal system with exactly zero moral legitimacy; convicting a defendant on charges that a civilian court could have managed in one-seventh of the time; and possibly ignoring or rejecting an offer from the defendant to locate bin Laden himself, then I suppose this is the most important accomplishment since the US demolished the Iraqi government, discovered its weapons of mass destruction, and and transformed the entire Middle East into an oil-rich version of New Hampshire.

Ken Gude offers an somewhat alternate interpretation:

The worst aspect of this whole episode is that the Bush administration has completely devalued the concept of a war criminal. War crimes should be reserved for the most serious offenses and war crimes trials are extraordinary. Charles Taylor is a war criminal. Radovan Karazdic is a war criminal. Salim Hamdan is a chauffer. He is clearly guilty of the crime of material support for terrorism. But now he has been elevated to the status of warrior, legitimizing al Qaeda terrorists’ belief that they are waging a holy war against the United States and our allies.

Sure. But if we apply the appropriate legal doctrine to this decision, it looks a lot better.