A Question For Our Age

Nestled in news coverage the last couple days has been the case in Florida with the college professor accused of financially and intellectually supporting Palestinian Islamic Jihad - a group with a similar ideology to Hamas, but smaller, who operate out of Syria and conduct operations in the West Bank and Gaza. They were an off-shoot of Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Anyhow, the issue is this professor raised money for the group and has been intellectually supporting the terrorist movement in favor of liberating Palestine.

He was jailed and prosecuted as part of the Patriot Act and just this week aquitted of all charges.

Is this a good thing? The article says that the jurors concluded:

"There was no murder weapon. There was no fingerprint. This is about a guy who raised money for a group, and that group went out and committed acts of violence, and they thanked him for giving them the money," said another lawyer involved in terrorism cases who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is close to the government team in the Al-Arian case. "That is different than shooting someone in the head with a pistol."

And, yes, from a legal standpoint, they are correct. He did not pull any trigger and he has a right to free speech to say whatever he wants.

But is it right that someone ought to be able to raise money through charities to finance terror? I don't think so. And I don't buy into the argument that well, maybe he didn't know about it. Well, maybe he did...and further, does it matter? A drunk driver doesn't intend to kill someone, but if they do, it's their responsibility. If you raise money for an organization that uses that money to finance suicide bombings, I think you bear some responsibility.

This boils down to the question after 9/11: Is terrorism primarily a law enforcement issue or is it primarily a war? I think viewing terrorism through the lens of law enforcement (which is what we did prior to 9/11) failed. It empowered terrorists, because they saw how they would be arrested and eventually released. Nearly every single terrorist leader was in jail at one time or another in a particular country, Zawahri, Zarqawi, KSM, etc. All were released and become much bigger, more powerful, and a greater threat. Many are arrested and let go because of a failure of evidence, and so forth. The cost to society: mayham, destruction, death.

So should we cheer for this success of the justice system, this diss to the Patriot Act? If terrorism is an issue for law enforcement, would we rather see 10 guilty terrorists go free than one innocent terrorist go to jail? Can we try to answer that question honestly, incorporating the moral implications, without wondering whether it fits into our political affilitations?

Many "civic minded" people argue against holding terrorists as enemy combantants. They argue, these people are not accused of any crime. But again, is this the right metric? By time the dots are connected, evidence collected, and prosecuted, two things happen (at least in this case) a) Palestinian suicide bombers attack Israeli citizens, financed by guys like the professor and b) it takes a long time and the justice system grows tired of hearing about a case from years ago.

In a war, we can hold enemy combatants until they surrender and cease hostilities. We are fighting a war against Islamic Fundamentalism and terrorists and terrorist financiers will be allowed to go free when they surrender and stop fighting. Until then, I see no incentive for bringing charges or letting them go.

UPDATE: Per the comment, indeed, one cannot be considered guilty of a crime if the act they perpetrated wasn't criminal when he/she did it...but that still brings us back to the heart of the matter, of whether Islamic Terrorism is best dealth with as a criminal matter? I'm not sure how to handle a situation such as this one, although it seems reasonable to me that a man, like a system, ought to be able to change his/its way after world events. That is, he could renounce allegience to PIJ, after learning the consequences of their actions. I really don't know.