Give your personal opinion in an essay response: "Should Suspected Terrorists Be Tried in Military Courts or Ordinary Criminal Courts?" Give your reasons for your opinion.
From a human-rights perspective, I believe it is perverse to reward alien mass murderers with the enhanced due process of civilian courts. This would afford them with the same rights as the Americans they kill. Our jihadist enemies are not entitled to the rights that U.S. Citizens are entitled to under our Constitution that was designed to protect our civilians.
Also, these terrorists plot their mayhem in their overseas hide-outs where American law does not apply and American law-enforcement cannot operate. I think there are terrible downsides to using the U.S. civilian justice system to prosecute our wartime enemies because of the above issues.
As a statutory matter, Congress has enacted military commissions for enemy combatants. But I think in many cases, they seem to be more lenient than federal courts. One case and point was when a military commission’s handling of Salim Hamdan, a bodyguard and confidant of Osama bin Laden. After years of helping the al-Qaeda chief run his network, Hamdan was captured in possession of missiles intended for use against American troops. Military prosecutors asked for a 30 year term. The commission instead, handed down a stunning five and a half year sentence that resulted in Hamdan’s release and repatriation, since he had already spent more than five years in custody.
In the news yesterday, Omar Khadr was transferred from the U.S. terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Canada. Omar Khadr is an Al-Qaeda terrorist who killed one American soldier and maimed another. In a military-commission proceeding, he was permitted to plead guilty in a deal that capped his sentence at a mere eight years. The agreement is what provided Khadr to be returned to his native Canada.

In Canada, the law is very favorable to convicts who commit their offenses as juveniles. Khadr, who is now 24, was 15 when he threw the fateful grenade. On Canadian soil, his incarceration will be governed by Canadian law, not the U.S. military-commission sentence. The likelihood is that the terrorist will be released in a year or two. He is an unrepentant jihadist who is plenty young enough for another decade or three of plotting against Americans.