Time to Pay the Piper...

Y'know, I'm not in general a big fan of the whole global war on terror concept.  It just seems overblown and ineffectual.  There are very few of these guys, and you don't interdict the operations of a small band of transnational extremists with armies and tanks and fighter jets, you do it with intelligence, law enforcement and the occasional special operation.

But this little rat fuck?  Yeah, he's a good 'get'.  Go Pakistani ISI.  Get some.  I don't care if they turn him over to the US or not.  I'm especially uncomfortable with the whole Treason indictment.  Yes, it's true that by the letter of the law he's a traitor, and from a legal basis there's nothing wrong with charging him as such.  But I have two problems with it.  First, it makes him out to be something much bigger and more dangerous than he was.  He was a minor cog in a part of a wheel, and while he's first-order scum I don't see any advantage in trying to make him out to be Carlos the Jackal.  If they extradite him, charge him with materially aiding international terrorism and put him in prison for twenty five years.  Seems like a good deal to me.  Also, a Treason conviction comes with the death penalty.  As you may know,  I am 100% against the death penalty in any and all cases.  Governments should not be in the business of putting their citizens to death, period, full stop.  But beyond that, if this little shit is rotting away out of sight in a supermax somewhere in middle America, he disappears forever down a hole.  If you allow him to be a martyr, an outcome I'm CERTAIN that both he and bin Laden would prefer, he lives forever, larger than life, a hero and and a warrior, instead of the pathetic little shit he is.