On Saturday, in the shadowy recesses of the Guantanamo Bay military base in
Cuba, the trials of five alleged Sept. 11 conspirators resumed three years after the
Obama administration attempted to bring them to civilian court in New York. After
fierce opposition to the civilian trial, which was to be held a few blocks away from
Ground Zero in New York City, the Obama administration backed down and agreed
to proceed with a prosecution in military court.

Now, as the drama of the proceedings has resumed, the five men accused have
stepped onto a global stage. The Miami Herald reports that the prosecutions are being televised on multiple
military bases, with several hundred families of 9/11 victims watching with a 40
second lag, allowing for the government to censor any admissions of classified
information and, undoubtedly, descriptions of the torture techniques used on the
five men during their time in Guantanamo.

The outburst against their courtroom antics has been amplified with every move
they make. Led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the Pakistani national who claims to
be the mastermind behind the attacks, the five men have protested at every stage of
the hearings already.

Kneeling to pray during their arraignment, removing their headphones with Arabic
translators and refusing to answer questions, KSM, as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad
has come to be known, and his co-conspirators continued what they call Islamic
jihad in the courtroom. One defendant, Waleed bin Attash, had to be strapped to his
chair until he agreed to cooperate.

The outcry at their protestations is what KSM and al-Qaida seek, and U.S. prosecutors
are well aware of that fact. The Los Angeles Times notes that former chief prosecutor Morris Davis said of KSM’s
rulings: “If we execute him, we will be giving him exactly what he wants.”

But what is it the prosecutors, and the American people, seek? For the families
who lost loved ones on the day of the attacks, the outcome of the trial is perhaps
a cathartic finale to the horrible aftermath of the brutal attacks. For the American
public, it is the justice at the end of a decade-long ordeal. And for the Obama and
Bush administrations, it is a justification for the stain on American history that is
Guantanamo Bay.

The War on Terror, as it has been dubbed, is partially the knee-jerk emotional
response to the attacks on this country. For every pointless loss of civilian life in
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and other corners of the world where the West likes to
point its finger to, the public is somehow meant to feel safer and just knowing that
some guy in a turban finally paid for 9/11.

The perpetrators of 9/11, despite the trillions of dollars and millions of lives
lost, are winning the shadow play that is the War on Terror. Eleven years after 9/11, Islamophobia is rampant in the West, and as drone bombs make rubble of my
homeland, Pakistan, the anti-Western sentiment only grows more vicious.

And that is the brilliance behind the tactics of fundamentalists in groups like al-Qaida. Pitting an ideological war against the West, they continue their attacks at an
emotional level. Answering with government-sanctioned drone bombs and full-scale
occupations, the United States feeds into their scheme.

The expectation in the international arena, a false one as most have come to realize,
is the United States sits at a higher moral plane than other nations. We are meant to
be leaders in human rights, in ethics, in freedom. Yet, as legislation in multiple states
passes outlawing shari’a law, as blatant attacks on Muslims continue in our own
backyard, as innocent civilians are detained indefinitely and as American rights are
slowly chipped away, we succumb to the same level as the terrorist organizations
that resented the U.S. for its freedoms.

So instead of stepping down to the deplorable level of hatred at which KSM and
his co-conspirators operate, the only way the American people, and all who have
suffered as a result of Sept. 11, can counter the mental anguish and racism al-Qaida
hopes to infect our minds with is to step above pointing fingers.

KSM’s trial is the
condensed metaphor for the way the West has dealt with terrorism. Only in this
case, the prosecution knows better than to give in to what al-Qaida wants.

Meher Ahmad ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in international studies and Middle Eastern studies.