Beverly's hope for justice gradually coming to fruition

The debate about the terrorism detainees at Guantanamo these days is not about whether they will be brought to justice, but when and where. Beverly Eckert would have relished this progress. As noted in an earlier blog entry, her final trip to Washington, DC, was to urge President Obama to close the detention facility and to bring suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammad to trial in the US. With a new president, there was optimism that new policies would bring justice at long last. Under the Bush administration, the handling of the detainees was marred by incompetence, incoherence, and illegality, delaying or destroying any chance for justice, and blackening the reputation of America, whose leaders in earlier times took pride in adhering to the rule of law.

Political opponents of President Obama have seized upon his swift detainee justice initiative by successfully whipping up grassroots hysteria opposing the plan. The detainee issue, as noted in the previous blog entry, has been made one of those which divides 9/11 family members rather than unite them. Just as among the general population, for the large part it pits 9/11 family members who support of the president against those who oppose him. In many respects, then, this is a debate not about security or justice but about politics. There is no question that if President Bush had proposed the same plan, the debate would flip to the opposite political pole, with Republicans touting "swift justice" and Democrats engaging in "terrorists in our backyard" fear-mongering. However, to be fair, even now there are many Democrats who have been swept up by the visceral but unfounded fear that putting people who plotted attacks or gave material support into high-security prisons is more dangerous than, say keeping mass murderers there, which is already the case. Just the vague term "foreign terrorist" expectedly inspires greater fear than even "mass murderer." To gauge how politically motivated the feverish opposition to Obama's plan for bringing terrorists to justice, notice how those who most loudly denounce the plan raised not a whimper of dissent against the location of Timothy McVeigh's incarceration.

According to yesterday's Associated Press article by Devlin Barrett, the current range of possible venues for trial and incarceration include facilities in New York, Alexandria, VA, and federal facilities in the Midwest, including Fort Leavenworth, KN. Even if Beverly were still alive to join the debate and urge those wavering to try the suspects here and now, it is clear that some detainees will never be brought to justice because of the grave errors of the Bush administration. In her letter to President Obama, Beverly wrote this would be the biggest injustice.

9/11 family members united on some issues, divided on others

After Sept. 11, 2001, you would have been hard-pressed to find someone who had lost a family member that day, of any political persuasion, who did not want to find out how and why the attacks took place and why their loved ones died. In the same way, there was and is widespread support among this diverse community, bound by the pain and loss of that day, for remembering the victims.

But once other questions began to arise, such as how to prevent terrorist attacks, and what to do with those accused of terrorism, the views of the 9/11 family members diverged -- widely. Beverly Eckert had fought for a number of causes after she lost her beloved husband, Sean. Perhaps she was best known for her role as a member of the Family Steering Committee, which was instrumental in establishing the 9/11 Commission and implementing some of the commission's most important recommendations. But Beverly was also strong supporter of other causes, including the creation of the National 9/11 Memorial, skyscraper safety, and airline security. These causes had wide support among the 9/11 community.

Beverly also supported closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and putting the terrorism detainees held there on trial in the US. Other 9/11 family members disagreed, and an article in today's Washington Post highlights the diversity of these views. One of the family members put it well, in this nutshell:

"There is a diverse set of opinions about closing Guantanamo, about having the military tribunals versus having federal trials in the United States, about the death penalty versus life if convicted," said Adele Welty, whose son, Timothy, was a New York firefighter killed on Sept. 11. "If you would take any group in the population who were not family members, you would have an equally diverse set of opinions."

Someone Beverly had met through the group September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, Valerie Lucznikowska, said President Obama's efforts to bring the terrorism suspects to justice in the US was a good idea. On the other hand, Kristen Breitweiser, another member of the Family Steering Committee, had become disillusioned with the president's approach, according to the article. She said Obama's failure to include family members in the deliberations on Guantanamo "translates to me like they really don't care."

The 9/11 family members achieved the peak of their political influence when their unity coincided with support from powerful allies in Washington, among the media, and from average Americans from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon. But as the issues at hand divide rather than unite; as the memory of 9/11 begins to fade from public consciousness; and as powerful constituencies and players are facing off against each other rather than standing should-to-shoulder, it is difficult to see how the 9/11 family members will ever be as effective as they once were.