Best Man For The Job
Seriously folks, I have to confess I don't believe in the innocence of David Hicks. To be precise, I believe he went to Afghansitan with the intention of shooting at Americans. That he got caught and now resides in a Hell-On-Earth scenario in 'Gitmo', is while grounds for feeling sorry for him, not something that inspires a lot of sympathy in me.
To be blunt, he put himself there through his own damn choices, good & bad; and in my humble opinion, they were mostly bad choices. I'm not saying Hicks is guilty or that this military commission is even legitimate as it dresses itself up to be. It's my contention that "deserve's got nothing to do with it," so as irrational as it seems, his predicament is a result of him "asking for it". At best, I think David Hicks is a silly, silly, boy who ran into a troubled sitation head first, but in most part he is only the victim of his own very faulty judgement. Let's just say I don't like what I've read and heard of him.
Be that as it may, David Hicks has a very public defender, and this man Michael Mori is my hero.
This is a man who is fighting for the integrity of our very civlization.
A seat for a lecture by Major "Dan" Mori (as he prefers to be known) has been the hottest ticket in town for the past week. With moments to go before the lecture's 6pm start, most of the 600-strong audience are already inside. But about 30 have remained outside to cheer the immaculately uniformed military lawyer who, as former Media Watch host David Marr recently noted, "looks like Gomer Pyle, but pleads like Atticus Finch".
Hicks' captors at Guantanamo Bay have also been thinking about Atticus Finch, the heroic lawyer character in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. The classic American novel is one of several books — along with lawyer-crime novelist Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent and Robert Hughes' The Fatal Shore — that Guantanamo authorities have refused to allow the lawyer to give Hicks.
The well-wishers follow as Major Mori walks into the foyer, where he is bailed up by waiting media. Inside, the crowd is solid middle Australia: a sprinkling of law students; a majority of 30- and 40-somethings; and a striking number of people about the age of Hicks' father, Terry.
Mori brushes off any discussion of his quasi-hero status in middle Australia.
"I'm just the messenger," he says, dismissing talk of the role that he — with his military uniform and his straight talk about a "corrupt" military commission system — has played in changing the Australian public's view on the David Hicks case.
He is also quick to correct the suggestion he is defying the Pentagon or its Commander-in-Chief, US President George Bush.
"I am doing my duty," he says. His ethical obligations as a defence attorney, he explains, overrule the restrictions that usually prevent serving military officers from speaking their minds.
"I was assigned to defend David Hicks. I am in a unique position where I actually have the ability to advocate for another person and another person's interests. Normally, except when you are assigned as a defence counsel, you are representing the United States or the military branch you belong to."
His job is simple in some ways, he says.
"I get the easy job, I get to speak the truth. I am speaking the truth about the military commissions. Military commissions are a made-up system, created after the fact, in which people are handpicked to get a desired outcome."
On a practical level, however, a military commission defence lawyer's job is arduous. Major Mori is his own chief public affairs officer (a good one, who regularly returns reporters' emails at midnight, his time). He also has to be his own team investigator, visiting Afghanistan two years ago to check out allegations against his client.
"Unfortunately, the defence office has always been under-staffed compared to the appointing authority's office, or the chief prosecutor's," he says. "When I was first assigned to David, I asked for a second lawyer and it took until the first month before the first hearing for me to get (one) assigned, and he was living in Germany." That part-time lawyer was eventually replaced with a full-timer, but only after some months.
Raised in Boston, Major Mori, 41, and a father of twin infant boys, first enlisted in the Marines in 1983. He left four years later to finish college and later re-enlisted as an officer. After graduating from law school he worked as a military trial lawyer, prosecuting and defending more than 200 cases of marines accused of crimes from rape to drug dealing, before taking on the task of defending David Hicks in 2003.
He knows and respects the traditional US military justice system, describing it as a "real" system with "real judges" who take the role of the defence seriously. The military commission system, he says, is something else. "It is a creation of the political appointees and civilians that control the Department of Defence — it has nothing to do with military justice and it should never be confused with the US court martial system."
As a lawyer he has always been committed to his clients, he says. After three years with David (as he always refers to Hicks), "friend" is not the word. But there is "a relationship".
"I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to let my kids see David and hang out with David. I would have David in my house. I hope he is released and I can go visit him in his house."
There you have it. A man who is defending somebody I think is actually not all that wonderful. Maybe the Military Commission system is a sham; I happen to believe both the Nuremburg trials and Tokyo Trial were just as much of bunkum as this military commission. But so many people still believe in these crappy kangaroo courts. So it's actually quite the fight to go up against history and plead for justice to be served properly, instead of at the behest of poltical interests. That right there is a mighty man, asked to do something much mightier than most of us will ever be asked to do.
Certainly you could characterise it as one marine who is fighting on behalf of civilization itself. When everything is said and done, I hope they give him the Congressional Medal to commemorate his valiant fight.
Here's the Link.
