War & Peace Quote by Mitt Romney

Romney draws a bright line between the Constitutional protections owed to American citizens and the treatment of wartime enemies, using Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused architect of 9/11, as a stand-in for the larger category of enemy combatants. The statement channels a post-9/11 political fault line: whether suspected terrorists should be tried in civilian courts with full due process or in military commissions under wartime rules.

The legal backdrop is complex. After 2001, the U.S. asserted authority under the Authorization for Use of Military Force to detain and try enemy combatants, and the Bush administration created military commissions. The Supreme Court pushed back in cases like Hamdan and Boumediene, recognizing limits and extending habeas rights to Guantanamo detainees, even as Congress tried to regularize commissions through the Military Commissions Acts. The Obama administration briefly sought to try Mohammed in federal court in New York in 2009, igniting intense political opposition. The reversal back to military commissions made Mohammed an emblem of a broader struggle over venue, secrecy, and the balance between security and the rule of law. Romney, running in a GOP climate wary of civilian trials for terrorists, made that boundary part of his political brand.

Supporters of Romney’s framing argue that foreign enemy operatives captured in a war context should be handled under laws of war, both to protect intelligence sources and to avoid granting adversaries the privileges of ordinary criminal defendants. Critics respond that the Constitution’s core guarantees often apply to “persons,” not just citizens, that federal courts have a strong track record prosecuting terrorism, and that stretching wartime categories risks eroding legal norms. Beneath the policy details lies a definitional question about who belongs within the American legal community and how far constitutional principles reach when fear and security are at stake.