Alex Koppelman: Sometimes, Giuliani should keep his anti-terror advice to himself

[A staff writer, Alex Koppelman writes and edits Salon's political blog, War Room. He's also written for New York Magazine, has appeared on MSNBC, Fox News and CNN Headline News and is a contributing editor with Smith Magazine.]

In this life, there are really only three things that are certain and unavoidable: Death, taxes and the fact that every time 9/11 comes up in the national news, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani will rush to find a microphone.

He's certainly done so in the wake of the Obama administration's announcement that self-described 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be taken from the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and brought to New York City for trial. A former spokeswoman for Giuliani said on Twitter that the former mayor will be on three networks -- ABC, CNN and Fox News -- this Sunday talking about the decision. On top of that, he's put out a statement condemning the move:

Returning some of the Guantanamo detainees to New York City for trial, specifically Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, has now brought us full circle - we have regressed to a pre-9/11 mentality with respect to Islamic extremist terrorism. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed should be treated like the war criminal he is and tried in a military court. He is not just another murderer, or even a mass murderer. He murdered as part of a declared war against us – America.

This is the same mistake we made with the 1993 terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. We treated them like domestic criminals, when in fact they were terrorists. In the dangerous world we live in today, a nation unable to identify and properly define its enemies is a nation in danger.

This statement took a whole lot of nerve. Because when it comes to lessons learned and mistakes made in the wake of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Giuliani is about the last person in the world who should be talking...