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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Bush is After Our Rights

by Marie Cocco for the Boulder Daily Camera (Colorado)

August 2, 2006

To turn our eyes momentarily from the terrifying war in the Middle East is to discover an ever-more ominous turn in the Bush administration's war on terror. Having been barred by the Supreme Court from treating foreign terrorism suspects as if they had few — or no — legal rights, the president's initial response is not to comply with the high court's finding that detainees must be treated under accepted standards of international law. In fact, the White House pushes to extend the ill treatment to American citizens.

That is, effectively, what the administration's draft of new rules for the military detention and trial of terrorism suspects would do. News and human rights organizations that have obtained the document, marked "deliberative draft — close hold," have criticized the way in which it would obliterate the Supreme Court's ruling. It seeks to have Congress write into law essentially the same procedures for military trials that the high court just said were illegal. That is, terrorism suspects still could be excluded from the courtroom, evidence could be withheld from the defense, and the Geneva Conventions — which the Supreme Court explicitly said must apply, would be circumvented. More chilling is that the draft makes clear that the president wishes to impose these conditions upon any American citizen he calls an "enemy combatant."

A copy of the draft made public by The Washington Post shows that, while an initial version anticipated military trials only for "alien" enemy combatants, the word "alien" is subsequently crossed out. Instead, the document refers time and again to "persons" who are detainees. A "person," under this draft, could be an American seized at a shopping mall, or in a suburban backyard. Here, then, is how the government could treat American citizens if this draft were to become law: A citizen could be designated an "enemy combatant" (a term the administration has never clearly defined) and held in a military prison. There, the citizen would have no right to a speedy trial. Any trials, the draft says, could occur "at any time without limitations."

Once the citizen is tried under rules that mock the constitutional protections he would receive in a federal court, or in a U.S. military court-martial, the outcome would mean little. An acquittal would not necessarily free the detainee. Neither would a sentence imposed, say, for two or three years and served in full. "An acquittal or conviction under this act does not preclude the United States, in accordance with the law of war, to detain enemy combatants until the cessation of hostilities as a means to prevent their return to the fight." Of course, "the fight" as defined in the draft is not necessarily an armed battle. People may be designated "enemy combatants" and subject to these rules if the president and the Pentagon believe they are now or were once "part of, or supporting" the Taliban, al-Qaeda or "associated forces." Support isn't defined. It could mean shouting "long live Osama!" while walking down Pennsylvania Avenue. All these powers are rightly the president's because he is commander in chief of the armed forces, according to the draft.

This is the precise argument the White House has tried, again and again, to get the Supreme Court to accept. It has failed. In two cases in which President Bush indeed did detain American citizens indefinitely and without charge, the courts derailed the effort. After the Supreme Court ruled against the administration two years ago in the case of Yaser Hamdi, the military released him and returned him to his family in Saudi Arabia. In a second case involving Jose Padilla, a citizen who was picked up at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, the government finally issued an indictment four years into his detainment — just as the Supreme Court was considering Padilla's case. The Bush administration now seeks from Congress an authorization for the blank check it once sought to give itself. If lawmakers hand him this, they will be handing over rights that Americans may never regain.

[The questions inevitably emerge from the above article – Is security, or even the illusion of security, worth this kind of infringement on civil liberty? Can we trust our Governments to act responsibly if we give them this kind of power? What can we do about a Government that has forgotten that it works for us and not the other way around?

I feel that more people should be asking these kinds of questions on both sides of ‘The Pond’.]

4 comments:

Scott said...

I honestly don't think 99 out of 100 Americans know what rights are. At least not the natural rights that Britain claimed before the American Revolution and the founding fathers of this country thought worth seceding over. We're taught from birth through the government schools that government is a tool to serve the majority, even if it's at the cost of the minority. I know in American schools nary is it taught that we were wrong in any of our wars, except for maybe Vietnam. We're never taught that any of the government programs we're failures, except maybe for prohibition, though we see how well we learned from that with our drug war.

The focus is never to limit government, but rather to make it work as if it's broken. The Feds interchange warfare and welfare, always increasing in scope, and when one of those sides oversteps its bounds we wonder why. As if you can put a 600 lb rhinoceros in a crowded room and pretend to be in control of it.

Well, I could say much more, this is one of my favorite topics after all. But the point is, no, governments can not be trusted with the power to trample rights in the name of security.

What can we do about it? I haven't the slightest clue.

CyberKitten said...

Hi Scott and welcome back.

Rights are funny things aren't they?

What are they? Why do we have them? Indeed *do* we have them....? Can you be given Rights? Can you bargan one Right against another? Can you have Rights taken away? Its certainly an interesting area for debate - maybe I need to Blog on it?

I'm starting a degree in October in Ethics & Social Philosophy and I'd be surprised if the Concept of Rights doesn't come up. I might even consider the Rights Issue for my Dissertation.

Personally I think that we have Rights because we are sentient beings. No one (especially Governments) can give us Rights nor can they truely take them away - they can just infringe on them.

Like you I am not a great fan of Government but from the other side of the political spectrum I think. My viewpoint tends to come from the Anarchist side rather than the Libertarian one as I have elements of Socialism in my make up... Long story and maybe the subject of another Blog post... once I get my thoughts on the subject in some kind of order!

I'm not sure what we can do about it either. Unfortunately no matter who you vote for you always get a Government.

Laura said...

I just finished a chapter in "Universal Human Rights in Theory and Practice" by Jack Donnelly and one of his arguments is that rights are supposed to be invisible. The fact that we don't realize they're there (that we don't have to 'enforce them' means they're being respected). So any time we have to draw attention to our rights, that means they're being threatened. But what a conundrum that is, because, as Scott said (and I agree) most people never think about their rights until they're taken away - but how are we to know what's being taken away if we don't know what they're supposed to be?

I also think that security is always an illusion. It's more a state of mind than a state of being.

CyberKitten said...

Laura said: But what a conundrum that is, because, as Scott said (and I agree) most people never think about their rights until they're taken away - but how are we to know what's being taken away if we don't know what they're supposed to be?

That is a *very* good question.

Laura also said: I also think that security is always an illusion. It's more a state of mind than a state of being.

Very true. Which is why politicians can manipulate people through fear and the illusory promise of the security most people seem to desire.