Letters to the Editor
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History of the English Kings
The rule of American law hangs upon an armature shaped by the history of the English kings.
In 1215, John was forced by the barons at Runymeade to sign the Magna Carta.
In 1649, Charles I asserted he ruled by Divine right, and that the King can do no wrong.. Parliament disabused Charles Stuart of this silly notion by separating his head from his shoulders, making clear no man is above the law not even the King.
George Bush is no King - but he is a very dangerous fool. Justice Anthony Kennedy admitted as much in his keynote address to the American Bar Association last month, when he said:
The rule of law is binding upon the government and all of its officials.
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Irony
Good luck-- but history is against you. The so-called "greatest American president" Abraham Lincoln got away with suspending habeas corpus for actual Americans in states that did NOT secede. He arrested political rivals, dissident editors, ordinary citizens-- all in the name of crisis and alarm. It worked then, I'm afraid it will work now.
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Bush's big mistake
is not applying Article 4 of the Geneva Convention rigorously enough. It wouldn't apply to all the detainees but those captured on the battlefield in violation could be denied pow status and after a courts martial shot as spies or sabotuers. If some of those insurgents you see on youtube fighting in street clothes were lined up and shot the next guys might thing twice.
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Worrisome Events
I am quite troubled that a democratic government can even think it can deny habeas corpus for anyone under its review. This is a fundamental characteristic of a free, democratic society - you have the right to be charged with a crime, confront your accusors and challenge the evidence against you. We fought a revolution (and a civil war) for this right - people literally died for this ideal.
If we deny this to "terrorists", what is to stop the government from denying this fundamental right to another group without representation (or lobbyists)? This is the type of stuff that makes people want to leave the country.
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Lincoln and our better angels
President Lincoln did attempt to suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus as was his right in the Constitution. The Supreme Court decreed that as long as the courts were open and operational, there was no cause to suspend Habeas Corpus and, thereby, set specific limits on when the president could use this constitutional power.
In the history of America, we have seldom lived up to the ideals expressed in our constitution. Americans have often allowed arrogance, passion or hatred of others cause us to act against our better natures. Andrew Jackson famously said of the Cherokee lands decree that "John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it." This man, immortalized on the American 20 dollar bill and in Americana in general, violated his oath of office. He ignored the constitution because he and his cronies wanted the Cherokee land and didn't consider the most westernized tribe of natives human.
Somehow, I see some corollaries with our current occupant of the office.
However, I do see signs of hope. People like Michael Ratner allow me to believe that we can approach the ideals our founders set forth. I don't believe in heroes, except where people see wrong and move heaven and earth to fix it. While I am a deist, it heartens me when I hear of a church group getting a group together to help in the reconstruction in Louisiana. If there is a God, it exists in the hearts of those who look beyond our differences and do right because it is what's right.
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I can already hear the shrill response
I already know what the neo-Nazi, er, neocon response to this will be:
Why do you America-haters want to give protection to terrorists? Do you want to invite them home for dinner too? Why do you hate America?
To these ranters, all the detainees are automatically guilty. Allowing them fair treatment under the law is not only unnecessary, it is obscene. Why should we give them the protections based on our way of life when they want to destroy our way of life?
I wish I were just making a straw-man argument here, instead of repeating things I have heard and read. Anyone who was actually thinking cogently about this would realize that giving these protections to people who were trying to destroy our culture is at least as important as giving them to our own citizens. Otherwise, what value do we truly place upon them?
The saddest part of all of this to me is that the pro-torture anti-habeas corpus gang are the ones actually destroying our way of life. In order to "save" it.
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I hate to tell you this
I hate to look askance at such a well written article by people so genuinely concerned with the rights of the detainees, but... The article multiple times says that the legislation would allow the administration to detain any non-citizen outside the United States indefinitely and deny them habeas corpus.
The latest version as of this morning, allowed them to deny habeas corpus and the right to a speedy trial (which is a clause in the Military Code saying that those arrested must be charged, informed of the charge or released) to any alien who is
1) in U.S. custody
2) has been determined to be an enemy combatant *or is awaiting determination*
This means that any non-citizen, outside the U.S. or inside, who has been arrested and is in custody *for any reason* could be construed as being "awaiting determination of enemy combatant status". The "awaiting determination" language is new, it was not in the Senate version last week, or in the original Bush version.
So Mr.Ratner and Ms.Miles' article is chilling, but as of this morning, apparently not chilling enough.
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Innocent until proven guilty
This from the article:
>Almost none of these detainees have been charged with a crime. Many, according to the administration's own claims, have never actively taken hostile action against the United States, but were turned over to the Americans by war lords or bounty hunters. Others are confused, elderly, or simply arrested in error. As Col. Bill Cline, deputy camp commander at Guantánamo, acknowledged, "Some of the prisoners are victims of circumstance, caught up in the wrong place at the wrong time."<
In my mind, this is the main point, and one that always seems to be lost in the discussion -- which seems to rest on "how should we treat terrorists." As long as the default assumption is that everyone at Guantanamo is "the worst of the worst," arguments about waterboarding and hypothermia will not be compelling to my security mom friends.
Thank you, Michael Ratner, for seeing the men at Guantanamo as human beings, deserving of the basic rights to face their accusers and challenge the evidence that is used to detain them. I wish that voices like yours were more common and louder -- the same friends who (unfortunately) don't flinch at applications of torture are horrified to learn that many of the men still at Guantanamo may have nothing to do with terrorist activity.