This week, President Bush signed the War Commissions Act. The GOP, in an attempt to reframe the election debates once again, heralded the signing as another nail in the coffin to democrats more so than any terrorist at home or abroad. Funny, I thought that the war was against terrorists, not democrats.
Dennis Hastert, amongst others, desperate to hold onto power, bragged that this bill would stop those pesky democrats from "coddling and pampering" terrorists. yeah, that's what's been happening.
Hastert, along with the rest of his desperate party, has seemed to have forgotten that the war is against terrorists, not democrats. But this bill is more against Americans than anything else. Democrats aren't interested in pampering terrorists any more than the republicans are interested in realizing the dramatic implications of what they have done in the spirit of holding absolute power.
A specific part of this act lists the definition of an "enemy combatant" as " a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a combatant status review tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the president or the secretary of defense.”
What does this mean? According to Constitutional Law proffessor Johnathan Turley, it means that you, I or any other American can be called a terrorist or enemy comatant at the president's whims. In other words, if he doesn't like you.
Turley: ... it says that if you even give material support to an organization that the president deems connected to one of these groups, you too can be an enemy combatant.
And the fact that he appoints this tribunal is meaningless. You know, standing behind him at the signing ceremony was his attorney general, who signed a memo that said that you could torture people, that you could do harm to them to the point of organ failure or death.
So if he appoints someone like that to be attorney general, you can imagine who he‘s going be putting on this board....The framers created a system where we did not have to rely on the good graces or good mood of the president. In fact, Madison said that he created a system essentially to be run by devils, where they could not do harm, because we didn‘t rely on their good motivations.
Now we must. And people have no idea how significant this is. What, really, a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values.
It couldn‘t be more significant. And the strange thing is, we‘ve become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. I mean, the Congress just gave the president despotic powers, and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to, you know, “Dancing with the Stars.” I mean, it‘s otherworldly.
Some have argued that they could care less about "terrorist rights" to the point where they skew anyone who defends the basic principles of Habeas Corpus as someone who wats to "give MORE rights to terrorists." then go on to make all kinds of false, inflamatory accusations. None of which are true.
President Adams signed a declaration similair to this. The end result was a rounding up of journalists. President Grant issued his own suspension of Habeas to rid us of the KKK. That still hasn't happened, but again innocent people wre jailed and given no opportunity to defend their innocence until wiser heads prevailed and like Adams's power grab, was reversed.
It happened again when President Wilson insisted that the espionage Act was necessary. the end result was that public speakers we re jailed unjustly and with no opportunity to defend their innocence.
FDR also exceeded the constitution with executive order #9066. that act imprisoned any Japanese -American during world war II in concentration camp like settings for the crime of their ancestors coming to America. As General DeWitt said at the time to Congress, "“It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen—he is still a Japanese.” This was not only the biggest blunder on FDR's record, it was so bad that ronald reagan had to formally apologize to the Japanese people and goverment for the lives we had ruined.
In all these cases, all that ever happened were Americans being unjustly imprisoned for nothing more than speaking or writing about their country or for just being here. No crimes were committed, no enemies were stopped. The only people who were terrorized were the innocent americans being jailed.
Senator Patrick lehey wisely said this is "a sad day when the rubber-stamp Congress undercuts our freedoms,” and Senator Feingold added that “We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation‘s history.”
Indeed we will.
But in the past, either the Congress or the Courts have stepped in to save our precious rights. So, they will again, right? let's ask Mr Turley...
"Well, you know what? I think people are fooling themselves if they believe that the courts will once again stop this president from taking over—taking almost absolute power. It basically comes down to a single vote on the Supreme Court, Justice Kennedy. And he indicated that if Congress gave the president these types of powers, that he might go along.
And so we may have, in this country, some type of ueber-president, some absolute ruler, and it‘ll be up to him who gets put away as an enemy combatant, held without trial.
It‘s something that no one thought—certainly I didn‘t think—was possible in the United States. And I am not too sure how we got to this point. But people clearly don‘t realize what a fundamental change it is about who we are as a country. What happened today changed us. And I‘m not too sure we‘re going to change back anytime soon".
But we don't torture, right?
"That‘s actually when I turned off my TV set, because I couldn‘t believe it. You know, the United States has engaged in torture. And the whole world community has denounced the views of this administration, its early views that the president could order torture, could cause injury up to organ failure or death.
The administration has already established that it has engaged in things like waterboarding, which is not just torture. We prosecuted people after World War II for waterboarding prisoners. We treated it as a war crime. And my God, what a change of fate, where we are now embracing the very thing that we once prosecuted people for.
Who are we now? I know who we were then. But when the president said that we don‘t torture, that was, frankly, when I had to turn off my TV set."
You weren't the only one, i'm sure.
Some Americans think that to beat the terrorists that we have to become more like them. We've made that mistake before, like when some thought that to beat the Soviet Union, we had to be more like them. Or the japanese. Or the Germans. Or the Socialists. Or the Anarchists. Or the Immigrants. Or the British. Or the Aliens. etc, etc,,,,
In every case, despite some folks good intentions, they were always wrong. America wins when Americans stand up to tyranny and at the same time defends our freedoms and rights with equal, if not a greater vigor.
Is this hyperbole? Keith Olbermann, in his special comments yesterday, nailed it...
"We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.
We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere—anywhere -- but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere - anywhere.
And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.
And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?"
I don't think so either Keith.
"