|
|
|
They hate our freedom: The truth about the Military
Commissions Act Aaron Sussman On October 17, with Dick
Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, and Donald Rumsfeld standing behind him, George
W. Bush solemnly
announced, “in memory of the victims of September 11th, it is my
honor to sign the Military
Commissions Act of 2006 into law.” It is apt that Bush invoked
a terrifying assault on America as he signed the Military
Commissions Act (MCA), legislation that chisels away at our civil
liberties, abets and immunizes top-level torturers, and strikes at the
core of American values and tradition. The
message that Bush gave when he signed the Defense Bill in 2005 is
now truer than ever: “Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and
so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country
and our people, and neither do we.” “In memory of the victims
of September 11th,” Bush passed a law that Robyn Blumner of the St.
Petersburg Times calls “an
obscenity against liberty and decency” and that the executive director
of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
calls “unconstitutional
and un-American.” A fitting tribute indeed for the victims whose
names have been
manipulated by this administration to justify everything from
invading Iraq, to the USAPATRIOT Act, to torture, to tax cuts. This
“honor” to the victims of September 11 is a national disgrace for which
the Bush administration, both houses of Congress, and the media are
to blame. While the White House
struggles to convince the nation that the MCA is perfectly legal and
essential in order for the CIA to continue “one
of the most successful intelligence efforts in American history,”
the true implications of this act must be made clear. Out of the many
dubious clauses in the act, the most egregious is the one that eliminates
the writ of habeas corpus
(the right to challenge the legality of one’s imprisonment), a fundamental
right that dates back to the Magna Carta. In his First Inaugural Address
in 1801, Thomas
Jefferson said, “Freedom of the person under the protection of the
habeas corpus I deem [one of the] essential principles of our government."
Ironically, the Supreme Court case, Hamdan
v. Rumsfeld, which held that Bush’s original military tribunals
were illegal and made the congressionally approved MCA necessary, would
never have occurred if the MCA had been in effect, as it was petitioned
by a detainee. According to the MCA,
“No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider
an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of
an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the
United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or
is awaiting such determination.” This allows the president
to seize a person who is in this country legally and detain that person
indefinitely. Who, though, exactly are these “enemy combatants?” The MCA says, “The term
‘unlawful combatant’ means . . . a person who has engaged in hostilities
or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against
the United States. . . . or a person who . . . 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.” With such vague language
as “purposefully and materially” and such ambiguous standards as “another
competent tribunal,” it is not difficult to foresee the grave violations
of human rights that the state can commit.
One of the few vociferous
opponents of the MCA in the Senate, Patrick
Leahy of Vermont, presented this
chilling scenario: “Imagine, you are a law-abiding, lawful permanent
resident. . . . You do charitable fund-raising for international relief
agencies. . . . Then one day there is a knock at your door. The government
thinks that the Muslim charity you sent money to may be funneling money
to terrorists, and it thinks you may be involved. . . . You are brought
in for questioning. . . . You ask for a lawyer. But no lawyer comes.
. . . Then you’re sent to Guantánamo. And then nothing, for years, for
decades, for the rest of your life.” Does giving money to this
hypothetical charity fit the definition of “purposefully and materially?”
Of course it does, because all the term really means is that Bush has,
what Thomas Jefferson School of Law Professor Marjorie Cohn calls, “the
power of a dictator.” According to Molly Ivins, “one
person has already been charged with aiding terrorists because he sold
a satellite TV package that includes the Hezbollah network.” Once you are detained
and denied the writ of habeas corpus, you effectively have no protections,
no counsel, and no rights. Bush has repeatedly emphasized that “we
do not torture” and “freedom
from torture is an inalienable human right.” This is only true if
you allow the Bush administration to define “torture,” a definition
that has become so nebulous that it might as well be changed to “whatever
techniques are not being used by the U.S.” The MCA gives the president
the authority to define and apply Common
Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, which refers to the treatment
of detainees, and reconfigures the War
Crimes Act to expunge this nation’s crimes. The MCA, according to
Amnesty International, will “narrow
the scope of the War Crimes Act by not expressly criminalizing acts
that constitute ‘outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating
and degrading treatment’ banned under [Common Article 3].” This is a
considerable relief for the torturers in our government. According to
the Huffington Post’s
Aziz Huq, “the Bush administration has gutted the no-torture rule.
It has added the requirement that a person ‘specifically’ intend to
cause the pain that amounts to torture . . . It means that any government
agent who says his goal was to get information, not to cause pain, hasn’t
tortured. . . ." The
Bush administration, then, does not think it is torture when federal
government employees engage “in acts such as soaking a prisoner’s hand
in alcohol and lighting it on fire, administering electrical shocks,
subjecting prisoners to repeated sexual abuse and assault, including
sodomy with a bottle, raping a juvenile prisoner, kicking and beating
prisoners in the head and groin, putting lit cigarettes inside a prisoner’s
ear, force-feeding a baseball to a prisoner, chaining a prisoner hands-to-feet
in a fetal position for 24 hours without food or water or access to
a toilet, and breaking a prisoner’s shoulders.” Combine those horrors
with what other countries do to suspects seized by the U.S. under the
“extraordinary
rendition” program, and America’s shameful role as a violator of
human rights is illuminated. Yet, we are consistently
told that opposing these acts and maintaining a basic level of humanity
and decency is tantamount to treason. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert
claimed
that opponents of the MCA are “putting their liberal agenda ahead of
the security of America” and that Democrats “would gingerly pamper
the terrorists who plan to destroy innocent American lives.” According
to Hastert, we have the false dilemma of either “gingerly pamper[ing]
the terrorists” or of criminally stripping Americans and non-Americans
of their rights, torturing them, and committing the brutalities and
excesses of tyrants. This is one of the many logical fallacies employed
by the GOP leadership to misconstrue the terms of the debate and cause
people to vote out of fear; a strategy that weakens this country and
undermines democracy. The media, which has been
uncritical
and complicit in regard to torture has failed its democratic obligations
once again with the MCA. When the legislation was first introduced,
the media considered the “substance
a yawn” and preferred to “focus on the sexy rift between George Bush’s
White House and those roguish Republican mavericks headed by John McCain.”
Michael Ratner, who is the president of the Center
for Constitutional Rights, pointed out on the Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting radio show, CounterSpin,
“There was no internal rift about habeas corpus, which was barely covered
in the press.” By pitting these two ideologically similar contingents
against each other as the only two sides of the debate, the media effectively
erased the massive criticism leveled by constitutional law experts,
human rights activists, watchdog groups, and everyone else who has a
stake in preserving civil liberties and international law. By the time the press
addressed the real issues concerning the MCA, it was too late. A
New York Times editorial, titled “A Dangerous New Order”, calls
the MCA “an unconstitutional act.” Unfortunately, the editorial, which
could have influenced votes in the House and Senate, was run after the
act was signed. The editorial also erroneously states, “The law does
not apply to American citizens, but it does apply to other legal United
States residents.” In fact, as Robert
Perry of Consortium News points out, the Act states that “Any
person is punishable as a principal under this chapter who commits
an offense punishable by this chapter, or aids, abets, counsels, commands,
or procures its commission.” Another inaccurate statement was made on
Fox News Special Report with Brit Hume, when Major Garrett
said, “this bill does give detainees the right to appeal their status
as enemy combatants, just not before civilian courts. They can appeal
to a court of military review.” Detainees
do not all have procedures to challenge their detention in court,
an error that was addressed by the media watchdog group Media
Matters. The seamless couplings
of the Bush administration, both houses of Congress, and the media,
combined with the powerlessness of the judiciary, exposes this new era
of anti-democratic collusion and the dissolution of “checks and balances.”
It is a harsh blow to democracy when the criminals in the highest offices
of the government prove they are not criminals by changing the laws
that they violated. The strategy of those who made the MCA into law
is to erase their past crimes to pave the way for new ones. The MCA
effectively immunizes government officials against allegations of torture
and other war crimes. Surely this was a consideration when Alberto Gonzales
told Bush that denying the Geneva Conventions would “substantially
reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecutions under the War Crimes
Act.” Rosa Brooks wrote in the
Los Angeles Times,“It’s
far too late for Bush to have a legacy that won’t be a source of shame
to future generations. So he’s going for second best: a congressionally
delivered get-out-of-jail free card.” This “get-out-of-jail free card,”
while giving the Bush regime tyrannical powers and immunity for past
crimes, has the reverse effect for all the co-conspirators who let Bush
hurt this country: Congress (and all those Democrats who voted “aye”*),
the media, the courts, and, of course, we, the voters, all of whom are
now more culpable than ever. The MCA is the latest link in a chain that
increasingly shackles democracy and progress, that tarnishes the rights
and dignity of every person in every country, and that, with every new
link, makes us more complicit accomplices to the crimes committed by
our government, by the ones who hate our freedom. *Democrat Senators:
Carper (D-DE), Johnson (D-SD), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ),
Lieberman (D-CT), Menendez (D-NJ), Salazar (D-CO), Rockefeller (D-WV),
Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Stabenow (D-MI) WHAT YOU CAN DO ABOUT
IT In a State
Department Foreign Press Center Briefing, John Bellinger, the Legal
Advisor to the State Department said: “And with respect to the Military
Commissions Act, which is extremely complex, hard to understand, as
wonderful a job as you all do in reporting this in the press, it is
hard to understand the details of the law unless one gets down, lawyer
to lawyer, to explain it.” Articles and documents
that actually help explain it:
How Congress Voted on the MCA: Tell Congress What
You Think:
Organizations the Defend the Constitution: About Habeas Corpus
Law Reviews: About Torture
|
|
|
| PRISON
PLANET.com Copyright © 2002-2006 Alex Jones
All rights reserved.
|
