TheAgitator.com
Habeas, Schmabeas
Saturday, May 24th, 2008Maybe Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri really is a bad man. Or maybe he’s another Jose Padilla, and guilty of far less than what the government is claiming. What’s clear, is that what the government is arguing is some scary, scary stuff:
Al-Marri’s capture six years ago might be the Bush administration’s biggest domestic counterterrorism success story. Authorities say he was an al Qaeda sleeper agent living in middle America, researching poisonous gases and plotting a cyberattack.
To justify holding him, the government claimed a broad interpretation of the president’s wartime powers, one that goes beyond warrantless wiretapping or monitoring banking transactions. Government lawyers told federal judges that the president can send the military into any U.S. neighborhood, capture a resident and hold him in prison without charge, indefinitely.
If the president gets these powers, it’s the end, gang. The writ of habeas corpus is 400 years old. The Bush administration is, rather incredibly, arguing that the “commander in chief” power of the U.S. Constitution authorizes them to vaporize it. Even if you subscribe to a Hinderaker-esque view of the current president, just remember, every future president will have this power, too. Think about the asinine process by which we chose our presidents. Think about what sorts of character traits it takes to want to go through all of the bullshit we’ve seen already this campaign season, and what traits it takes not only to endure all of that, but to win. Now think about giving those people these kinds of powers.
The Bush administration has defined “terrorism” in broad, vague terms. As Charlie Savage points out in his book Takeover, it includes not only Islamic terrorism, but domestic terrorism, and the Bush administration claims these powers not just against terrorists, but against the people who “aid” them. Savage explains that, for example, a more liberal president could claim these same powers against the farmers in the mountains of North Carolina who are suspected of helping Olympic Park and abortion clinic bomber Eric Rudolph evade the police.
Keep in mind, this isn’t a question of whether such people, or whether such people as al-Marri, should be prosecuted. We’re talking about whether we should give the president the authority to arrest and detain such people—American residents (and, the Bush administration has argued, American citizens)—without giving them a trial . . . forever.
The Bush administration is claiming its wartime powers give it this broad authority. But the war the administration says we’re fighting isn’t against Iraq or Afghanistan. It isn’t a war for which there will ever be a peace accord or the signing of a treaty. It’s a war against “terrorism.” It’s a war that quite literally is never going to end. And so any “wartime” powers we grant the executive, are powers we’re granting to the executive permanently.
It’ll take decades to figure out just how much damage this president has done to the Constitution. And it’s really almost impossible to overstate just how serious this is.
I want to disagree, but I can’t. When you say this war will never end you are correct.
Buy ammo while you can still do so anonymously. Even if it turns out you don’t need it, it’s a good inflation hedge, what with the trend in the price of metals these days, and it keeps well for years and years.
“It’s a war against ‘terrorism.’”
It’s not even that. It’s a “war on terror.” That’s as vague and nebulous as…well, the administration’s definition of it.
Don’t worry folks. In 8 months the eeeevil George Bush will be gone and you will have Barack Obama or John McCain to deal with.
Reminiscent of this old post, which I still like a lot:
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/week_2004_06_06.html#001957
I’m thinking there has to be somewhere I can move that is a democracy, and not influenced greatly by the US, but I cannot think where. Maybe Sweden; granted they are socialists, but I would much rather live in a free socialist country then the dictatorial mercantile one America is becoming. Is Switzerland still a real democracy?
How do “wartime” powers exist if there hasn’t been a declaration of war? What is the current interpretation of the 1973 war powers resolution?
jah
GWB didn’t invent this nonsense, he’s merely copying Lincoln.
KB, isn’t it about time we stopped with all that bullshit? Who cares who did what when and to what degree? Do we really want to spend our time having debates about when it began when the whole thing seems to be crumbling at our feet?
Fuck! I’m so tired of the blame game and the “my party is better than your party game” and don’t forget the “my ideology is better than your ideology”.
I don’t agree with a lot of libertarian principles, but the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Edin said it well. I am certainly a liberal, but the idea that any president can do this - whether they share my ideology or not - is deeply disturbing.
EdinTally,
“KB, isn’t it about time we stopped with all that bullshit? Who cares who did what when and to what degree? Do we really want to spend our time having debates about when it began when the whole thing seems to be crumbling at our feet?”
This is the sort of contempt for history that I usually hear from pro-war types, who desperately want everyone to stop mentioning who wanted to invade which country and just move on so people don’t waste time with the “blame game” and actually learn from history.
Who did what and to what degree is relevant because it’s important to remember that, contrary to what many on the left seem to believe, George W. Bush is not a uniquely wicked figure who somehow invented the idea of violating civil liberties himself and then got it into law without any sort of past precedent to justify it. Hell, I’ve seen conservative columnists explicitly cite Lincoln’s attacks on civil liberties in the Union to justify Bush’s actions. And if Lincoln really was the plaster saint most people seem to think he is, why shouldn’t they?
Bush is the natural culmination of accumulated precedents combined with the current crisis mood in America. Don’t like Bush? Then you shouldn’t like the precedents that made him possible. This is a somewhat uncomfortable subject for many of Bush’s detractors, since so many links in the chain were forged by liberal icons like Wilson and Roosevelt. Much like the law enforcement horror stories Balko documents, the problem cannot be solved by throwing out one or two bad apples, because the system itself is sick and laden with bad precedents from the past. To ignore the precedents and how they built up is to act as if the problem IS just a few bad apples, which ensures that the underlying system will be allowed to continue unchanged. In that case, throwing out Bush will have the same effect as having one misbehaving cop put on “administrative leave,” mouthing the usual platitudes about how the vast the majority of police are heroes, and then forgetting the issue.
Roy,
In 8 months the eeeevil George Bush will be gone and you will have Barack Obama or John McCain to deal with.
I’ll breath a sigh of relief once a new president is sworn in. A few months back I heard someone from the administration say that, since al-Qaeda has attempted to disrupt elections in the past, it would only be prudent for the administration to have a contingency plan in place so the US would not be without a president.
I’m a big believer in contingency plans, so I was happy for about three seconds. Then what she said sank in, and I wasn’t happy any more.
Besides, like Radley said, it doesn’t matter who the president is. Look over the list of past presidents and possible future presidents. If there’s anyone on that list you wouldn’t trust with this power, you should oppose it.
1) Democracies are EVIL. It’s simply a numbers game, and you win or lose. Do we want your property? We get it because we voted 3-1 in favor of taking your property. Same reasoning goes for everything. This is NO protection for the individual. To learn more, watch the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTQQJOEn9yI
2) The executive branch can be held in check, as designed by the founders of this country, by the Legislative and Judicial branches. When they don’t do their job, then we get the problems we’ve been having for over a century.
3) Who did what and when is relevant. If you don’t learn from history, and if every generation keeps thinking their problems are unique, then we are truly doomed.
4) It doesn’t matter what party is “in control”. Neither of them is the one in control, and neither of them does anything different. They both make things worse, and in my opinion are achieving different pieces of the end goals, sometimes with the same means. Just open your eyes, think about what is going on with economics, foreign policy, and education (for starters) and you might begin to see grave problems.
5) Unplug yourself from The Matrix and wake up. No government is ever benevolent. Government is supposedly by the consent of the governed, therefore you and I are the government, NOT Senator X or Representative Y. They are supposed to be doing the work of The People, and bound by The Constitution. This not being the case, you should be mad as hell and do something about it. Sitting back and saying “what can I do, it will always be the same” is equivalent to accepting your role as an economic slave.
[...] http://www.theagitator.com/2008/05/24/habeas-schmabeas/ [...]
“Democracies are EVIL. It’s simply a numbers game, and you win or lose. Do we want your property? We get it because we voted 3-1 in favor of taking your property.”
Lee, if democracy is so evil, what do you say you draft up a new form of government and enlighten us as to what wouldn’t be, in your opinion, “evil”.
Take a look around you…..with ALL of it’s flaws, what we have, as defined in the Constitution, is better than what’s available to any other country in the world.
The USA was founded as a Constitutional Republic, *NOT* a democracy. My statements stand …
Mark, fallacious arguments and assumptions will not win the day.
You say Lincoln, I say founding fathers, King George, The Magna Carta, the Romans, the Greeks……….blah blah blah. It’s all one big academic mental masturbation circle jerk. WHEN the problem is FIXED we can all agree to meet back here and flail away at our prodigious members until the last drop of seed has hit the floor. Deal?
Until then, how about we all work on a solution? Failing that, we might as well start tuning our fiddles.
[...] via The Agitator [...]
I understand the hand wringing but we might be getting just a little overwrought. The headline to the story sums up the question pretty well: “Does Constitution apply to enemy combatant on U.S. soil?”. Personally, I don’t think it should but there are good arguments to be made for the opposing view.
The fact that it has happened a grand total of ONE time to a man (non-citizen) where there doesn’t seem to be much of a question of his terrorist connections (I know that’s “Fear Mongering!” to some) or intent makes this a little difficult to get all worked up over. I’m much more concerned with low level city/state bureaucrats locking up american citizens for years while they await trial on minor drug charges. How about we take better care of our own citizen criminals before we start worrying about the treatment of terrorists caught on american soil.
Maybe I should make a clarification. I think the president can declare this bastard, as a non-citizen, an “enemy combatant” and have him snatched up and hung for all I care. I do disagree with the idea that they have the power to do the same thing to an actual american citizen but I guess we’ll have to wait for the courts to make that decision. I’d bet there is no way they’ll allow it but then I thought the same thing about McCain-Feingold.
[...] The Agitator » Blog Archive » Habeas, Schmabeas If the president gets these powers, it’s the end, gang. The writ of habeas corpus is 400 years old. The Bush administration is, rather incredibly, arguing that the “commander in chief” power of the U.S. Constitution authorizes them to vaporize it. [...]
GWB- WORST PRESIDENT EVER
Lee, since pure democracy doesn’t exist anywhere, and arguably never has, you’re just presenting a red herring argument. By your reasoning, a Constitutional Republic could be just as evil, depending on what that constitution says.
[...] Attack Ad Over at the Agitator, when he isn’t worrying about the tiny matter of the President now having the power to send the military into a US suburb, abduct a U.S. citizen, and det…, Randy Balko is a pretty funny guy. In this case, he’s identified one of the silliest [...]
I wonder what the GW Bush liberty meter would look like these days?
I think that everyone has forgotten what the Constitution is. It is a set of rules for the US government. Where ever that government is, it operates under the Constitution. If Gitmo is under US control, the government is bound by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The only places I see citizenship as a factor is in the requirements for high office. Otherwise, it’s all “the right of the people”, and “Congress shall make no law.” Nowhere in there do I see “except for the outsiders.”
So, to answer the question: Yes, the Constitution applies, to the Government, wherever it is, no matter whose rights are being abused today.
But but, if he wasn’t guilty, then WHY would he be a suspect?
Forget it folks, republican democracy is dead, yet the stinking corpse keeps a-shamblin’ on.
Can we try anarchy now, or at least declare a Sacred Spunk and go back to divine right of kings? At least then, everyone would know where power “comes” from.
I’m thinking there has to be somewhere I can move that is a democracy, and not influenced greatly by the US, but I cannot think where. Maybe Sweden; granted they are socialists, but I would much rather live in a free socialist country then the dictatorial mercantile one America is becoming. Is Switzerland still a real democracy?
Costa Rica has no standing army.
…contrary to what many on the left seem to believe, George W. Bush is not a uniquely wicked figure…
Thank god someone else says the same thing. The only difference between Bush, LBJ, FDR, Lincoln is that he is *our* wicked figure.
…contrary to what many on the left seem to believe, George W. Bush is not a uniquely wicked figure who somehow invented the idea of violating civil liberties himself and then got it into law without any sort of past precedent to justify it.
Actually, he has claimed powers that had no prior precedent. The very scary thing is that he has set precedent for future presidents to claim these and other powers.
I’d probably agree with you that there’s nothing “uniquely wicked” about Bush. He’s more of a dupe. Cheney, on the other hand….
like everyone else alive at the time, jeff, i suffered greatly through the carter years.
go sell that “worst president ever” bullshit somewhere else.
Carter sucked all right, but at least he didn’t shred the Constitution. How you can compare Carter’s general stupidity with Bush/Cheney’s pure contempt for everything our country was founded on is beyond me.
Enough talk. Let’s get a revolution started.
Enough talk. Let’s get a revolution started.
I’ll bring the cheese dip!
[...] “legal” basis for these events has already occurred here, however. People are already being disappeared. Maybe the people who never make it back out again [...]
Just like FDR, Wilson, Lincoln, hell, Jefferson before him. They all claimed some powers that no else had claimed and also used past presidents as precedent for other powers. Which is exactly what you are arguing against.
GWB is not the “worst president ever”. He is by no means the best, but hyperbole just makes you look ridiculous and waters down the real message.
Uhhh… Tokin42. Jose Padilla was an American Citizen. So it has happened to an American Citizen. He was declared an enemy combatant. He was captured on U.S. Soil. He was basically disappeared until such time that his detention was forced through the court system (with the fact it was even allowed there fought every step of the way). He was tortured and detained incommunicado from human interaction to the point of mentally unbalancing him. The list goes on.
Luckily Padilla has bronwish skin so people can keep there heads in the sand, plus he may have been collaborating with the bad guys so he gets what he deserves.
Rights have to protect everyone or they protect no one.
Seems to me that an “enemy combatant” should actually be engaged in some sort of combat to really qualify for the title. Enemy combatants are people with guns engaging in, well combat, with the US. Not people who we think might do something bad sometime in the future.
It is amazing what these people manage to accomplish by the clever use of provocative words. Start talking about the “war on terrorism” (or more ridiculously “war on terror”) and people actually believe that it is a real war. It is not. You cannot have a war on terrorism. Terrorism is a tactic used by desperate people. It always has been available and always will. It is like the “war on drugs”. The “war” part is supposed to be figurative, but people bought into it and think it is a real war. Hence the ridiculous, ilegal tactics allowed in both of these non-wars.
Why that is just un-patriotic nonsense. You need to drink deep fo the Powerline, Red State, Little Green Footballs kool-aid. Only once you have become one with the Body will you understand how subversive your views are.
Sheesh.
[...] the last few days Ed Brayton and Radley Balko have both covered a remarkable new argument justifying expanded executive power. Here’s the [...]