Sunday, May 28, 2006
Paranoia Strikes Deep
I'm reproducing another blog site posting (Tom Elia at The New Editor) in its entirety because there is no way to improve on it.
"People Who Don't Understand How America Works"
Andrew Sullivan has this for his "Quote for the Day":
"That's how this group of Bush followers thinks America is supposed to work. If you are a U.S. citizen, the President can unilaterally order you abducted and imprisoned; does not have to charge you with any crime; can block you from speaking with anyone, including a lawyer; can keep you incarcerated indefinitely (meaning forever); and can deny you the right to any judicial review of your imprisonment or any mechanism for challenging the accuracy of the accusations. And oh - while it would be nice if we could preserve all of that abstract lawyer nonsense about the right to a jury trial and all that, we're really scared that Al Qaeda is going to kill us, so we can't," - Glenn Greenwald, on his blog yesterday.
When I read stuff like this, I have just one question: How many American citizens have been detained in the manner described by Greenwald?
I believe the number so far is two -- Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan and subsequently released and flown to Saudi Arabia.
For comparison purposes: the Adams Administration jailed about 100 American citizens under the Alien and Sedition Acts; the Lincoln Administration jailed over 15,000 when it suspended the writ of habeas corpus; the Wilson and Harding Administrations jailed somewhere between 1,000-2,000 in the Palmer raids; and the Roosevelt Administration incarcerated over 100,000 Americans when it put Japanese Americans in detention camps.
Some historical perspective would be nice.
UPDATE: OK, maybe there is a little more to say. This is not that hard. We should imprison and interrogate all those fighting against us whom we capture and not reveal they are captured and not allow any communication from the captured, because taking those steps is the best way to fight the sort of war that has been waged against us for the past couple of decades. I believe there are grade school children who can see the wisdom of that course of action.
It's not a criminal matter (as the Clinton Administration nearly exclusively considered it--and I hope the Bush Administration only experimented with) and there should be no lawyers, nor charges, and only military due process for those who have declared and are fighting a Jihad, a Holy (to them) war against us. We stray from these principals at our peril.
Oh yea, Padilla has been charged, has a lawyer and will face trial just as Moussaoui did. So now the number of Americans being held in a scary way is down to, well, zero.
But by all means let's talk about the scope of the duties of the Executive Office and the inherent powers of the Commander in Chief.
And for anyone thinking, well, Hamdi and Padilla are the Americans we know about, I have some slightly used tinfoil and instructions for constructing your hat.
"People Who Don't Understand How America Works"
Andrew Sullivan has this for his "Quote for the Day":
"That's how this group of Bush followers thinks America is supposed to work. If you are a U.S. citizen, the President can unilaterally order you abducted and imprisoned; does not have to charge you with any crime; can block you from speaking with anyone, including a lawyer; can keep you incarcerated indefinitely (meaning forever); and can deny you the right to any judicial review of your imprisonment or any mechanism for challenging the accuracy of the accusations. And oh - while it would be nice if we could preserve all of that abstract lawyer nonsense about the right to a jury trial and all that, we're really scared that Al Qaeda is going to kill us, so we can't," - Glenn Greenwald, on his blog yesterday.
When I read stuff like this, I have just one question: How many American citizens have been detained in the manner described by Greenwald?
I believe the number so far is two -- Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured on a battlefield in Afghanistan and subsequently released and flown to Saudi Arabia.
For comparison purposes: the Adams Administration jailed about 100 American citizens under the Alien and Sedition Acts; the Lincoln Administration jailed over 15,000 when it suspended the writ of habeas corpus; the Wilson and Harding Administrations jailed somewhere between 1,000-2,000 in the Palmer raids; and the Roosevelt Administration incarcerated over 100,000 Americans when it put Japanese Americans in detention camps.
Some historical perspective would be nice.
UPDATE: OK, maybe there is a little more to say. This is not that hard. We should imprison and interrogate all those fighting against us whom we capture and not reveal they are captured and not allow any communication from the captured, because taking those steps is the best way to fight the sort of war that has been waged against us for the past couple of decades. I believe there are grade school children who can see the wisdom of that course of action.
It's not a criminal matter (as the Clinton Administration nearly exclusively considered it--and I hope the Bush Administration only experimented with) and there should be no lawyers, nor charges, and only military due process for those who have declared and are fighting a Jihad, a Holy (to them) war against us. We stray from these principals at our peril.
Oh yea, Padilla has been charged, has a lawyer and will face trial just as Moussaoui did. So now the number of Americans being held in a scary way is down to, well, zero.
But by all means let's talk about the scope of the duties of the Executive Office and the inherent powers of the Commander in Chief.
And for anyone thinking, well, Hamdi and Padilla are the Americans we know about, I have some slightly used tinfoil and instructions for constructing your hat.
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 11:54 AM 
