5 posts tagged “constitution”
On Sunday I learn that the associate pastor at the church I'm attending went to the local "Festival of Lights" parade over the weekend and when the Marine Corps. marched by he started yelling, "Yeah! That's why we're free right there!"
This is an obvious, overstated canard about how it is the military that makes us free. It is the law that secures our liberty. It is the Constitution that restrains the military that keeps us free. How is it our country lasted over 160 years without a standing military? How is it that after the industrial military congressional complex took hold in the early 1950s we have been losing more and more liberties every year?
My second point is that, as a Christian, we look to Christ Jesus before all others as an example for our lives. His example was this: He forgave his enemies and died for them. So how do we, in our jingoistic fervor, do we feel we should use our military as a tool of vengeance and hate? How do we support the slaughtering of enemies for the benefit of self and of our loved ones?
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Benjamin Franklin
"You might however consider whether you should not unfold as a background the great privilege of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the English people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the Executive to cast a man in prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist." - Winston Churchill
Habeas corpus is removed for aliens (including permanent residents, not including nationalized or born citizens), but "unlawful enemy combatant" status can be applied arbitrarily to anyone. They will be tried through military commissions ... whenever they get around to it (because speedy trial is removed). If they take the detainee to a foreign country, they cannot apply for writ of habeas corpus in the States because then they can only appeal to the courts of the nation in which they're located. Interrogators are only held under the laws of the country the detainee is located in as it matters to torture, so in Syria they can torture you at will.
But don't take my word for it, read the text of the law.
It has already begun in some places, signed off by Donald Rumsfeld and in extension the commander-in-chief himself. There are even videos of boys being sodomized by US operatives in front of their parents.
(source: MSNBC)RUMSFELD: There are other photos that depict incidents of physical violence towards prisoners, acts that can only be described as blatantly sadistic, cruel, and inhuman.
MIKLASZEWSKI: U.S. military officials tell NBC News, the unreleased images, show American soldiers severely beating one Iraqi prisoner to near death; apparently, raping an Iraqi female prisoner; acting inappropriately with a dead body; and Iraqi guards apparently videotaped by U.S. soldiers raping young boys.
SEN. LINDSAY GRAHAM (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: We're talking about rape and murder here, we`re not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience, we`re talking about rape and murder and some very serious charges.
MIKLASZEWSKI: Senator Carl Levin raised questions about one photo which appeared to show the abuse of prisoners may not be random, but part of routine operations.
SEN. CARL LEVIN (D), MICHIGAN: That the conduct we were witnessing and watching was not aberrant conduct of a few individuals, but part of an organized and conscious process to extract information.
(see also: TOPDOG08.COM)
If all of this isn't shocking enough, the legislation passed this week regarding torture and the Geneva Convention retroactively gives the Bush administration immunity to war crimes from 2001-09-11 to present. Of course this became priority number one after the Supreme Court determined the Geneva Convention applies to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, along with all "illegal enemy combatants".
I remember back in 1994 when Rev. Jerry Falwell put out The Clinton Chronicles and I thought our country was coming to its despotic end. In the last three years it's been getting closer and closer still. The latest legislation gives the President sole discretion for defining what torture tactics are acceptable under Geneva Convention guidelines. Other legislation has been giving the executive branch extreme gains in power without having to answer to neither the judicial or legislative branches. Things don't seem to be headed in the right direction, to put it gently.
Last night, the Discovery Channel held a special by Ted Koppel called The Price of Security, which dealt with the questions around what has happened since 9/11 concerning security and civil and privacy rights. It was very informative, broke some misconceptions, and brought up some very important questions. The first ninety minutes was a documentary style about what had happened, and the second ninety minutes was a live forum discussion about the issues with people involved. If you have the opportunity to watch this, I think you probably should.
There were some important questions raised about how we're supposed to fight this Global War on Terror and preserve our American values and Constitution. However, I think the question that needs to be asked is, "Can we win a war on terror?" I don't think we can win a war on terror anymore than we can win a war against any ideology, and an example of this is the war on Marxism in South America. Terror is a nonentity. You cannot fight what is intangible with what is tangible. Because it is a nonentity, there are no defined enemies, there are no defined goals and objectives, there is no gauging success and failure. As a result, there is no winning this war. This isn't because we will lose, but because there is nothing to tell us when we can declare the war over. This is what I fear the most.
When the war never ends, the executive branch has expanded powers indefinitely. They can do whatever they want under the guise of fighting this war. They can (and have) take people off the street and detain them for as long as they want without ever having to explain why they were taken, or bring evidence against them. The executive branch of our government turns into the military branch, and we become a military power, not a civil power. The Constitution does not afford a military branch, and it frightens me to think we're moved in that direction. We're now looking at pax americana through expanded military presence in every part of the world.
