28 September 06
Paging the Ghost of George Washington
The United States is now officially a tyranny. You might not have heard—at least our local rag had no mention of the final debate—but the Senate today passed the torture and detention bill (or whatever it was officially called) 65-34. The torture bit is horrible enough, but the suspension of habeas corpus rights is the real kicker. Congress has just given the President the right to detain anyone anywhere indefinitely without any right to judicial oversight or trial by jury if they are an ‘unlawful enemy combatant’. And who gets to decide who is an unlawful enemy combatant? That’s right—the executive branch. It doesn’t matter if you’re a U.S. citizen or not. And if Bush were to declare that some group—let’s say left-wing bloggers—were in fact ‘enemy combatants’ , oops, into the gulags they go.
Glenn Greenwald sums up today’s cravenness perhaps best of all:
During the debate on his amendment, Arlen Specter said that the bill sends us back 900 years because it denies habeas corpus rights and allows the President to detain people indefinitely. He also said the bill violates core Constitutional protections. Then he voted for it.
The bill is probably quite unconstitutional, even to the eyes of today’s Supreme Court, but why will it ever see review? If you’ve been disappeared, how are you ever going to bring the case forward in the courts?
Didn’t we once fight a revolution against such tyranny? To quote Thomas Jefferson (thanks again, Glenn Greenwald): “I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”
There’s not a whole lot of checks and balances left in the system. Unless of course the ghost of George Washington himself were to summon the spectres of the soldiers at Valley Forge to a march on the Capitol to rout this adminstration and their despicable enabling crony congresscritters from the nation, in a scene straight out of Lord of the Rings.
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We not only fought a revolution against such tyranny; we fought that revolution against a nation of people who had fought a revolution against such tyranny— that’s what the Magna Carta was, a revolution.
I suppose I should derive some sort of calming perspective from that thought, but somehow it’s like trying to console oneself with the thought that death is universal, when someone one loves dies. It’s true but it doesn’t stop hurting.
What has so unutterably, deeply infuriated me about the U.S. in the last five years is the sense that proclamations by the American government seem to be expected to be obeyed by all and sundry everywhere else in the world, that somehow only being an American citizen carries any legitimacy in the whole world, even in my own country, and that no one but Americans are allowed to criticize and campaign against bad American policy and deeds. This I cannot and will not accept. I see myself as equal to Americans and to have the same basic human rights. No American, or any other person, is going to tell me that I cannot enjoy those rights.
Bush has vilified the anger of the world and created not just a tyranny, but an abomination (honestly! no pun intended!). It is a cliche now, but this is exactly the same way that Germany descended into madness before the War.
What I was originally going to say was that perhaps it’s time to lay George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln into their graves and stop always glorifying them as if they were saints. It’s time to look at the modern world with its modern problems and figure things out for yourself. It’s too easy to always bring up the iconic ghosts of the Forefathers and relegate all responsiblity for how your society should work on idealistic proclamations made by people who never knew the complexities of the huge nations we have now. Their ideas are important for getting the debates started, and for laying out the philosophy behind the structure of society, but the constitution has frozen in time. The whole government system of America is a fossil that needs serious revamping and revitalization. I mean, how can you run a truly democratic modern government with just two parties in power? People need to sit down and THINK. Where must America, and indeed the whole world, go from here?
Funny how that take on the Constitution’s needing revision sounds familiar lately. You do know that two-parties-in-power has nothing to do with the US Constitution, don’t you? In fact, it hasn’t always been the case in US history, and those parties as they are now don’t have much in common with the parties of a century ago except for their names.
”... relegate all responsiblity for how your society should work on idealistic proclamations made by people who never knew the complexities of the huge nations we have now…”
What parts of habeas corpus and the ban on torture, which is what this furor is about, are outmoded because of the “complexities of the huge nations we have now”?
A very big part of the problem, I believe, stems from a proclivity among so many Americans to only think within the bounds of their country. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that actions and rules they make extend to what happens in other places. A lot of the Americans who go along with Bush seem to think that the Constitution’s “All men are created equal” stops at the border and that it doesn’t matter what happens to these other people as long as Americans themselves are always safe and protected. So when I say “the complexities of the huge nations we have now” I am talking about the global mutual interdependence of societies that we have today. I believe the US constitution, as almost all societies’ constitutions, is outmoded because it still thinks in terms of a nation-state, blind to cross-border realities. It is time to revise constitutions to recognize the rights of all people all over the world, no matter which society they hail from. Bush’s doctrines go a long way toward isolating America from and threatening the rest of world.
http://www.counterpunch.org/sullivan0617.html
My ancient software won’t let me make links in replies here, so you’ll have to cut-n-paste. Anyway, for the record, there it is.
When I came home I was diagnosed with PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, I was told that I am sick that I am not Right. Then I turned on the TV and I see Dick Durbin saying American soldiers are committing acts of torture at places like Abu Grab and Quantico because they had a Al Qaeda terrorist who saws civilians heads off with their hands tied behind their backs, Al Qaeda terrorist who place bombs on three year old children, Al Qaeda terrorist who came in our country when we were at peace and murdered over two thousand American civilians, and they had these terrorist standing on a bar stool with a dunce cap on their head and that’s Torture! Why in the hell didn’t he say a damned thing about Matt Maupin, Shoshana Johnson, Edgar Hernandez, James Riley, Patric Miller, Joseph Hudson, Jacob N. Fritz, Johnathan B. Chism, Shawn P. Falter, Johnathon M. Millican, or any of the other American soldiers who have been captured during this war! Private Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Private Thomas Tucker of Oregon were captured by terrorists in Iraq , hacked to death, their eyes gouged, their bodies defiled.
In fact it was the American soldiers who have died including all those who have been captured in this war (and I haven’t seen seen any enemy POW camps but I’ve seen a shit load of bodies that have been tortured to death by these scum that Dick Durbin is defending!) that give Dick Durbin the FREEDOM to call them terrorist for putting some Al-Qaida dirt bag on a bar stool with pajamas and a dunce cap! I might have PTSD but I’m not the one who is sick it’s DICK DURBIN! Are you Really an AMERICAN DICK?If it were up to me before any politician could take office they would be given a polygraph and asked one question. Do you love America enough to die for her?