Year One of the Empire
Bush: Resistance is Illogical
Bush and a supine, cowardly Congress shredded the US Constitution on Tuesday, abolishing the right of a court review (habeas corpus) for some classes of suspect. Suspect, mind you, not proven criminal.
In other words, we have to be confident that George W. Bush is so competent, all-knowing, and inherently just that we can just trust him. If he says someone is an enemy combatant, then he or she is. No need to check with a judge about why he or she is being held. And then Bush can have the suspect tortured to make him confess, and can convict him on the basis of the coerced confession, all in secret.
This law creates two classes of persons inside the United States, citizens with rights and non-citizens (12 million persons? Equivalent to the entire state of Michigan!) without rights.
Basically, Bush can issue them what the French kings used to call lettres de cachet.:
' In French history, lettres de cachet were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal, or cachet. They contained orders directly from the king, often to enforce arbitrary actions and judgements that could not be appealed. . .'
We Americans made a revolution against such arbitrary practices of the French and other Empires.
Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution says, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
I look out my window. I don't see a general Rebellion or an invasion by a foreign power. The conditions, under which the right of the imprisoned to demand that a court establish whether there are genuine grounds to hold him is suspended, are absent.
The law is unconstitutional.
Moreover, our founding documents did not admit of a distinction among human beings with regard to rights. The Declaration of Independence says:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
All men here means all human beings. It says they are all created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. All of them. Not some of them.
Of course we have had these periods of neo-Monarchy and temporary insanity before in our history. There was the Alien and Sedition Act, and the Red Scare after World War I, etc.
King George came on O'Reilly and said that it is "illogical" to disagree with his policies in Iraq and branded arguments that he is drifting along without a plan "propaganda."
Bush sounds more and more like the Borg every day. I swear to God, next we are going to get up in the morning and hear him proclaim, "Resistance is futile!"
So of course eventually Bush-think will lead to attempts to cure those of us who are critical of him of our illogicality, and to suppress our "propaganda." We'll all be right-thinking non-propagandists after a little water-boarding. You say we don't have to worry about that because we are citizens? But what is to stop Bush from declaring you an enemy combatant and stripping you of your citizenship? And then keeping you away from any civil court where those letters of cachet can be challenged?
The Republic is Dead, Long Live the Republic.
You want a resurrection of the Republic?
Join the American Civil Liberties Union and send it lots of money.
posted by Juan Cole @ 10/18/2006 06:30:00 AM
Click to join Infoco
28 Comments:
Congratulations, Professor Cole,
You are the first pundit I've read (and I've read quite a few) who FINALLY noticed how un-American it is to deny basic inalienable rights to people based on their lack of American citizenship. A REAL American wants to protect every person in the entire world's inalienable rights. Just like our founding fathers and the philosophers on which they based their actions did. But, let us remember, the reason they created the bill of rights in the first place is because they knew that the vast majority of the population would be simply patriotic (read tribalistic), without understanding these philosophies. So they set up checks and balances. Now it's for the Supreme Court to check and balance the philosophic ineptitude of the Bush administration and the cowardliness of Congress. We'll see what happens.
Dear Professor Cole
You might like this reference to some information on the suspension of Habeas Corpus in other jurisdictions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_(HM_Prison)
The Iranians called a street after Bobby Sands when he died on hunger strike.
Of course Beria didn't have to worry about such quaint concepts either.
This Jefferson chap who wrote the constitution must have had a remarkably wide understanding of the foibles of human nature.
The interesting problem for us peons who are not US citizens is the application of the principle of extraterritoriality. Thus the FBI or CIA can go after anyone anywhere, grab him, and now once they have got him, that's it.
Republican'ts
Once again we see the Buscists exercising their prerogative to enforce laws and restrictions on Americans, those supporting and defending the Constitution as well as nominally those who use the United States to further their greedy grimey grimness through the advocation of totalitarian laws. The irony of the whole argument is that the events in Iraq have given rise to increased tewwowism for which those who advanced the cause for the invasion, liberation, occupation, and colonisation are themselves guilty of having contributed to the rise and success of the tewwowists, something for which they should be charged under the same laws and caused to endure the same aggressive interrogation methods as anyone else. Perhaps there can be found at Abu Ghraib some who will accept the outsourcing to wrest information from those who, as aligned with the Buscists, will need to be encouraged to divulge information, forced to confess to whatever, whether they had a hand in it or not.
When we look back at things like Lettres de Cachet and the subsequent demise of the French royal entities, we might conclude that there is an effort afoot to do the "smoking out" of those who might oppose the empowered, to the point of being convinced that it is better for them to comply with the demands of the government rather than continue to resist. History has a way of changing quite dramatically, with the storming of the Bastille and the later events experienced in France attesting to how violently damaging things can become, especially for those whose presumed superiority causes them to step beyond their bounds and lose their heads.
There are many similarities between France and the United States, first among them was the throwing off of the yoke of the monarchies at about the same time. As France was a limited country and society, the easier means encountered by the Americans when sorting out their differences was not possible in Europe, especially as comparatively small each country is. France also had a flirtation in the interWorld War years with right wingy thinking, with the restoration of the monarchy considered seriously by some inasmuch as that would free the average citizen from hving to be burdened with the affairs of government. As we know, the results of the Second European Civil War did not bode well for the future of autocracies.
The overtones of overcrowded and overburdened citizens to overreact should not be overunderestimated. Overthrowing a smugly entrenched government is not impossible nor improbable. The reliance on the soldiers to perform their duties becomes open to interpretation, wherein one that must find some measure of balance, a decision as to just who the domestic enemies are against whom they have sworn to defend the country. If indeed the new law is unConstitutional, having sworn to uphold that sacred document must take precedence overall. The ability to determine the legitimacy and legality of orders is not lost on those whose lives are governed by honour, dignity, and integrity. Hoodwinking the military into complicity against the Constitution is dicey at best.
Losing the ability to be tried according to the Constitution is something that will endanger everyone in the United States and in places under its governance. As American citizens are equally liable to be branded as "illegal enemy combatants," those who disagree philisophically or politically might easily be given their "Yale farternity cigarette burns" but with something even more severe. The notion of government-operated holding pens, camps, or prisons for those who need to be silenced has been around for quite some time, with FEMA and other private corporations having made plans for confinement of just such a body of people. Private concerns are more easily hidden from the prying eyes of the government functionaries.
As we've seen in the past weeks, those who have expressed disagreement (citizens, media, politicians, real Americans) with the present policies are seen by some camps as enabling the "others," the adversaries, the foes. There is a great distinction between dissent and treason, once again the determination needing to be made just as to who is (doing) what. We might conclude that dissenting from laws passed by the Congress in the form of "signing statements" is illegal, that undermining the role of two of the three coequal bodies of government constitutes actions against the Constitution itself. The need for such draconian measures demonstrates not strength and resolve but weakness and insecurity as is evident by the constant redoubling of efforts to secure and retain power and control, those things that did not exist in the first place.
We can see the Buscist regime as one that has had as its primary focus the testing of every segment of American society, to probe its soft spots and to chip away at its harder ones. With the blasé* responses to threats of tewwowist attacks and hurricanes, the effects are undoubtedly gauged and analysed for their impact on the effectiveness of the government. The events are nothing but experiments in some devious political scientists' laboratories. While these two events were locally devastating, the intent has had to include seeing just how much damage occurred not to the administration but to the people prone to come crawling, suppine, to it for assistance and aid. Both New York City and New Orleans have to be evaluated in terms of their political importance to the Republican'ts, then a determination is needed to see if pre- and post-event actions has anything to do with the nonchalance of the response. Comparisons to what was done for Florida will be instructive.
The breaking down of long-established societal barriers (church-state, pre-emptive conflicts, voting irregularities, tax preferences, et cetera) is one way of shaping a country's destiny according to the whim and will of those who will most benefit. This is nothing new, in fact, old as discussed at length and in depth in (e.g.) *Imperialism* (JA Hobson). The sign of ineffective management is the inablity to properly coordinate with lateral and subordinate organisations, resulting in failures for which the leadership has to be held responsible, declining rational and competent advice, relying on the imposition of needless rules, regulations, and laws in order to wrest power from everyone, concentrating it in a micromanaging form of controlling.
Thus, the only entity that can solve the problems is the one that is ignorantly or intentionally causing it. "Stay the course" is one example of this kind of irrationale, unwilling to delegate or share authority or responsibility with anyone else, whether in on 10th September 2001, in Iraq, or before Katrina. Consequently, the "make or break" mentality is confined to the grip of the greedy, grimey, grim grinches who will go about their business to spoil everything for everyone, if only because they have felt things to be spoiled for them. This is, of course, also the old "bat and ball" syndrome, wherein if the whining one who owns the implements is not winning, then everyone suffers. The one kiddie feels contentedly justified if only because he got to hurt more than one person's feelings and remains rigid to any appeals to moderation or alleviation of the disputes. No one wins because the resources are not shared and the object of playing a game (i.e., sportsmanship)is lost on all sides, therefore.
Even so, the spoil-sport is the one who will ultimately suffer due to isolation and condemnation by any and all who might have been inclined to be friendly or helpful. Not being able to accommodate others can become a liablity in and of itself in that compensations are never practiced and not learned. It is bad enough when the other neighbouring kids are alienated but when one pisses off one's own natural allies, well, we wind up with a bunch of resentful and bitter Buscist-types who still are playing that old sandlot game, intent on forever trying to best those who, long ago, had been seen as adversaries, still learning nothing from the immature attitudes and experiences.
*blasé
ADJECTIVE: 1. Uninterested because of frequent exposure or indulgence. 2. Unconcerned; nonchalant: had a blasé attitude about housecleaning. 3. Very sophisticated.
ETYMOLOGY: French, from past participle of blaser, to cloy, from French dialectal, to be chronically hung over, probably from Middle Dutch blsen, to blow up, swell.
"This law creates two classes of persons inside the United States, citizens with rights and non-citizens...without rights."
Actually it's more like "citizens who may or may not have rights depending on how Bush feels like defining 'enemy combatant' from one day to the next, and non-citizens without rights." Bush keeps control of the definitions, which means he can theoretically choose to interpret anti-war protesting as aid to terrorists if he wants, yanking American citizenship away from Quakers and old people and dropping them into some black hole till the kangaroo courts convene.
Given his history of respect for the Constitution, do you doubt he's capable of it?
also the center for constitutional right (CCR) deserves our support:
http://www.ccr-ny.org/
"Characterizing the new law as "an assault on the Constitution," CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren said, "By trading our liberty for a false sense of security, Congress has effectively granted the President the power of tyrants to undermine the foundations of Democracy." He added, "CCR intends to challenge this outrage at every turn, using every tool at our disposal, until we reverse this affront to the rule of law."
Further, Warren pointed out that under this administration's lawless programs, innocent people like CCR client rendition victim Maher Arar-who was recently cleared of any links to terrorism-can be jailed and tortured with no recourse.
CCR has already filed the first new cases to challenge the stripping of habeas corpus: Mohammed v. Rumsfeld, a habeas petition on behalf of 25 men detained at Bagram Air Force Base; and Khan v. Bush, a habeas petition on behalf of Majid Khan, a Baltimore man held in secret by the CIA for nearly three years until President Bush transferred him to Guantánamo in early September. Both cases are in the D.C. District Court."
http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=b5stDu9ZOb&Content=871
Amen
While Bush was making his declaration, I was watching the faces of the men standing behind him. The one who looked the most profoundly disturbed was General Pace. He knows what the suspension of human rights would mean for his Marines if they were captured in other countries. Now he is looking on as this same atrocity has been applied to the entire country. Even people who "support" "terrorist" groups could become desaparecidos. Since anti-war groups are being increasingly spied upon by intelligence operatives, anyone who disapproves of anything Bush does could vanish forever.
When Pace first took on the job as Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I was amazed at how boyish and almost naive he looked, so eager to serve, so awed by the honor, like Oliver North defending his president during the Iran-Contra affair. Now Pace looks sad, weary, frightened and depressed - with good reason.
Bush will stop at nothing to elevate his sorry-ass fiasco in Iraquagmire to the status of a war for national security. There is literally nothing he will not sacrifice to save his ass.
As he has said,
"You never know what your history is going to be like until long after you're gone."
There is nothing he will not arrest, torture, invade, bomb, pervert, fabricate, classify or misrepresent to delay that reckoning with history.
Habeas corpus is only the recent victim. What's next?
citizens can be declared "enemy combatants" and then they have no rights either....
see you in Guantanemo....
Maybe you can shed some light on the international aspects and implications of this Bill. What could be the impact regarding the extradition and rendition of terror suspects wanted by the US from say European countries. Copied from Wikipedia: "Countries with a rule of law typically make extradition subject to review by that country's courts. These courts may impose certain restrictions on extradition, or prevent it altogether, if for instance they deem the accusations to be based on dubious evidence, or evidence obtained from torture, or if they believe that the defendant will not be granted a fair trial on arrival, or will be subject to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment if extradited."
I haven't seen this mentioned anywhere when this Bill went through Congress.
..
Three boobs go into the local democratic campaign headquarters, and ask to see Bill Clinton .....
..
Hey Juan, how have you been?
So, Bush is no different from the communists is saying we need to be "re-educated"--meaning reindoctrinated to obey the dicta.
In "The Gulag Archipelago," Solzhenitsyn makes clear the point that it's better to be alive in the Gulag then shot dead in the inner courtyard of the Lubyanka. As bad as the prison labor system of the USSR was--the Gulag--it fit within the larger scope of Russian history and could thus be known and rationalized. On the other hand, it's clear that Cheney/Bush actions are beyond the scope of US history [although not too far for those who know true US history], which provides a large base for their resistance and demise. I would note that there was a very dark period regarding civil rights at the beginning of WW2 involving the criminalization of a particular segment of the populace [not just Japanese]. In response, the reknowned historian Charles Beard wrote what I think is his best work: The Republic; and the issues it addresses are no different from those we now face. The only difference is that the populace is now far more atomized and indoctrinated and thus easier to manipulate.
Many in the "Indymedia world" had Cheney/Bush marked as Borg very early on. Their mantra was: Resistence is mandatory.
Bush has been able to do this because this is what the American people want, and unfortunately it's inherent in what we've been from the beginning.
For millions of people, the United States was at its inception a tight little police state in which large classes of people were subject to arbitrary flogging and torture and to being torn from their families and sold away like cattle. And this is genuinely overlooked by Americans, who thereby testify that this condition was normal and acceptable - a small blemish perhaps. Moreover, the imperial expansion that began immediately was largely fueled by the war against freedom at home, notably the two Seminole wars and the Mexican wars, which were all fought to defend and extend slavery.
Bush would not be able to do this, with approval ratings in the 30s, and
the Congress would not happily go along, and the Republicans would not have gotten a boost in the polls as a result, if this were not the desire of the American people, not Bush.
Expansion and world domination are
an American cultural imperative going back 400 years. The world needs to understand the nature of the insatiable empire that it faces, and so do we. We're deluding ourselves
if we blame Bush so we can hide from ourselves. People can't come to their
senses while they can't reckon with
who they really are and what they really do.
That Bush can behave this way in such a weak position reveals us to ourselves. We'd better quit kidding ourselves, and the rest of the world needs to understand it too.
Am I paranoid, or should we be expecting outspoken political foes of the President (academics, journalists, politicians) to start 'disappearing' mysteriously in the middle of the night?
Not that the President needs to make excuses anymore, but certainly the standard justification could be that dissent is traitorous and any criticism of the executive is tantamount to an attack on the nation.
Is it cynical to believe that most American's wouldn't notice or even care?
To quote from another sci-fi classic:
"Fear is the mind killer, Fear is the little death...."
Fear led to this moment. Fear, and not "moral values" led to 51% of the population to vote for George W. Bush. And Fear is what leads to silence by some and encouragment by others (yeah, I'm talking to you O'Reilly!).
That is all....
Abu Ghraib stands at the epitome of what America has become. It is nothing but silence that prevents the persecution of those ultimately responsible, as it is silence that allows it to continue to this very day. And it will be silence that will permit America to lose its founding principles, and founder on the rocks of militarism and authoritarianism.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't think the bill made a distinction between citizens and non-citizens. In other words, Bush or a panel he appoints, could declare anyone, citizen or not, an unlawful enemy combatant and lock him or her away forever with no recourse and no due process.
A sad sad day indeed.
This seems fairly surreal to me. I am having trouble processing the facts. It is so over the top that I think there must more going on than meets the eye. Something smells fishy. Since the bill seems so clearly unconstitutional, and since there really is no pressing need for anything of the kind anyway, why have they decided to sign it into law? They are NOT that stupid. Will the law actually stand up when challenged in court? Perhaps there is some sort of political grandstanding or other angle to this. Could the sponsors be expecting the bill to be blocked, and hoping to use this as some sort red herring battle against activist judges? I am grasping at straws here I know, but the whole thing doesn't add up.
From the New York Times, January 17, 2009:
President Bush today said that critics of his Clean The Streets campaign were "un-American" and "giving comfort to our enemies". He said it was important for Americans to "stay on message" and unite as one to achieve his newly declared goal of US Global Empire.
"Americans learned on October 13th last year just how determined and resolute our enemies are," said Mr Bush. "We now know that anti-American terrorists are not limited to one state, one region or even one culture. Nothing less than total global domination will give Americans back the basic freedoms we once took for granted."
President Bush defended a recent string of detentions for media commentators on the basis that their continued criticism of his decision last November to suspend elections was hurting America's image abroad and confusing citizens at home.
"It's got to the point where these people are living in a fantasy world," said Mr Bush. "But the perils we face are real. So I am forced to take action against these propagandists, to ensure that the American people understand the real threat that confronts us, so that we can - you know - stand united as one."
President Bush's comments were interrupted at one stage by a small band of protesters. Five men and three women were quickly arrested. Officials said they would be moved to the newly constructed Halliburton Homeland detention centres in New Jersey, where they will await processing...
Ok, Juan, I joined the ACLU; I should have done so long ago.
Well...
Even if the bush should be "All-wise", as those who voted for this obviously hope, the BIG problem is that the next president may not be as "enlightened"
These venal and corrupt politicians are willing to sell our Constitution just to get a few votes, but the ones who will pay the price will be our children and grandchildren.
Remember who is sitting on the Supreme Court. There really is no guarantee that they will srike the law down.
CUT and RUN ON FREEDOM: GOP'S NEW PLAN
I was upset, fearful and angry reading the recent NIE about the sad state of our international relations when I burst out laughing.
Jumping to mind was the neocon's perverted sales' pitch: "The terrorists hate us because they hate freedom."
What if that was true?
The GOP leadership we presently enjoy promotes secrecy, dishonesty, suspension of habeas corpus and other fundamental juridical rights; they promote wholesale wiretapping without warrants and suspending historical "Rules of War" agreements so that America can, on its whim, perform inhumane and degrading acts of torture on whomsoever we may choose to incarcerate.
One or two more stolen elections plus a new gaggle of lies from Dick, Condi et al and poof, our freedoms will be gone and the terrorists, seeing that their main reason to hate us has vanished, well, they'll just go back to berating womenfolk for racy clothing.
It's a plan, you'all. It's a plan.
"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism," said Colin Powell. "To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk."
Oscar-Winning Actor Vanessa Redgrave to Present International Human Rights Award to Extraordinary Rendition Survivor Maher Arar
Vanessa Redgrave details the case, legal now in the United States unless and until it is struck down by the Supreme Court, of charges being fabricated out of whole cloth, as Ronald Reagan used to like to say, against a man arbitrarily and of his subsequent imprisonment and torture through the agency of the United States of America.
Whilst today's signing was tragic, America has been doing this stuff to foreigners with impunity since the Phillipines 100 odd years ago.
Even now I hear the bleating of those who would deny the fact of the US's imperialistic ways, mostly only about the outrage that Americans are now subject to these laws.
The only real surprises of this admin. are how brazen they are and how utterly incompetent they have been yet still maintaining the confidence of a significant per centage of the voting public.
America has lost any respect it had in the world and until its people reexamine their role within that world with honesty, rather than an idealized goodness bubble (shining beacon my butt), they will not get it back.
Deal with it, and soon.
I am so distressed. Why aren't there riots in the streets??? Hell...how about actually hearing about it on the "news". Keith Olberman has been the only one to stand up and say somthing.
God help us all.
The next logical step for a tyrant would be to suspend general elections.
To do otherwise would simply be illogical.
Prof. Cole
Reading a recent post by Billmon (hat tip to you) I was reminded of this little speech by one General Smedley Butler:
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
First of all, the next stage is NOT to suspend elections. Even Sula and the Gracchi, the predecessors of Bush in United States's chosen "ancestor", the Roman Empire, did not immediately suspend elections. It takes time. Bush is only the Sula (or maybe Marius) of our times. Caesar and Augustus are on the way, and then of course Caligula!
But my dear American friends, do not worry. Nothing is to happen to you. This right was obtained to clean US and the world of the fealth of the Muslims. 700 years ago, the French lawyer Pierre Dubois advised Edward I and Philippe the Fair of doing what Bush is doing now. It took 700 years, but St. George Walker is going to achieve it, you shall see, thee of little faith!
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