Life in the state of nature, said Thomas Hobbes, is solitary, nasty, brutish and short. Anything is possible. Jets can slam into buildings killing thousands. Men can be held incommunicado for years. Without law, there is only brute force. We turn to the rule of law to create a society in which life can flourish.
Will someone please convey that message to the knuckleheads in the United States Senate who just voted 49-42 on an amendment to a military budget bill to all but close the courts to the detainees at Gauntanamo?
The Senate is apparently troubled by the fact that the Supreme Court has opened the doors of the nation's courts to the detainees, who have been confined now for three years without a trial or any lawful process whatsoever. Two hundred of the 500 prisoners have filed habeas corpus petitions in the wake of the Court's decision in 2004 in Rasul v. Bush. Just this week, the Supremes finally agreed to hear a case challenging the use of military tribunals to hear cases arising out of what the administration calls its war on terror. The Senate bill, if enacted into law, would deprive the courts of jurisdiction to hear these cases.
This flagrant act of mobocracy was spearheaded by one of the dimmest bulbs flickering in the Senate chambers, Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. "It is not fair to our trooops fighting in the war on terror to be sued in every court in the land by our enenmies based on every possible complaint," saith the Senator, raising anew the old debate about whether an intelligence test ought to be a preequisite to service in the Senate. Memo to Senator Dumbstruck: A habeas petition is not a suit arising under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983. Who said anything about suing the troops?
We are becoming what we hate in this war on terror. Others attack us using weapons foul and heinous to leash out in their hatred? Fine, we respond in kind. Let's round up the funky-looking towel heads and stick 'em in an old military base. We'll hold them forever it we want to. Why? Because we can, and because we, too, can hate.
No, this is not fuzzy-minded moral equivocating. I am not saying that holding men in Guantanamo without access to courts of any kind is the same as killing people. What I am saying is that both acts are lawless. Were I a relative of a detainee, I would view the detention as an act of terror.
We strut, we huff, we puff, and we traipse around the globe trumpeting our commitment to the rule of law. We forge treaties -- and then refuse to honor them. We ask for international cooperation -- and then refuse to play when we don't like the outcome. We say the rule of law is great except when it isn't, and then sheer power will do. Is it any wonder the world looks at us as though we had the moral gravitas of Alice in Wonderland?
The Senate bill is a disgrace. It is an invitation to international anarchy. It fuels, rather than combats, the very terror we fight. Shame on the Senate for passing this excrement.
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