Centerblue.org

What happened to the resistance to Bush’s gross push for unlimited violations of the Geneva Conventions posed by a few supposedly brave GOP senators like McCain? Apparently it has dissolved into goo, because Bush got everything he wanted and they got nothing. Did McCain suddenly get cold feet when his resistance endangered his 2008 presidential prospects? Consider the terms of this new “compromise:”

• The bill would permit confessions obtained through cruel and inhumane interrogations by the CIA or military before 2005, but not afterward. Small comfort.
• Defense attorneys may challenge hearsay evidence received in coercive fashion in distant countries only if they can prove it is unreliable–something almost impossible to do when it is in writing and the defense cannot cross-examine the confessor. The rules of evidence traditionally bar hearsay evidence uttered outside of court (with some limited exceptions such as a dying man’s declaration of who killed him) because it is fundamentally unfair to enter evidence against an individual without his having the right to confront his accuser in court.
• It strips from defendants the right of habeas corpus. Habeas corpus allows a detainee to challenge his detention as unconstitutional. Without it, a defendant has no right whatsoever to appeal his detention in any manner and can be essentially allowed to rot in jail forever without ever going to trial regardless of his offense (if there even was an offense) or the manner of his treatment. This breathtaking step of stripping habeas corpus has only happened twice before–by Lincoln during the Civil War (later re-instated by the Supreme Court in Ex Parte Milligan), and during Reconstruction by Grant in South Carolina when taking federal action against the Ku Klux Klan. It is very likely the Supreme Court will rule that an indefinite suspension of habeas corpus without emergency justification is unconstitutional.
• The bill bars detainees from citing the Geneva Conventions or any international/foreign laws or authority on detainee or POW rights. What is the administration afraid of here?
• Bush is given the right to interpret the Conventions as he sees fit for anything that falls below the level of “grave breaches.” While McCain grandstanded his “victory” by saying that Bush would be required to publicly issue such interpretations, we already had White House spokesperson Tony Snow saying that such publication might not be necessary.

The entire exercise is disgusting. It desperately attempts to seal away what the US is doing and still claim it is abiding by its treaty obligations, when it is abiding by neither them nor the Constitution. I hope it’s only a matter of time before the Supreme Court steps in again and bars such gross violations of our values.

As for the “brave” resisting-come-rubberstamping GOP’ers…I really just don’t have words that suitably describe my scorn.

Despite Bush’s every effort to try having the Senate enact his autocratic version of a bill for interrogating and trying terrorist suspects–even going to Capitol Hill himself yesterday–a small group of GOP Senators (Collins, Warner, Graham, McCain) is standing firm and refusing to let the administration trample the Geneva Conventions.

The issue is simple, really. Either we obey the provisions of the Geneva Convention and the rule of law, or we do not. Bush thinks that the “war on terror” gives him license to suspend just about every right that America holds dear (habeas corpus, right to speedy trial, right to know the evidence arrayed against you, right not to be tortured). It seeks to interpret the Geneva Convention in conformity with its wishes. These Senators understand that the Conventions apply to everyone, and that our failure to observe them undermines our moral high ground in the war on terror. It would also place our troops in jeopardy since our failure to adhere will give license to other countries to also not do so.

Conservative blogs such as this one are outraged at the “turncoats,” not being able to grasp why the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution might apply to terrorists.

Let’s see if we can describe it in language easy enough for them to understand: the war on terror is either a war, or it’s not. If it’s really a war, then the Geneva Conventions apply as against prisoners of war and its human rights requirements must be followed. Terrorists want to kill us no more and no less than any nation’s soldiers at war with us would want to do so, and their being terrorists does not exempt them from basic human rights accorded all prisoners of war. Spare me the blather that they’re different because they target civilians; there’s a list of of innocent women and children a mile long in Iraq who’ve been killed by American bombs (not to mention incidents like the My Lai massacre in Vietnam). We are America, not Taliban Afghanistan; we do not maim and torture regardless of the reason or intent of our enemies.

In regards to constitutional rights, not all terrorists are foreign nationals, some of them are Americans. For those that are, the Constitution does not distinguish between Americans in its granting of basic rights. All of our rights are threatened with extinction once we start to pick and choose who among us is entitled to the Constitution’s protections and who is not. Today it’s them, tomorrow it’s us–at the whim of a Chief Executive with no checks on his power. We can streamline warrant requirements, allow for better emergency response, make things faster, allow for quicker judicial review, weigh the benefits vs. burdens of intrusions on our privacy, and adopt other measures to fight terrorism…but we cannot give the president unlimited license to interpret, grant, and remove constitutional rights as he sees fit.

This is not about appeasement, not about being soft on terrorists. It’s about not forgetting we are all Americans and there are some values that cannot be given up without surrendering who we are as a nation.

The words that come out of Bush’s mouth become more chilling by the day.

He recently told a group of conservative journalists that he senses a “Third Awakening” of religious devotion and open expressions of faith in the US akin to similar periods in the 18th and 19th centuries. He also noted how these people agree with him in seeing the current US struggles in terms of “good vs. evil,” with of course his side being that of “good.”

Hearing those words, I couldn’t help but wonder if we live in the American democracy envisioned by our forefathers, or whether we are slipping into the dystopian theocratic America described in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

I’m also not surprised if such a resurgence of religious faith is taking place among Bush’s followers. After all, only faith in Bush himself can bridge the connection between Iraq, the war on terror, and the so-called “good” he is championing.

If Bush is right that our “war on terror” is really just a struggle between good and evil, then:

• The torture and indefinite detention of prisoners of war, and shielding torturers from prosecution, are “good.”
• A war with no justification or connection to how we were attacked is “good.”
• The hypocrisy of dealing with Saudi autocrats who brutally repress their society at the same time that we trumpet the cause of freedom as justification for the Iraq war is “good.”
• Forcefeeding our vision of secular Jeffersonian democracy onto people who do not want it because of their drastically different religious and cultural beliefs is “good.”
• Using a traumatic event like September 11th where thousands of people lost their lives to spin a political ideology and justify an unrelated war is “good.”
• Breaking our nation’s social compact we call the Constitution by seeking unlimited power to spy on our own citizens while they are stripped of any court protection is “good.”
• Seeking to convict prisoners of war without letting them see the evidence arrayed against them is “good.”

With “good” like this, who needs evil?

History is replete with examples of how such “good” deeds have been used in the epic struggle of good vs. evil. Events like the Salem witch trials, the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades, and the Third Reich come to mind.

Bush has forgotten the simple ethical maxim that the ends don’t justify the means. In prosecuting his “good vs. evil war on terror” in the manner he has, he’s become no better than America’s enemies.

It’s good to know there are still some Republicans out there with enough sense to oppose the autocratic madness oozing out of the White House these days.

Dick Cheney was sent to Capitol Hill today to try whipping Republicans into accepting Bush’s proposals on surveillance and military tribunals. I can’t help but wonder whether Cheney will call his fellow GOP’ers unpatriotic “appeasers of terrorists” for refusing to give Bush the blank check he’s looking for.

Bush is seeking legislation that would:

• provide immunity from prosecution to interrogators who “mistreat” (a/k/a torture) detainees;
• allow an alleged terrorist defendant to be convicted with hidden evidence to which he has no access;
• give legal status to Bush’s warrantless surveillance efforts, despite their running afoul of the Fourth Amendment.

Republican Senators like Collins, Warner, McCain, and Graham thankfully remember that this is America, not Taliban Afghanistan. You simply do not convict anyone in this country or in any advanced democracy without so much as letting him know what evidence is laid out against him. You do not give license for interrogators to torture anyone. You do not wipe your ass with the Constitution.

I may want Republicans out of power because I believe they’ve lost their ability to lead…but I respect these Senators for understanding their current role as the last bastion against a White House that seems bent on pulling this country down into fascism.

This morning I tuned into CNN’s video pipeline where the news network is re-enacting coverage of 9/11 as it took place five years ago. The raw emotions I felt that day have come back in full force as I see for the first time how the crisis unfolded on television.

I knew two people who died that day, one on Flight 93 in Pennsylvania and one in the World Trade Center towers. Also, someone very close to me now was in the Pentagon but narrowly managed to escape injury.

Unfortunately this tragedy has been spun out of all recognition for political purposes. It has been used to justify the invasion of another country not involved in any way with the attacks of September 11th. A “docudrama” grinds a partisan ax on national television trying to rewrite history by creating fiction and attempting to pin the blame where it doesn’t belong.

In light of the disgraceful twisting of the tragedy that has taken place I thought it important to view the raw unedited footage as it happened, free of political agendas and partisan spin. The images themselves speak loud and clear as to how America changed that day.

Clearly we lost something dear and precious to us on that fateful morning. America is not what it was. Today’s news and debates of what constitutes torture, of secret gulags, of indefinite detentions of Americans without access to courts or a lawyer, of warrantless wiretapping would have been utterly unthinkable five years ago. We live in a different world now, and obviously we need to aggressively pursue our national security…but we must do so in a way that doesn’t compromise our core values. We can fight terrorism without trampling the Constitution.

I watched the ABC docudrama disgustedly last night as it attempted to make the case that it was because of pesky “obstacles” like the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement that prevented the US from fighting terrorism–clearly implying that such obstacles should be eliminated. They should not. We can streamline the process, quicken the decisionmaking, allow emergency arrests and searches to take place without a warrant as long as you get one later–all these measures address national security concerns. But when you entirely remove the authority of our justice system from judging the fairness of a search or seizure against Americans then we no longer live in a democracy, but in a police state.

The legacy of September 11th five years later is that we are handing the terrorists a victory by threatening to become that which we once hated. Bin Laden remains free to laugh at us in a cave somewhere. We are creating terrorists by the day throughout the Arab world by virtue of our irresponsible military “adventure” in Iraq. We are not safer as our ports and cities remain vulnerable, though credit must be given for the fact that there has not been another attack. The treasury continues to bleed money at an alarming rate.

Yet there is hope–Americans are waking up from their stupor and seeing the wolf in the henhouse. They are angry. They know in overwhelming numbers that America is headed in the wrong direction. They are understanding that our national identity, security and prestige are at stake both at home and abroad. They understand that we can fight terrorism and win without losing our nation’s soul in the process. They will hopefully vote their minds in November.

In the meantime I continue to watch the footage to remind myself of how much is at stake, lamenting the loss of a carefree America that our kids will probably never know, hopeful for a safer nation that hasn’t completely lost sight of its values.

We must never forget.

The GOP wasted no time yesterday in attempting to use a federal judge’s injunction against unconstitutional wireless surveillance to club Democrats as being “soft” on national security. A new ad rolled out yesterday: “Democrats say they want to talk about national security and the war on terror . . . while terrorists are watching,” it warned ominously. Bush’s claimed in his angry comments that opponents of the decision simply don’t understand the world we live in.

The GOP insists that any questioning of King George’s policies in any way, shape, or form whatsoever is kowtowing to terrorists. It insists that any attempt to criticize the gross unconstitutionality of his edicts and his flouting of the laws, or even ask for the barest shreds of due process, means that we’re cheering the terrorists on to commit new atrocities like 9/11.

Nobody puts these ridiculous arguments in their place more eloquently than Judge Taylor, who issued the ruling:

“It was never the intent of the framers to give the president such unfettered control, particularly where his actions blatantly disregard the parameters clearly enumerated in the Bill of Rights…There are no hereditary Kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution. So all ‘inherent powers’ must derive from that Constitution.”

What’s on voters’ minds these days is Iraq rather than national security. As the article points out, Republicans have done such a good job connecting national security to the war in Iraq (where no connection really exists) that this strategy is blowing up in their faces–because any mention of national security such as in the context of this ruling immediately reminds voters of the complete disaster in Iraq. That just makes them all the angrier at what’s going on over there, motivating them to throw the GOP out in November.

Brilliant!

That boomerang effect is causing some GOP’ers to “cut and run” on Iraq. Chris Shays, a Republican House incumbent in Connecticut, is quoted as now wanting a timeframe for withdrawal of troops from Iraq. Michael Fitzpatrick, a GOP House incumbent from Michigan, distances himself from Bush’s “mistakes” and turns his back on Bush’s Iraq policies in a letter to constituents.

There’s nothing sweeter in politics than to watch the opposition destroy itself with the same club it has used against its opponent.

In the ongoing debate going over same-sex marriage, the Commonwealth of Virginia is emerging as nothing short of fascist in its zeal to deprive gay people of their liberties–so much so that the curtailment of liberties threatens to spill over to non-gay relationships if a measure is approved in November. The hostile laws are causing many gays, especially couples, to leave Virginia in favor of the District of Columbia or Maryland.

In 2004, Virginia passed a law that not only banned just gay marriage, but even invalidated “civil unions, partnership contracts or other arrangements between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage.” Not even contracts between two gay partners would be honored. So for example if a couple wanted to pass along property by a will to a life-long partner, the will would stand to be invalidated by hostile family members if they chose. A “living will” arrangement where one partner could honor the wishes of the other to not continue life support when one of them is in a vegetative state could also be rejected as unenforceable. A host of other things like hospital visitation rights and even joint property ownership would also be put into question, never mind the possibility of adoption.

The attempted curtailment of so many rights is not just “conservative,” it’s downright draconian. No government would be suffered to inflict that much of an infringement of civil liberties on any other group of people, and I’m fairly certain the provisions are unconstitutional although nobody has as yet stepped up to challenge the law’s legality. The federal Constitution guarantees the right of people to contract with each other:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10

That Virginia would even try to take someone’s right to enter contracts with another person show’s the extent of the Commonwealth’s spite. But that’s not all…as if the law were not enough, the Commonwealth feels that additional punitive measures are required, as now there will be a proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot that prohibits “unmarried individuals” from “union, partnership or other legal status similar to marriage.” Of course, gay couples are not the only co-habitating unmarried couples out there, raising a question as to the status of the rights heterosexual unmarried couples may have under common law. If nothing else this ambiguity serves to highlight the sheer stupidity of a backwards state as it stumbles over itself in its haste to enshrine prejudice into its laws and constitution.

Needless to say, gay couples and residents are not taking this lying down. Some are fighting the amendment while others are taking themselves, their creativity and their tax dollars to other places. As one departing resident said for the linked article,

“As an African-American, having grown up during the Civil Rights movement in Birmingham, Ala., I am not willing to have my rights taken away from me by ignorant, religious zealots who don’t respect the constitutional understanding of separation of Church and State when scripting laws. It was apparent to me that things weren’t getting any better, but worse. Why should I continue to pay taxes to support such a hateful government?”

In the end it is Virginia who loses. As Richard Florida argues in his book, “Flight of the Creative Class: the New Global Competition for Talent“ the municipalities that are most successful in creating hubs of technology and creativity so essential in today’s information economy are those that show openness and tolerance for differences, including towards gays. There are a lot of highly educated and highly paid gay people in information technology and related fields who will decline to take jobs in and pay taxes to such a hostile state, letting DC and Maryland reap these gains at Virginia’s expense.

Quite apart from the economics argument, however, is the intuitive notion that you don’t treat people like second-class citizens and expect to be seen as anything other than a backwards state full of hatemongering idiots.