You would not know it to look at CNN right now. Top stories over there include speculation over whether the girls taken hostage at a Colorado high school might have been singled out based on their MySpace pages, a high school freshman who had enough and shot his principal, a filmmaker shooting off his mouth, a woman who killed her husband because her lover was hiding in the closet, police shooting a suspected cop killer, a store clerk beating up a would-be thief on camera, something entitled “Guy in neon Speedo-thingy embarrasses nation”, Anna Nicole Smith getting married again, and one actual item of importance to the whole country, it turns out Abramoff talked to people in the White House lots of times, and “people” includes Karl Rove.
Nope, it isn’t at all important that the Senate passed something called “A bill to authorize trial by military commission for violations of the law of war, and for other purposes.” Please, take a moment to find out how your Senators voted on the matter. You can read the actual text here, or you can get the short version from the Washington Post’s write-up. It wasn’t even front page news over there; go figure. But here’s the ShortWoman’s even shorter version:
- It’s ok to lock up any “individual engaged in hostilities against the United States” as an unlawful combatantant. Contrary to what many are reporting, this definition does not contain any mention of “citizenship” or “alien”. Sure, “hostilities” implies trying to do actual physical harm. But is that the definition they are using? Or could protesters be considered to be “engaged in hostilities”?
- They can gain this status by doing something against the United States, or by giving material support to someone who does. So, uh, check out charities very carefully before giving anything to anybody, mmkay?
- Such people have no rights whatsoever in American courts.
- Nevertheless, some people like Arlen Spector have gone on the record as saying Well yeah, it’s not Constitutional but that’s ok because The Courts will clean it up!
- Such people will have access to military tribunals, but they won’t get to see evidence against them, evidence in their favor may be supressed, and evidence obtained through beating someone until they say what the prosecutor wants is ok.
- Anybody who is against this is accused of “supporting the rights of terrorists who want to harm us.”
If you haven’t had enough, please check out the excellent items posted at The Moderate Voice and The Boston Globe and — just for a bit of flavor — Buzzflash, twice. Even guys who don’t talk politics like Wil Wheaton are saying this is a sad, sad day for our nation.
They no longer have any reason to hate us for our freedoms, for our freedoms are fleeting.
Nobody — at least nobody sane — is saying we have to coddle people who were captured trying to harm Americans. But torture is illegal under World Law (which supercedes our mere American law much the way Federal law supercedes State law), doesn’t work, breeds resentment and mistrust around the world, and puts Americans at risk of harsher treatment in the event of their capture anywhere in the world.
These will be no “in closing” today. This is too important.
Having reread the text of the bill, technically it only applies to citizens. The definitions are divided rather inanely for a document that should be fundamentally clear. More troubling is the fact that the Geneva Conventions are both embraced and denied in different sections.
I do expect the Presidential signing statement will reinterpret this yet again and citizens will be as easily victimized as non-citizens.
and of Tim McVeigh and his ilk? Is this justification of their actions and opinion? One correcton though Shorty: this is a sad day not just for America and Americans… it is a sad day for humanity… and the DisEnlightenment marches forth
that was an ill prepared comment, my apologies. What i meant to ask was if this would breed more Tim Mcveigh’s…
Thank you, I could not have sead it better my self.