Enemy Combatant

Oct 6, 2006

At the end of World War II, the victorious allies gathered up a large number of select Axis prisoners ranging from high ranking politicians, to industrialists, to general officers, and on down to common soldiers. These people were believed to have been guilty of war crimes ranging from planning aggressive war, on through a number of atrocities, and included a pretty nasty bunch who were responsible for the holocaust. Quite a few of these war criminals were found guilty, and sentenced to long prison terms, or hanging. The free world sent a message to all totalitarians, that atrocities would not be tolerated. A message that American POW’s held in North Korea and North Vietnam found had not been fully understood by the communists.

The laws of each nation covers the treatment afforded common criminals. The Geneva Convention covers the treatment of prisoners of war. Both situations generally demand that prisoners be treated fairly, and both take a very dim view of torture. For the most part, and depending on the social standards of each country, these laws and treaties have served humanity well for many years. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights have seen that the United States has been at the forefront in demanding ethical treatment of all prisoners, both civil and military.

But the times are changing I’m afraid.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor, has decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's okay to torture or generally mistreat these enemies. As one news report so succinctly puts it: “… an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer, your Swedish grandmother, or your Czech au pair.” No real proof is required, which could leave a lot of people in this country at serious risk. What’s the penalty for “Harboring an Enemy Combatant” going to be? And after that it’s only one short step to including American citizens as enemies. There is a precedent remember… there were American citizens fighting in Afghanistan, for the Taliban.

Nor does this require a written order personally signed by the president. He can after all, delegate the necessary authority to anyone he wishes. So now it’s purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the individuals file "enemy combatant" and then throw the poor schmuck into prison. At his leisure he tries them in any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble, where they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal.

This was passed by 65 senators, it will become law when signed by President Bush, and in due course will be (hopefully) declared unconstitutional by the courts. But the people who voted for this bill really don’t have any right to take a high moral view of the Nazi Third Reich anymore, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. They’ve just denied two hundred years of American jurisprudence and moral standards.

Mark the names of these US Senators who voted away our rights: Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Imhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

Three Republican senators made a stage show of opposing the bill and after they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the Supreme Court will dispose of this piece of garbage. If however, the Court does not, then our country has taken another step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone, lock them up and throw away the key, while never being required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America that I grew up in.

What’s happened to my country? Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, they’ve made us become like them.