Preventive Detention

As inevitably happens following nearly any political campaign, we expected a number of broken promises. But now it seems that we’re getting ‘em in spades! The hopes and expectations following Barack Obama's inauguration had many people thinking that perhaps he could “pull us together again”. Unfortunately, his performance over the last few months makes Bill Clinton look like the ideal of integrity and follow-through! From healthcare to torture, from the economy to the war, Mr. Obama has backed off on a wide assortment of the nearly 500 campaign promises he made.

Certainly I wasn’t all that happy with many of President Bush’s programs, or his way of doing things, but at least I could understand the “what and why” of most of what he was attempting. Some of his failings could be blamed on simple bureaucratic failures and others on a totally partisan congress. Many were pure and simply his own darn fault. Still, during his first-term, President Bush was unwilling to go to Congress to get expanded presidential powers, even where Congress would have been happy to give them to him; during his second term, Bush, like Obama today, was more than willing to allow Congress to rubber stamp his proposals, hence, the Military Commissions Act, the Protect America Act, the FISA Amendments Act, etc. and etc. ad nauseaum.

Mr. Obama travels overseas (at taxpayer expense) to apologize to our enemies for being the richest and most powerful country in the world. He apologizes to Muslim nations because we’re a Christian nation. He apologizes to Marxist dictators because Americans believe in liberty. He apologizes to Africa over a slavery situation that occurred a hundred and fifty years ago. What’s next, will he apologize to Germany for the Normandy invasion?! He’s reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, apparently in fear of annoying the Turkish government. He’s reneged on his campaign promise to allow a period of public comment before signing Bills presented by Congress. We are currently engaged in two comparatively “small” wars in which our military is terribly overextended and taking an unnecessary beating. The Generals are begging for troops to prosecute those wars and save American lives, and Mr. Obama now wants to cut our faltering military strength by 25%! He appoints “Czars” to handle everything under the sun, bypassing the normal federal bureaucracy. The only qualification necessary to be a Czar is an avowed belief in Marxism! He runs the federal deficit up to astronomical numbers in the name of “sharing the wealth”, but it seems the only people getting a share are corporate campaign contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists, and assorted corrupt politicians! He won’t (or can’t) even prove that he’s legally qualified to hold office! Obama apparently knows nothing about economics, diplomacy, the military, or national affairs. Effectively he’s useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous, which is why he ought to resign before he drags us even further down the path to destruction.

The latest pronouncement from the anointed one is “preventive detentions.” Essentially, Mr. Obama wants an "entirely new chapter in American law". With this latest bright idea, if a cop or any other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, they can arrest you or anyone else right off the street, and hold you indefinitely in what’s called "prolonged detention." Media reports imply that this new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, any potential “sorta-kinda thinking about terrorism” types. Of course the authorities also get to define just what that potential terrorism is, which would likely include what George Orwell called "thought-crime" in his book “1984”. (If Congress buys into this plan, please don’t annoy anyone in authority!) Preventive detention under whatever name is a classic characteristic of any dictatorship, because a dictatorial regimes top priority is self-preservation rather than improving the people's lives. They worry about the one thing they can't control, individual thought that just might lead to rebellious activity. Independent thoughts are potentially dangerous to a totalitarian regime. (Vietnam vets will remember Charlie’s habit of torturing and killing anyone who might ever become a threat to communist control.) Locking people away who haven't done anything wrong is not only un-American; it’s a direct attack on the basic principles of law. It’s also contrary to the notions of human decency. What kind of monster do we have sitting in the White House, who would even consider promoting such an offense against civilization itself! And even if you’re comfortable with Mr. Obama having this sort of power because you trust him not to abuse it, are you comfortable with the idea of some future President having the power of indefinite "preventive detention"?

The New York Times pontificated that "Prolonged detention” would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried." Ah… Okay, and just why can’t they be tried? What they mean of course, is that the hundreds of men and boys imprisoned at Gitmo and the thousands of "detainees" the Obama Administration apparently anticipates arresting in the future cannot be convicted of any actual crime. Much like the Soviet Union, where putting enemies of the state on trial wasn't enough, conviction had to be guaranteed, or there would be no trial, just a long time in “detention”. The Soviets had their Gulag… and now we get “Detention Centers”. Obama stated that "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted." If we follow the law, any terrorist suspect can be tried. Rightfully, anyone can be tried for committing any crime, within a specific jurisdiction. But consider that there is a Somali teenager sitting in a New York prison, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where U.S. law has no legal jurisdiction. Anyone accused of committing a crime can be tried. However, where the legal system still works it’s assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk. Where the rule of law prevails, in places free of leaders whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is not even considered evidence. If you can't prove that the defendant committed a crime--an actual crime, not a thought crime—the last I heard you have to release him. Mr. Obama is a Law Proffessor 'fer 'th luvva Pete, and he dosen't understand that!? It’s amazing that after all the illegal things the Democrats accused President Bush of, they don’t understand these basic rules either. Obama's White House Counsel described him as "The first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law". Well, technically that is a form of change I guess, but probably not what many Obama supporters expected.

It’s ironic that the man who campaigned on “transparency in government” is less transparent than the president he attacked for excessive secrecy. At least Bush and Cheney believed they had the constitutional right to act in any way they saw fit, regardless of what the public understands about Constitutional law. Bush declared "I'm the decider" and he definitely meant it. This administration apparently believes it has the same right, and just pretends otherwise.