This week the Guantanamo Bay case will go the the Supreme Court. The central issue of the case is whether or not non-Americans have the right of habeas corpus. Is it okay for Americans to hold non-citizens in jail without a trial? This trial would help determine if the detainee camp(used for holding suspected terrorists) will be shut down, either releasing prisoners or keeping them locked up.
No matter what you think about the legal aspects of this situation, would you really want for these people to be released? Should principle or safety come first? It's been stated that "so far 30 released detainees are believed to have returned to terrorist activities."
Then there's also the issue of the abuse. It's been well publicized that there has been mistreatment of prisoners there. How will this play into the case?
I also thought it was interesting that as this article says, "So intense is the interest in the case that the court has ruled it will take the rare step of issuing audio recordings of opening arguments," being that the Supreme Court is usually not very friendly with the press; as we read in the last chapter of the textbook. This shows how seriously this case is to Americans.
Credit for cartoon: http://www.andydavey.com/Images/03-056%20Guantanamo%20cow.jpg
4 comments:
I hope the court rules in favor of granting all detainees a fair trail. American arrogance should not come at the expense of potentially innocent foreigners. After all one man's terrorist is another man's hero.
Just in case it wasn't obvious that this was an important case, the SC decided to release the recording of the oral arguments immediately. Although a ruling may be months away, the Justices are aware of the case's importance. This case has Constitutional (in a separation of powers sense, involving all 3 branches) and international implications.
Had the Bush administration put some thought into how to fairly adjudicate these cases -- and remember, some of these guys are actual scumbags -- they could have created military tribunals that preserved some semblance of due process for the accused without shredding the Constitution and our reputation, not to mention gumming up the federal courts. In other words, on the basis of an extreme interpretation of executive power, they tried to establish a very flimsy process, and may very well end up with what they see as a less favorable outcome than they could have gotten years ago.
In other words, in an attempt to eliminate _all_ chances of a guilty person going free, they might have actually made it more likely that some of the guilty will go free.
In my view, it is better that no innocent people be punished than no guilty go free. If that means there is a little more terrorism in the US, so be it. It isn't like we are under siege. A couple car bombs a year adds up to about as much violence as the city of Oakland produces already.
May sound selfish but I for one do not want to be at the other end of one of those extra "Oakland" cases. If that means people who are not American being detained for longer periods of time because of suspicions of them going to commit acts of violence, well so be it. Can we establish that they are not American so unless I am unclear about what the case really involves, since when does the Supreme Court control how we handle a situation like this.
Ryan,
Most of the detainees have been in custody for 5 years, and the Bush administration has not come up with a scheme to determine their guilt or innocence. Since they have released other Gitmo prisoners over the years, we know that some of the original apprehensions were shaky. The burden of proof is on them. Moreover, even if you believe that human rights are for Americans only, the idea that the President can declare someone, even a US citizen, an enemy combatant and detain and torture them indefinitely with no judicial oversight is an absurd concentration of power and outrageously hypocritical. The SC had intervened in the Padilla case involving a US citizen (Padilla has since been convicted, even though he was pretty much a nobody that posed no credible threat to anything); if not for the SC jurisprudence, it isn't clear if he would have ever had a trial. Padilla was tortured into being a walking zombie. To summarize: a US citizen was imprisoned and tortured with no charges and no judicial oversight for years. The public yawned. THIS IS THE RED SCARE ALL OVER AGAIN!!!! We will look back on all this with shame.
But I digress...
There are not US citizens at G. Bay, but US law as well as the Geneva Conventions (which we have ratified) plausibly do cover them. One thing is for sure: I'd rather the courts decide what the constitutional limits of executive power are than either the executive himself or Congress. Abolishing habeas corpus protections in an ideological "war" that may never end is scary stuff; this is not like the US Civil War.
There is little doubt that the Bush administration broke US law. They more or less admit it, saying that such laws are invalid during wartime. Their legal argument boils down to, anything the President does in the name of security during wartime trumps the existing law. Just because they have lawyers like John Yoo make an argument with legal language doesn't make this interpretation valid. It is radical.
More than a few Bush administration officials are never going to be able to travel abroad because of the real threat of being picked up on war crimes charges.
Objectivity is not neutrality. I really believe that the other side of the argument in these cases is pure hogwash, and I'll stake my professional reputation on saying so. John Yoo is a disgrace to all UC-Berkeley alumni. A disgrace to humanity, actually.
Buck the politics of fear. I say all this in full belief that Islamic radicalism is a mortal threat to civilization. But for us to say we are the civilized ones requires us to live with some fear. Like Jon Stewart sarcastically had to say about the New Hampshire motto during a recent GOP debate, "Live Free or Do Everything Possible To Avoid Dying."
PS Max asked me to stir the pot. I tried.
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