Some Thoughts On Supreme Court Ruling

My fellow bloggers both here and around the net have already given some excellent coverage to the Guantanamo Bay ruling today so I thought I would take another angle on the topic. I know that it a controversial decision and that we have plenty of people on  both sides of the decision. That is only natural as people of good will can disagree on subjects like this.

But I think there is a deeper meaning to this decision. We are in the midst of a war on terror and have faced some of the worst attacks in our history. Every day we have people with real and reasonable concerns about their own safety as well as the safety of those they care for.

This is hardly a new situation, it has been faced by people many times before both in the US and around the world. How people have reacted to the circumstances has varied greatly. In Germany during the 1920’s and 1930’s they faced a different kind of foe, economic and social disruptions, and they reacted by installing an brutal dictator who threatened the freedom of the entire world.

In the United States during the 1950’s we faced concerns over expanding Communism and we also reacted badly. We did not install a dictator but we did subject our citizens to the hysteria of McCarthy and the Hollywood investigations.

In short, far more often than not, societies have reacted to external and internal threats by acting to deny civil rights and freedoms in the name of safety.

Today however we have, for better or for worse, taken a very different course. It began with a group of men who were not only non-citizens but men who had been captured on the battlefield. Many were quite literally shooting at the men and women of our armed forces. Many of them may have been closely tied to some of the top terrorist leaders around the world.

In most nations of the world these men would have been thrown into jail and would never be seen again. Certainly this would be true in many of the nations of the Middle East who daily attack us for being oppressive or unfair. In our country however they were given access to the courts of the very nation they attacked. Today the highest court of that nation ruled that many of them were entitled to many of the same rights of an ordinary citizen.

It is not a stretch to say that many top officials in our government disagree with the decision, as do many members of our military. In some nations there would be serious doubts as to whether or not the ruling would be respected. Yet we do not have those doubts here. Aside from a few hard core Bush haters, I don’t think anyone seriously thinks he would defy the Supreme Court. It is simply unthinkable to the American mind.

In short, the very society these men swore to destroy has extended to them the rights they seek to deny to everyone else. 

Just think about that for a moment. Whether you support or oppose the ruling, the fact is it does demonstrate our commitment to freedom.