Yesterday, in his speech at the National Archives, Pres. Barack Obama told Americans of his intention to create a system of what he calls “prolonged detention” for Guantanamo detainees who “cannot be prosecuted for past crimes … but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States.” Here is part of what he said on this subject (emphasis mine):
I know that creating such a system poses unique challenges. And other countries have grappled with this question; now, so must we. But I want to be very clear that our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for the remaining Guantanamo detainees that cannot be transferred. Our goal is not to avoid a legitimate legal framework. In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight. And so, going forward, my administration will work with Congress to develop an appropriate legal regime so that our efforts are consistent with our values and our Constitution.
This entire concept — of legitimizing something that is clearly unconstitutional by creating a “legal framework” for it — chills me to the bone. There is absolutely no place in American tradition for imprisoning someone indefinitely to prevent them for doing something they might do in the future, absent their actually having done anything that can be proved in a court of law. Since when does this country throw people in prison for years, or for the rest of their lives, based on a mere belief that they are “dangerous”?
And what makes this even more distressing is that the media is already starting to fall into line behind this horrendous idea. The same media that spills gallons of ink on the scandalous news that Pres. Obama smiled at Hugo Chavez and shook his hand; the same media that reports endlessly on the gifts that Barack and Michelle Obama give to the Queen of England or to Gordon Brown, or on whether Michelle Obama broke protocol by touching the Queen, has next to nothing to say when the POTUS wants to put into place, for the first time ever in this country’s history, a “legal framework” for arbitrary, indefinite detention without charges and without trial.
I say “next to nothing” because today there actually is an article in the New York Times by William Glaberson called “President’s Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition” — and the text of that article is exactly what you would expect from that gentle title. Here is the opening paragraph (emphasis mine):
President Obama’s proposal for a new legal system in which terrorism suspects could be held in “prolonged detention” inside the United States without trial would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.
Um, it would also be a departure from the Fifth and Sixth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Think that’s worth mentioning?
Here is the next paragraph:
There are, to be sure, already some legal tools that allow for the detention of those who pose danger: quarantine laws as well as court precedents permitting the confinement of sexual predators and the dangerous mentally ill. Every day in America, people are denied bail and locked up because they are found to be a hazard to their communities, though they have yet to be convicted of anything.
Can you say, stretching a stretch to the point where the muscles dissolve? Indefinite detention without charge or trial on the grounds that you might do something illegal in the future is analogous to quarantine laws? If I’m confined to a hospital bed because I have the swine flu, that’s the same as if I were arrested and thrown into prison on no charges for an indeterminate length of time because I held up an anti-Obama sign at a demonstration and now the government thinks I might be dangerously violent?
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