The Baying of PIGS!

“We do not get good laws to restrain bad people. We get good people to restrain bad laws.”
-- G. K. Chesterton, “All Things Considered,” 1908

“The Supreme Court on Thursday declared unconstitutional a provision of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that, at the administrations behest, stripped the federal courts of jurisdiction to hear habeas corpus petitions from the detainees seeking to challenge their designation as enemy combatants” (Linda Greenhouse, New York Times, 6/13/08).

“Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy declared: ‘The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times” (NYT 6/13/08).

“Extraordinary times” indeed! It’s no accident that Bush’s public appearances are carefully selected to preclude any possibility of his being served a warrant for crimes against humanity. How are his actions any different from the Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg? Unlawful imprisonment, torture, the deaths of half a million civilians, don’t these actions qualify as crimes against humanity? Regarding the ethical dilemma of circumventing habeas corpus, Linda Greenhouse reports that, “The majority’s conclusion was that the provision did not permit a detainee to present evidence that might clear him of blame”(NYT 6/13/08). Writing for the majority, Kennedy declared that, “Some of these petitioners have been in custody for six years with no definitive judicial determination as to the legality of their detention. Their access to the writ [Habeas Corpus] is a necessity to determine the lawfulness of their status”(Excerpt from Kennedy’s opinion in the court’s 5-4 decision).

Consider this: “The environmental campaigner and Guardian columnist George Monbiot tried and failed to make a citizen’s arrest of the former Bush administration official John Bolton over alleged ‘war crimes’ committed during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As Bolton, a former US ambassador to the UN, ended a discussion at the Hay book festival, Monbiot moved towards the stage waving a charge sheet as supporters chanted ‘war criminal’ and waved placards. Monbiot later said, ‘I made what I believe to be the first attempt ever to arrest one of the perpetrators of the Iraq war, and I would like to see that followed up’”(The Guardian Weekly, June 6-12 2008).

What’s “extraordinary” is not the sham war we’re mired in, but the senseless wasted lives of, as Scalia puts it, “our countrymen in arms.” Make no mistake about it, our young men and women were put in harm's way by the perpetration of a scam to spread a failed ideological policy that had nothing to do with 9/11: neoconservative neocapitalism. The current administration’s fantasy went something like this: We liberate Iraq and they embrace western democracy. From this small flame of democracy, an all-encompassing fire of freedom breaks out and engulfs the adjacent nations. The oppressed peoples of these surrounding countries, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and others, see the wisdom of the American way and throw off their shackles. Their political liberation, ensured by a military occupation, then leads to an economy of mindless and infinite consumption from which US war profiteers, like Haliburton, Bechtel , Blackwater, and other contractors, pass on the profits to corporate America. What we have instead is an Americo-centrism run amok that has drained the economy and ruined our global credibility.

Assessing the court’s decision, Greenhouse writes, ‘The court repudiated the fundamental legal basis of housing prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere at the US naval base in Guantanamo Cuba, where Justice Department lawyers advised the White house that domestic law would never reach”(NYT 6/13/08).

Of course, these aren’t the same lawyers Chief Justice John G. Roberts refers to in saying "Lawyers will now arguably have a greater role than military and intelligence officials in shaping policy” (Excerpt from Roberts’ dissenting opinion). When the policy shaped undermines “domestic law” in favor of illegal prosecutions, Roberts is all for it. And doesn’t it seem a bit odd that in a nation where the separation of powers is fundamental to the Constitution we would want “military and intelligence officials” dictating policy?

Writing for the minority, Roberts opined that, “The Great Writ’s majesty is hardly enhanced by its extension to a jurisdictionally quirky outpost”(Excerpt from Roberts’ dissenting opinion).

The Bush administration’s black-ops implementation of “Extraordinary Rendition” gives new meaning to Roberts’ strange turn of phrase, “quirky outpost.” This secret rendition and interrogation program, first, illegally abducted suspected terrorists, and then administered a kind of torture by proxy whereby the moral standards associated with an enlightened western democracy could be ignored in favor of clandestine cruelties more in line with the Spanish inquisition than Geneva Conventions.

Speaking of “quirky outposts,” and America’s innovative detention methods, Kennedy’s unwittingly ironic reference to “extraordinary times” brings me to this from the latest issue of The Guardian:

“The US is operating ‘floating prisons’ to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of the detainees….The analysis, due to be published this year by the human rights organization Reprieve, also reports there have been more than 200 new cases of rendition since 2006, when President George Bush declared that the practice had stopped….Detainees are interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed locations.” (The Guardian Weekly, June 6-12 2008)



Linda Greenhouse writes, “Of the two dissenting decisions [Roberts and Scalia], Justice Antonin Scalia’s was the more apocalyptic, predicting ‘devastating’ and ‘disastrous’ consequences’ from the decision. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed,’ he said. ‘The nation will live to regret what it has done today’” (NYT 6/13/08). Scalia condemned the ruling as a decision that duped ‘the nation’s commander in chief [and] will make the war harder on us’”(Excerpt from Scalia’s dissenting opinion).

Scalia’s on target about the “devastating” consequences wrought by a president that caused more casualties than necessary with the first death in Iraq, just as he’s right about the nation’s “living to regret” the consequences of his fateful appointment. He’s probably the worst gangster of the bunch. Then again, it’s difficult to choose, when you have Roberts in charge, and Thomas and Alito as willing yes-men.

Finally, this from the main editorial in the Times:

“For years, with the help of compliant Republicans and frightened democrats in Congress, President Bush has denied the protections of justice democracy and plain human decency to the hundreds of men that he decided to throw into never-ending detention….It is sobering to think that habeas hangs by a single vote in the Supreme Court of the United States—a reminder that the composition of the court could depend on the outcome of this year's presidential election. The ruling is a major victory for civil liberties—but a timely reminder of how fragile they are”(NYT 6/13/08).

And so it goes…