Site search
sponsored by
Home
News
The legal, moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Bush administration was never exposed so thoroughly as last week with the Supreme Court decision on Boumediene vs. Bush. This extremely conservative court (seven of the nine sitting justices were appointed by conservative Republican presidents) delivered the third in a series of stinging rebukes to the immoral and unconstitutional procedures of the current administration.
In 2002 the first detainees were brought to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo in a deliberate attempt to avoid the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. The government stated at hearings that the detainees could be held indefinitely, without access to lawyers and without being charged with any crimes on the sole authority of the president and could even be tortured and summarily executed. If this sounds like Germany under the Nazis to you, then be assured that the rest of the world interpreted it just that way to our national shame and disgrace.
Fortunately in 2004 the Supreme Court in a historic decision (Rasul vs. Bush) ruled that the federal habeas corpus statute extended to detainees at Guantanamo because the U.S. had exclusive control of that base. Habeas corpus is perhaps the most fundamental right of the Anglo-American tradition going back to the Magna Carta of 1215 and was incorporated directly into the main body of our Constitution even before the Bill of Rights. The notion that a president of the United States could arbitrarily imprison people indefinitely (and, as it has developed, even torture them) without recourse of any kind is so repugnant to the American way of life as to be almost unbelievable eight centuries after Magna Carta.
Just nine days after this decision, however, the Pentagon hastily assembled the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, now notorious around the world as a transparent attempt to avoid meaningful federal court review. These tribunals were one of the worst examples of “kangaroo courts” where detainees were brought before military panels without lawyers, without access to key government evidence against them and without the opportunity to present evidence in their own behalf. Although this clearly violated requirements of the Geneva Conventions, the administration position is well summed up by Alberto Gonzales, the later discredited attorney general, who dismissed the Conventions as “quaint.”
In 2006 the Hamdan case challenging the authority of the military tribunals reached the Supreme Court which once again issued a stunning repudiation to the bogus legal theories of the Bush administration. The Court noted that the president had concocted a process which disregarded the minimum safeguards required by the Geneva Conventions and ordered the military trials to be halted.
Twisting and turning, the Bush administration then quickly whipped its Republican-dominated Congress into passing one of the most infamous bills in our history, the disgraceful Military Commissions Act, which expressly revoked the rights of Guantanamo detainees to bring writs of habeas corpus and stripped any U.S. court of the right to hear such appeals. In the latest Supreme Court decision, Justice Kennedy, speaking for the majority, wrote that the president and the Congress do not have “... the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.” If Congress wishes to suspend habeas corpus, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion. “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and to remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
This decision has been met with general approval in the editorials of many leading newspapers around the country except for, predictably, the Wall Street Journal and the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. The dissenters on the Supreme Court, notably Justice Scalia, and the Sentinel attacked the decision on the basis that it gives aid and comfort to our enemy (never mind that it was the right thing to do). These folks have forgotten the lessons of John Adams. He defended a group of British soldiers who, upon being attacked and clubbed by an out-of-control mob in Boston, fired back (without orders) in self defense. Although vilified for this very unpopular stance, Adams won an acquittal for the soldiers. His character in defending justice for even the enemies of our country was later recognized by our citizens who voted him as the second president of our country.
Finally we must remember that the detainees in Guantanamo, some of them imprisoned for more than six years, have been convicted of no crimes at this point and fall under the ancient American credo that such are innocent until proven guilty. Let them face fair court proceedings with competent defense counsel to resolve their cases. Even with suspected Nazi war criminals, we had the wisdom at Nuremberg to give them a fair trial. And I point out that some of them were acquitted! America must live up to its own ideals. We simply cannot adopt the despicable practices of our enemies because to do so would put us in the same lawless category as they. We are better than that as this very conservative Supreme Court has reminded us once again.
------------------------------
Dr. J. Eugene Fox is a retired professor of biochemistry and a medical scientist who spent two years in Washington, D.C., as director of the cell biology program for the National Science Foundation. The Grand Junction resident writes a column twice a month for the Grand Junction Free Press.
In 2002 the first detainees were brought to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo in a deliberate attempt to avoid the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. The government stated at hearings that the detainees could be held indefinitely, without access to lawyers and without being charged with any crimes on the sole authority of the president and could even be tortured and summarily executed. If this sounds like Germany under the Nazis to you, then be assured that the rest of the world interpreted it just that way to our national shame and disgrace.
Fortunately in 2004 the Supreme Court in a historic decision (Rasul vs. Bush) ruled that the federal habeas corpus statute extended to detainees at Guantanamo because the U.S. had exclusive control of that base. Habeas corpus is perhaps the most fundamental right of the Anglo-American tradition going back to the Magna Carta of 1215 and was incorporated directly into the main body of our Constitution even before the Bill of Rights. The notion that a president of the United States could arbitrarily imprison people indefinitely (and, as it has developed, even torture them) without recourse of any kind is so repugnant to the American way of life as to be almost unbelievable eight centuries after Magna Carta.
Just nine days after this decision, however, the Pentagon hastily assembled the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, now notorious around the world as a transparent attempt to avoid meaningful federal court review. These tribunals were one of the worst examples of “kangaroo courts” where detainees were brought before military panels without lawyers, without access to key government evidence against them and without the opportunity to present evidence in their own behalf. Although this clearly violated requirements of the Geneva Conventions, the administration position is well summed up by Alberto Gonzales, the later discredited attorney general, who dismissed the Conventions as “quaint.”
In 2006 the Hamdan case challenging the authority of the military tribunals reached the Supreme Court which once again issued a stunning repudiation to the bogus legal theories of the Bush administration. The Court noted that the president had concocted a process which disregarded the minimum safeguards required by the Geneva Conventions and ordered the military trials to be halted.
Twisting and turning, the Bush administration then quickly whipped its Republican-dominated Congress into passing one of the most infamous bills in our history, the disgraceful Military Commissions Act, which expressly revoked the rights of Guantanamo detainees to bring writs of habeas corpus and stripped any U.S. court of the right to hear such appeals. In the latest Supreme Court decision, Justice Kennedy, speaking for the majority, wrote that the president and the Congress do not have “... the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.” If Congress wishes to suspend habeas corpus, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion. “The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and to remain in force, in extraordinary times.”
This decision has been met with general approval in the editorials of many leading newspapers around the country except for, predictably, the Wall Street Journal and the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. The dissenters on the Supreme Court, notably Justice Scalia, and the Sentinel attacked the decision on the basis that it gives aid and comfort to our enemy (never mind that it was the right thing to do). These folks have forgotten the lessons of John Adams. He defended a group of British soldiers who, upon being attacked and clubbed by an out-of-control mob in Boston, fired back (without orders) in self defense. Although vilified for this very unpopular stance, Adams won an acquittal for the soldiers. His character in defending justice for even the enemies of our country was later recognized by our citizens who voted him as the second president of our country.
Finally we must remember that the detainees in Guantanamo, some of them imprisoned for more than six years, have been convicted of no crimes at this point and fall under the ancient American credo that such are innocent until proven guilty. Let them face fair court proceedings with competent defense counsel to resolve their cases. Even with suspected Nazi war criminals, we had the wisdom at Nuremberg to give them a fair trial. And I point out that some of them were acquitted! America must live up to its own ideals. We simply cannot adopt the despicable practices of our enemies because to do so would put us in the same lawless category as they. We are better than that as this very conservative Supreme Court has reminded us once again.
------------------------------
Dr. J. Eugene Fox is a retired professor of biochemistry and a medical scientist who spent two years in Washington, D.C., as director of the cell biology program for the National Science Foundation. The Grand Junction resident writes a column twice a month for the Grand Junction Free Press.
