|
Americans seem ready to forfeit their most basic
civil liberty -- actually, all their civil liberties -- without a whimper.
By a vote of 93-7 the Senate this month approved a
military appropriations bill empowering the government to designate any U.S.
citizen within the country as a terrorist and to have the military hold him
indefinitely without trial and without the right to habeas corpus, the right
to be brought before a court for a judgment on the legality of one's
imprisonment.
In effect the legislation is a declaration of
martial law throughout the country.
The bill still has to be reconciled by a conference
committee with a different version passed by the House of Representatives.
But even Connecticut U.S. Rep. Joseph D. Courtney, a liberal Democrat and a
member of the committee, plans to support the martial law provision and
expects it to be enacted. Courtney, who used to be a lawyer, cites as
consolation the money contained in the bill for Connecticut military
contractors, tens of millions of dollars for jet fighter engines manufactured
by the Pratt & Whitney division of United Technologies Corp. in East
Hartford and for nuclear submarines made by the Electric Boat division of
General Dynamics in Groton.
At least Connecticut's junior senator,
Richard Blumenthal, was one of the lonely seven senators who voted against
martial law. Connecticut's senior senator, Joseph I. Lieberman, who also used
to be a lawyer but now is the Senate's foremost advocate of perpetual
imperial war, voted for it.
The Constitution prohibits suspension of the right
of habeas corpus "unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the
public safety may require it." While habeas corpus was suspended in
certain circumstances during the Civil War, there is no rebellion or invasion
now and no impairment of the criminal-justice system, and the mere danger of
terrorism does not constitute rebellion or invasion.
President Obama is threatening to veto the
legislation but not so much for its suspension of habeas corpus. Rather, the
bill is objectionable to the president because it would prevent the government
from transferring terrorism suspects from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
to installations in the United States, even for trial.
If the bill becomes law the president and his
successors will gain dictatorial power, the power exercised by the worst
tyrants in history -- Hitler, Stalin, and Mao -- the power to kidnap anyone
off the street or out of his own home and lock him away incommunicado
forever. The president will be able to do that even to members of Congress
themselves, and while it would suit them right for enacting such an
abomination, Americans better rise up and stop it if they don't want the
country to slip into totalitarianism as Germany did in similar circumstances
in 1933.
First the German people were demoralized and
deprived of economic security by hyperinflation and depression. Then they
were frightened into submission by the burning of the parliament building in
Berlin, which was opportunistically depicted by the National
Socialist-dominated coalition government as Communist Party terrorism and
used as the pretext for a proclamation, issued the next day, suspending all
civil liberties, including, specifically, habeas corpus. Three weeks later
the Nazis persuaded parliament to surrender its power through the infamous
Enabling Act, allowing the Nazi chancellor to rule by decree. He did so for
12 more years.
Eventually one of those decrees was the "Night
and Fog" decree, under which people across Europe simply disappeared,
never to be seen again.
Americans may have some vague awareness of the
horror perpetrated by Germany back then. But do they have any idea of how
closely they are following the Germans in what led to it? Our politicians
don't seem to have any idea.
Republicans who scream about the supposed
oppressiveness of a government that would require everyone to have medical
insurance are rushing to give that government the power to make people
disappear. And Democrats who chafe at the government's refusal to recognize
same-sex marriage are ready to forfeit the longest-established and most
substantial liberties because a free society can never eliminate the danger
that someone can plant a bomb somewhere -- though a totalitarian society
can't eliminate it either.
No amount of military contracting in Connecticut can
be worth even a day without due process of law. The purpose of military
contracting is to protect the country, and without due process of law the
country will not be worth protecting.
-----
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal
Inquirer.
|
