See You At Gitmo.
Keith Olbermann, Special Comment on the Military Commissions Act
â€They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. “
– Benjamin Franklin, in the Penn. Assembly - Reply To Governor
”Go ahead. I dare you.” I told Mary this afternoon at work. “Go on out there and stop someone, and see if they even know what it’s about.” I hooked a thumb out towards the parking lot, snorting derisively.
We were talking about the Military Commissions Act of 2006, colloquially known as “the Torture Bill”. This is the bill wherein the Preznit not only basically legalized torture, but also suspended Habeas Corpus.
Habeas Corpus: In common law countries, habeas corpus, Latin for “you [should] have the body”, is the name of a legal instrument or writ by means of which detainees can seek release from unlawful imprisonment. A writ of habeas corpus is a court order addressed to a prison official (or other custodian) ordering that a detainee be brought to the court so it can be determined whether or not that person is imprisoned lawfully and whether or not he or she should be released from custody. The writ of habeas corpus in common law countries is an important instrument for the safeguarding of individual freedom against arbitrary state action.
The Constitution of the United States of America states, “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.” The Military Commissions Act of 2006 suspends Habeas Corpus. Or, rather, it states, in effect, that the President of the US may, pretty much at will, declare any non-citizen or citizen an “enemy combatant”, and cycle that person into one of our prison camps, to be detained indefinitely without representation, without seeing the evidence posed against them, without Habeas Corpus. This Act allows the President of the United States to turn you into an unperson. The President can make you disappear.
I can’t find any words large enough to describe how much this scares me. This scares me more than terrorists could ever dream of frightening me. This scares me more than anything else I’ve ever encountered. It scares me down to the marrow of my bones. It makes me sick to my stomach with fear.
No, I am not exaggerating, or being overly dramatic. This is serious, people. This isn’t about jokes and sarcasm and anger, this isn’t about politics or bad language or religion — these are our rights I’m talking about. These are our essential civil liberties, the things we built a country out of, the summations of our hopes as a nation. This is what our forefathers lived and died for. This is what our elementary school teachers taught us that we fought a whole war over. This is about the fundamental spirit of America.
The Bush Administration has systematically stripped away our rights and civil liberties, and we have allowed it. We have ignored them while they did it. We have allowed it because they made us afraid of the Boogieman terrorists hiding in our closets. We have been afraid, and we have allowed our government to harm us far, far more than any terrorist ever could. We have allowed our government to rip the very foundations of America out from underneath of us.
It boggles my mind that there is not rioting in the streets of America. I find it utterly astounding that we have not risen up, marched across this nation, and advanced on the hills of Congress en masse, bearing pitchforks and torches, demanding the heads of this Administration. Do you people not see what they are doing?
This nation has faced dark times before, certainly. We’ve done horrible things in the past, too. This isn’t the first time we’ve rounded innocent people up into our very own concentration camps. This isn’t even the first time we’ve suspended Habeas Corpus. But this might just be the first time our government has done such awful things to the American people, and we sat silently by and allowed it — applauded it, even.
Even if you support this Administration — although I rather doubt I have anyone who does reading this, but even if you do, think what you have allowed. Sure, you may trust this government with the power we’ve given it . . . but what about the next guy? Or the next? Or the next? The government now has the power to declare any citizen to be an “enemy”, and detain them indefinitely without access to a fair trial or a lawyer or the presumption of innocence, and subject them to torture, while meanwhile tapping in on their families’ phones and emails, and seizing their assets and properties without restriction, and all of that with no Congressional oversight. No, seriously.
Bill of Rights? Doesn’t exist anymore. That’s the power we’ve handed over to our government, the power that our Founding Fathers never, ever intended an American government to have over it’s citizens.
How could we? At what point do “We the People” stand up and draw a line in the dirt? At what point to we wake up and say, “Oh my god, what have we done? No more!” How far is too far? When people actually are “disappearing”? When they contrive to cancel elections? When they place us under martial law? When it’s just too damned late? When do “We the People” stop and say to ourselves, “You know, my grandparents and great grandparents and great great grandparents to the nth degree did not live and die and bleed and sweat to earn these rights that I so casually enjoy so that I could toss them away because American Idol was more interesting.”
Aren’t we better than that? Aren’t we greater than that? Or is it true — are we all fat, lazy, arrogant, ignorant slobs who just flat out don’t deserve what we had, and therefore don’t need to worry about ever getting those rights back?
Didn’t we used to be the good guys? When history writes our story, will it tell how we rose up, in one voice, and declared, “No more!” and slapped our wayward government back into it’s place, or will it tell the Orwellian story of the evil Capitalist ancestors we “conquered”, so we could all live safely and happily, baaa-ing in service to Big Brother?
Am I really the only one here who looks at what our government and nation is doing, and is so terribly frightened of it? Am I really the only one of us, the common folks, the average people, who sees the slow, step-by-step progression into Communist Russia?
How does the saying go . . . “He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” Friedrich Nietzsche said that. We are becoming the monsters.
Keith Olbermann, “Why Does Habeas Corpus Hate America?”
Keith Olbermann reviews the repercussions of the Military Commissions Act.
October 19th, 2006 at 2:50 pm
I don’t know anyone who *hasn’t* heard about this.. but what’s worse, they don’t really seem to give a damn.
It appears that american idol or whatever *is* more important to them… as long as they eat and are entertained..”whetever, dude”.
this rule won’t get overturned anytime soon, by repub or dem.. it’s too damn useful to whoever the big man on campus is to get rid of.
I feel tha tthe best you can do is to be well known by your friends, and have peopoe ready to cry out when someone you love (or even just you) is taken away, never to be seen or heard from again, by the men in black.
October 21st, 2006 at 12:53 pm
I don’t know anyone who *hasn’t* heard about this.. but what’s worse, they don’t really seem to give a damn.
Yeah, that’s about what I’ve run into, as well. I’ll mention it, and people have heard about it, but don’t know what it means. I explain, and most people respond with, “Oh, they can’t do that.” Well, yes, now they can. Legally. It’s “stick-your-head-in-the-sand-syndrome.”
this rule won’t get overturned anytime soon, by repub or dem.. it’s too damn useful to whoever the big man on campus is to get rid of.
Exactly. That’s what I was telling my hubby the other day. It’s too much power — nobody gives up that kind of power without a fight.
I feel tha tthe best you can do is to be well known by your friends, and have peopoe ready to cry out when someone you love (or even just you) is taken away, never to be seen or heard from again, by the men in black.
This means I have to start being nice to my customers, doesn’t it?