The three year detention of Yaser Hamdi was a total victory for the Bush Administration. By incarcerating Hamdi without due process, Bush and co. proved that an American citizen can be stripped of his constitutional protections and dispatched according to the whims of the government. No civil liberties organization or human rights group made a bit of difference. Even the pompous braying of the Supreme Court fell on deaf ears and was breezily ignored. Hamdi was simply locked away in solitary confinement and released when they were through with him. The rest is just rubbish.
For all practical purposes, the rule of law is DOA in America. It is the most striking casualty in the apocryphal war on terror. Whatever rights are left are not of the “inalienable” variety. They are more akin to “civilian privileges”; the provisional gifts of the state that can be quickly rescinded when the faintest hint of suspicion attaches itself to the person in question. “Rights” have no place in Bush’s grand scheme, aside from their rhetorical value in his speeches to the nation.
The Hamdi case was critical in establishing an important precedent; the precedent of robbing the citizen of his rights at the president’s discretion. Following Hamdi we can expect that this standard will be more loosely applied to criminals and, perhaps, political opponents.
Is that an exaggeration?
Consider this: Hamdi never was a threat to the US, that’s why he was kept in a Navy brig rather than in Guantanamo where he would have been exposed to the same regime of abuse and interrogation as the other prisoners. He was (according to NPR accounts) simply in “the wrong place at the wrong time”; picked up off the battlefield by one of many warlords who used him for ransom to the US.
His case had nothing to do with terrorism. If it did the Administration would be boasting of the “terror plot” they had broken up, saving the American people from “imminent doom” once again. We can also be certain that Hamdi was never actively engaged in hostilities towards the US. If he had, he would never again see the light of day (as is true with prisoners in Iraqi prisons that were actively involved in the insurgency)
Hamdi is simply an arbitrary figure who provided the opportunity to dismantle the law under the rubric of the “war on terror”. Now that his purpose has been served, he can be dumped in Saudi Arabia and forgotten. The precedent he established, however, is left behind, overshadowing the institutions that once protected the citizen from the intimidating grasp of the state.
We should wonder where the germ for Hamdi’s detention first originated. Neither the Patriot Act, nor the “war on terror”, nor “enemy combatant”, simply emerged in response to circumstances. Each is a thoughtfully crafted expression intended to savage fundamental democratic principles.
These “euphemisms” are clearly the brainchild of the many “right-wing” think tanks; those corporate funded organizations that are moving our political system to a more autocratic form of government. The primary functions of the “think tank” are to weaken the rule of law, shift the nation’s wealth towards the corporate elite and, most significantly, create the language and logic of aggression. (ie “preemption”)
The moniker “unlawful combatant” is religiously applied by the Bush administration because it “single-handedly” denies all constitutional protections to the citizen while elevating the President to the “supreme authority”. This allows Bush and his colleagues to bypass any cumbersome rules or laws and dispense justice as they see fit.
The term “unlawful combatant” could as easily be dubbed “the end of the rule of law” since that is what it implies.
When citizens are stripped of their rights, all power is ceded to the state. That’s the real meaning of the Hamdi case and it has struck a blow at the heart of our foundering democracy.
The Supreme Court has scrupulously avoided confrontation with the administration. Apart from their well-rehearsed indignation, their rulings have allowed the Bush depredations to continue unabated.
Judge Antonin Scalia offered this trenchant remark regarding Hamdi; “The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive.”
Judge Sandra Day O’ Conner was equally strident, saying that the war on terror could not be considered a “blank check” for the President in riding roughshod over civil liberties.
Never the less, their ruling provided plenty of room for Bush to circumvent their “stated intentions” and simply do as he pleases. Their duplicitous banalities and “calculated patriotism” paved the way for Hamdi’s expulsion from the country and the subsequent revoking of his citizenship.
The Supreme Court has become, perhaps, the most reliable friend to the despots in Washington.
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