Decimating the Constitution with Military Tribunals

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 01 Oct 2006 12:26:59 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Jacob G. Hornberger at The Future of Freedom Foundation - there's lots of noise about the "torture bill" right now, and rightly so, but this is the first essay that I deemed worthy of a link. What we're talking about here is S. 3930, the "Military Commissions Act of 2006". It passed the House as H.R. 6166, and is currently on the President's desk. I expect that he'll sign it. [cafe]

Mr. Hornberger is one of the few commentors on this bill who makes it clear that it currently applies only to foreign nationals. He also does a good job of describing why it is still really bad news. All they need to do is strip you of your citizenship, or remove the word "alien" from this "law" by unanimous consent in the dead of night, and it will apply to us all. Be accused of having "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States", and you go before a military tribunal, with no habeus corpus, no appeal, and few rights. Can you say "Enabling Act"? Though you could.

Equally important, under America's criminal-justice system these rights inure to any person, including foreign citizens, whom federal officials charge with a crime. That point shocks some Americans. They cannot believe that foreigners accused of a crime are guaranteed the same procedural rights as Americans who are accused of a crime. But it's true -- and it has long been one of great hallmarks of America's criminal-justice system. It is something that Americans can take pride in.

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The military tribunals that Bush and the Congress are setting up will supposedly be used only on foreigners, not on Americans accused of terrorism. The reason for that differentiation in treatment is political -- the feds know that Americans are less likely to object to this new judicial system if Americans think that will be applied only to "other people," not to them.

How can such a system be reconciled with the legal principle of equal application of the law and the political principle of the rule of law? Answer: It cannot be. Suppose there is a conspiracy to commit terrorism consisting of both foreigners and Americans. The accused will be placed in two lines -- just like at the arrival section at U.S. international airports. In one line will be those who have foreign passports -- they will go to the kangaroo military tribunals for conviction and punishment. In another line will be those who have U.S. passports -- they will go to the federal courts -- well, until federal officials decide that Americans terrorists should be treated no differently than foreign terrorists. And that will be the day when Americans start to recognize more clearly the consequences of having permitted the Congress, the president, and the Pentagon to have hijacked their criminal-justice system and decimated the judicial principles that formed the founding of our nation.

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