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Military Commissions Act of 2006

I hope my disgust has not gotten the best of my rationality, but regardless of my political views, as a human being this makes me physically sick.

Some notes from a New York Times editorial:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

What many of the discussions seem to be missing is the discrepancy between detainee (in administration-speak "unlawful enemy combatant"--just as those cleared of wrongdoing by military tribunals are "no longer enemy combatants." Cleared of wrongdoing. Innocent. No longer enemy combatant. Right.) and terrorist. A detainee is not necessarily a terrorist; hundreds of detainees have been released from Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds more remain. There are some bad people being held, to be sure, but there are also some good, or at the very least neutral people being held as well. And our representative government--our voice in defining the law--has declared that all those people can now be held until they die. And that government officials are welcome to abuse those people without repercussions, unless the abuse is "grave." Should that abuse be aimed at producing confessions, such confessions will be permissible as evidence in front of a military tribunal, as will be information which can be kept confidential from them. And none of this procedure will matter anyway because they can still be detained and abused even if cleared of any wrongdoing in a trial where centuries of legal developments in the field of evidentiary law are discarded and the trier of fact is not truly a disinterested, impartial third party. And remember, these are people, some of whom may be guilty of horrible crimes, true, but some of whom may have been fleeing the chaos that this struggle has brought to an already imbalanced part of the world, or sold to the government for reward money, or simply picked up for no reason at all.

The talk show hosts say why should we afford these people rights that they would not afford us, these people who wage war out of uniform and outside the laws of war, placing civilians in harm's way and killing indiscriminately? I say (1) because it is not only "these people" that we are affording such rights, but also the innocent, (2) because we are not them. An eye for an eye makes the world blind. Trite but true.

There are other arguments, of course. I hardly claim to present an exhaustive list, particularly given the hour. But it is true that by weakening our own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions (and make no mistake about it, we are), other governments may invoke that same interpretation against us when we engage in actual war (not just a "use of force" or a war on a tactic) again and thereby possibly avoid international sanctions (although there are arguments to be made that both sides would be deserving of sanctions in such case). It is also true that the more depraved (strong language but perhaps not strong enough) our own government becomes, the easier a time recruiters for the other side will have. It is NOT, however, unAmerican to acknowledge the repercussions of our actions nor to oppose government actions which are clearly violative of the basic principles of democracy, and indeed humanity.

Thank you to the following Senators for remembering this:
Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Byrd (D-WV)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Chafee (R-RI)
Clinton (D-NY)
Conrad (D-ND)
Dayton (D-MN)
Dodd (D-CT)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Obama (D-IL)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Wyden (D-OR)

Finally, the close to the above New York Times editorial I quoted:

Americans of the future ... [will] know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy...

I can't help but feel responsible. This is not a matter of politics, but of simple human decency.