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The case for detaining Jose Padilla in a military prison for over three years without benefit of due process rests on the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution (AUMF), which reads:
"[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons _he_ determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."(emphasis added)
If the above sentence is constitutionally valid, and it is constitutionally valid to be at war with a non-nation/state entity, then Padilla is lawfully detained.
I am not the scholar to say whether or not giving such broad and vaguely termed powers to the executive is constitutionally valid. However, given my limited understanding of the checks and balances built into that venerable document, our Constitution, it would seem this section of the AUMF violates constitutional principle.
Further, there exists no convincing argument that it is legal, reasonable or even sane to consider war to be applicable to non-nation/state entities. The rational and reasonable grounds for fighting al Queda as a collective and it's members as individuals is through a) conspiracy law where the issue is with a citizen of the United States, b) where the persons in question are not U.S. nationals, international diplomacy and assisting other nations with enforcement of their laws by which conspiring to kill innocents is universally prohibited.
Given that the current administration, as well as the majority of representatives in both the House and the Senate, subscribe to a "We are the world's policeman" ideology most articulately presented by the Plan for the New American Century (PNAC), and likewise given that so many of our elected representatives, and so too, presumably, our fellow countrymen, fail to see the evil and dangers of taking such a position, it is no surprise that few have the will to question the basic assumption, but I will phrase it for you nonetheless: Are there legal, reasonable, sane grounds on which to define as "war" our effort to bring to justice the architects of the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center?
The legal, reasonable, sane and moral answer is a clear and resounding, "No."
By allowing such efforts to be couched in terms of war we have allowed an immoral and power drunk element of our society to take the steering wheel of our nation and to frame all dissent thereto as treasonous, and so we have each of us become complicit in the crimes of that immoral and power drunk element. The "war" in Afghanistan never offered any hope of permanently defeating a shadow organization such as al Queda. Likewise for the war in Iraq, even if we credit such a goal as the motivation behind our continued illegal military occupation of that country. On the contrary, such acts of arrogance and belligerence can only fuel the fire, can only increase the perception in the eyes of people who might otherwise have shunned al Queda and their ilk that we are indeed the evil empire and that a blow struck against our citizens is a blow struck for justice.
I have used the inclusive pronoun throughout most of this, not because of any affirmative act or support on my part for these crimes committed and being committed in our names, but because my will to speak out against these crimes was overshadowed by fear. I have even been in fear of physical violence against my person, in late 2001, for suggesting then what I say now about the fruits of invading Afghanistan. I still would think twice before verbalizing what I write here.
Legally it is the flimsiest nonsense to grant war powers to the executive to pursue international criminals; it is dangerous nonsense, nonsense which puts you and me and all our fellow citizens at grave risk by deteriorating our civil liberties and by increasing the palpable anti-American sentiment that spreads like a plague wherever PNAC has its way.
Jose Padilla is clearly an international criminals, perhaps not directly involved with the destruction of the World Trade Center four years and one day ago, but clearly conspiring to bring more of same to the extent of his abilities; he should be accordingly charged, tried and punished. It is farcical, however, to even so much as declare his acts treasonous on their face; he posed no threat to the nation as a whole, whatever threat he posed to the individuals who would have been killed by his intended acts. To hold Padilla's acts as inherently treasonous, on the reasoning that to injure a citizen is to injure the nation, would expose every petty thug to the same charge. That the rhetoric of the organization of international criminals with whom Padilla affiliated is rhetoric of "destroying the United States" does not in fact mean that said organization approaches having any such power or in any reasonable fashion can be raised to the status of an entity with which the United States can legally or even rationally war. Padilla was in possession of no vital state secrets, was not privy to information that could reasonably or even arguably affect security of a legitimately national character.
Padilla's detention and the current legal proceedings related thereto are simply and clearly a case of history's most spectacular international crime being used to justify the world police ideology of PNAC and fellow travelers. Padilla qua Padilla may be of little strategic importance even in the goal of bringing to justice the international criminals of al Queda; the truly important issue raised by this man's three year detention without due process is how long America, my country, will stand to be run by representatives with such frighteningly deficient moral development, by men and women of such stunted thinking ability as to not cry out against the nonsense of granting war powers to combat international conspiracy, by fellow citizens who for one reason or another seem not to care for protecting the liberties that, if real and present, would give this nation it's only reason for pride, and if absent give this nation reason for nothing but shame.
References:
Padilla v Hanft: http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/056396.P.pdf
PNAC: http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
Framing: http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/gwot_rip/view?searchterm=frame
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