It’s a real shame that on the eve of the Fourth of July, wherein we celebrate our nation’s highest ideals, our top political leaders attack them. Yesterday, Senators Mitch McConnell, John McCain and Lindsay Graham attacked the Supreme Court for insisting that our government follow not only its own laws (the Uniform Code of Military Justice), but also those of a binding legal treaty to which we have long been a signatory, the Geneva Accords.
Instead these Senators, along with President Bush, would have us try our military prisoners in secret courts, unilaterally developed by the president, which deny even the smallest amount of due process. It is so bad, so unfair that even the military lawyers object to the rank injustice. The accused have no right to be present for the trial or to see all the evidence against them. It is so bad that not a single case has been tried.
As Justice Stephen G. Breyer said, "Where, as here, no emergency prevents consultation with Congress, judicial insistence upon that consultation does not weaken our Nation's ability to deal with danger. To the contrary, that insistence strengthens the Nation's ability to determine -- through democratic means -- how best to do so.”
McConnell is concerned that American servicemen could potentially be accused of war crimes. But that is what treaties are all about. We therefore do unto others what we want, and through the treaties expect, in return. What McConnell demands violates fundamental fairness as well as national and international law, and as such is truly contrary to the spirit of the American ideals bequeathed by our forefathers.
And if you accept McCain’s argument that the decision “is somewhat of a departure…of people who are stateless terrorists” then you reject the very notion that we are in a war at all, for a state of war demands a concrete declaration against a defined other state. He, and Bush, cannot have it both ways.
Either we are at war, which Bush has declared since 9/11, wherein all prisoners are due the protections of our own law, the UCMJ, and the Geneva Accords, or we are not at war, and those prisoners are treated instead as common criminals in international courts of law.
It is anti-American to denigrate our inherent values and diminish our system of justice. Bush was wrong to have done so all this time. That is what the Supreme Court has said. Yet our leading Senators persist in making America less than America.
This, on the eve of the Fourth.
Rfd 7.4.06
2 comments:
Do your homework. The supreme court was way out of control. You need to stop swollowing the stuff CNN and AP puts out.
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/contentDisplay.asp?aid=22131
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ZTYwOTYzMWY5NGZlNDM0MTg2MDc3ZjkxYmI4ZmY4NmU=
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1153AP_Guantanamo_Whats_Next.html
Thank you for the links to those articles. There are some legitimate points, but one could argue similarly on about ANY Supreme Court case. Jurisdiction? What jurisdiction could it have had in the Al Gore Florida vote re-count case? These writers preferred a different outcome so they grasp at any straw on which they have the appearance of some validity.
The National Review makes a ludicrous argument in assuming all prisoners have automatically done the horrors described therein (executions, etc.). THAT is the point of fair trials.
The Geneva Accords, and our own Military Code likewise envisioned this scenario, where prisoners would be tried before being found guilty. This is fundamental.
America never loses by being fair. Thanks again.
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