The idea being that by continuing to work at the faulty mechanisms of the Law, "we" can -- somehow -- reverse the tide. As was done by our sainted ancestors, so let it be done by ourselves and our progeny.
Uhhhh. I think not. Not this time.
We've been in full reverse when it comes to most issues of Rights and Liberties for some time, and there seems to be a ratchet-effect to prevent any significant restoration. Once a Right or Liberty is extinguished, it is not restorable, not in any sensible way. Given that habeas is the core legal Right from which all others are derived, its extinguishment and faulty "restoration" should be instructive.
But oddly, it's not.
So this is where we are: Chris Floyd has written an outstanding -- and horrifying -- examination of just what our Law Lords are telling us:
The president's war powers cannot be constrained by the international laws of war. Whatever the Leader (no points for translating this term into German) decides to do in the course of a war is thus rendered entirely "legal." He cannot be accused of international war crimes because such things do not apply to him.
With this ruling -- which is all of a piece with many more that have preceded it -- we are well and truly "past the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm." What is most frightening, of course, is the obscene philosophy of machtpolitik -- the craven kowtowing to the demands of brute force -- that is embodied in Judge Brown's chilling words: "War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust."
Again, remember the context of this ruling. It deals with the Leader's power over foreign citizens in lands that the Leader's armies are occupying. The judicial "reasoning" expressed by Judge Brown could apply, without the slightest alteration, to the Nazi regime's various programs of mass killing and "indefinite detention" of "enemy" foreigners in occupied lands.
The "resettlement" of Eastern Europe -- in order to provide for the "national security" of the German people and the preservation of their "way of life" -- did indeed require a pathbreaking advance into a "new paradigm" on the part of the law. The exigencies and challenges of the war demanded, as Judge Brown would put it, that "new rules be written."
And what were those preceding rulings?
Let's have Chris speak to that as well:
[O]ur most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.
Here's how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.
This extraordinary ruling occasioned none of those deep-delving "process stories" that glut the pages of the New York Times, where the minutiae of policy-making or political gaming is examined in highly-spun, microscopic detail doled out by self-interested insiders. Obviously, giving government the power to render whole classes of people "unpersons" was not an interesting subject for our media arbiters. It was news that wasn't fit to print. Likewise, the ruling provoked no thundering editorials in the Washington Post, no savvy analysis from the high commentariat -- and needless to say, no outrage whatsoever from all our fierce defenders of individual liberty on the Right.
And that's where we are, legally. It's not just a matter of tormenting the Foreign Devils and denying their human and legal rights. These rulings can literally apply to anyone at any time at the sole Pleasure and Command of the President-Emperor. There is no redress. There is not even the possibility of it.
This is the definition of tyranny, enshrined by our Law Lords.
Even during the darkest days of our Long National Nightmare under Bush and Cheney there was hope that their tyrannical designs would be thwarted, if not by the People, then by the Courts. And from time to time, the Courts would render hope-inducing opinions that seemed to at least temporarily thwart the more outrageous designs of our would be tyrants. Of course Bush and Cheney and their minions would find work-arounds, but the impression was left that in the end, the Courts would uphold the basic rights and liberties found in the Constitution and the various treaties to which the United States has long been party, but with these rulings -- with no doubt more to come -- the Courts are saying, "Ha ha, sucker! NO!"
Executive tyranny is being upheld and extended, casually, off-handedly. As if it were perfectly Normal.
And in fact, the whole point has long been to Normalize the Inconceivable.
These rulings, if allowed to stand -- and there is no reason to think they won't be -- constitute the "legal" dismantling of the Constitutional Rule of Law and the substitution of "Law" by Executive Fiat and Command. It is now Normalized that the Word of the Leader is itself "Law," by definition.
And with the exception of a few Internet cranks and civil liberties extremists, no one notices.
Do we ever have a Real Problem.
As always, the question is what do you do about it, especially when the Institutions relied on to correct such problems are themselves part of the problem.
And indeed, isn't it interesting that the Thundering Rightists have nothing to say about this at all. Why you'd almost think they were unconcerned about their dreaded Socialist Nemesis Fascist Obama "unpersoning" them.
Why would that be, I wonder...?
No comments:
Post a Comment