The Padilla Omen
Published Oct 8, 2005 11:19 PM
The recent appeals court decision in the case of Jose Padilla,
which okays the right of the government to imprison an American citizen,
indefinitely, without ever formally charging or trying that person, is a
judicial omen that should mark the death knell of the Constitution.
Jose
Padilla, who has been in U.S. custody for over three years, was initially held
on charges that he plotted with al-Qaeda to detonate a so-called “dirty
bomb.” (One wonders, is there ever a “clean”
one?)
Padilla’s arrest came at a time when the U.S. Justice
Department, which had dropped the ball on 9/11, was busting people, especially
those of Arab descent, on any conceivable charge, many of which have fallen
apart in the years since 9/11.
Some national newspapers protested the
Padilla ruling, calling it an affront to the Constitution and a threat to the
nation’s citizens. Surprisingly, many of these same papers reported,
months ago, that the Bush administration lost in the Hamdi and Rasul cases, and
their most recent tone suggests surprise at the Padilla decision.
Yet the
Padilla and Hamdi cases are closer than they appear, and the administration
actually lost far less than the newspaper reports suggested.
In the Hamdi
decision, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that citizenship was no bar to the type
of imprisonment that Padilla suffers. In their words:
“There is no
bar to this Nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy
combatant. In [Exparte] Quirin [a case involving Nazi saboteurs—maj], one
of the detain ees, Haupt, alleged that he was a naturalized United States
citizen... We held that ‘[c]itizens who associate themselves with the
military arm of the enemy governments, and with its aid, guidance and direction
enter this country bent on hostile acts, are enemy belligerents within the
meaning of ... the law of war.’ ... While Haupt was tried for violations
of the law of war, nothing in Quirin suggests that his citizenship would have
precluded his mere detention for the duration of the relevant
hostilities.”
The Hamdi/Rasul cases blithely suggest that
“detention isn’t punishment” but a “temporary war
measure”— a kind of “protective custody.”
The last
time the court came to such a conclusion wasn’t Quirin, but the infamous
Korematsu case, where Japanese-Americans, men, women and children, were sent to
concentration camps across the country, essentially because they were
Japanese.
There were no trials. No hearings. No due process.
There
was Executive Order #9066. Period.
In the words of Gen. John L. DeWitt,
“The Japanese race is an enemy race, and while many second and third
generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States
citizenship, have become ‘Americanized’, the racial strains are
undiluted.”
Guilty of Japaneseness, thousands were put in
camps.
How many Americans are now guilty of being Muslims?
How many
Muslim and Arab-Americans have had their “rights” denied since
9/11?
In the blizzard of news around Katrina and Rita, many of us
haven’t heard of Padilla’s fate.
Knowing what we now know
about the lies that led to a war that has meant death for tens of thousands of
people, can you blindly trust the government? Can any court that claims to
defend the Constitution allow an American citizen to be consigned to a U.S.
dungeon, simply on the president’s say-so?
If the Padilla case is
any example, the answer is yes.
The implications of this should send
shivers down your spine.
This government, which has brought Chaos into
being since its “election,” now decides who it can detain, and why.
Essentially forever.
This is a judicially-approved recipe for madness.
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