John
Roberts and Enemy Combatants
By
Chris Floyd
08/19/05
"Counterpunch" -- -- The United States long ago
ceased to be anything like a living, thriving republic. But it
retained the legal form of a republic, and that counted for
something: as long as the legal form still existed, even as a
gutted shell, there was hope it might be filled again one day with
substance.
But now the very legal
structures of the Republic are being dismantled. The principle of
arbitrary rule by an autocratic leader is being openly
established, through a series of unchallenged executive orders,
perverse Justice Department rulings and court decisions by
sycophantic judges who defer to power - not law - in their
determinations. What we are witnessing is the creation of a
"Commander-in-Chief State," where the form and pressure
of law no longer apply to the president and his designated agents.
The rights of individuals are no longer inalienable, nor are their
persons inviolable; all depends on the good will of the Commander,
the military autocrat.
George W. Bush has granted
himself the power to declare anyone on earth - including any
American citizen - an "enemy combatant," for any reason
he sees fit. He can render them up to torture, he can imprison
them for life, he can even have them killed, all without charges,
with no burden of proof, no standards of evidence, no legislative
oversight, no appeal, no judicial process whatsoever except those
that he himself deigns to construct, with whatever limitations he
cares to impose. Nor can he ever be prosecuted for any order he
issues, however criminal; in the new American system laid out by
Bush's legal minions, the Commander is sacrosanct, beyond the
reach of any law or constitution.
This is not hyperbole. It is
simply the reality of the United States today. The principle of
unrestricted presidential power is now being codified into law and
incorporated into the institutional structures of the state, as
Deep Blade Journal reports in an excellent compendium of recent
outrages against liberty.
For example, on July 15, a panel
of federal appellate court judges upheld Bush's sovereign right to
dispose of "enemy combatants" any way he pleases, the
Washington Post reports. In a chilling decision, the judges ruled
that the Commander's arbitrarily designated "enemies"
are non-persons: neither the Geneva Conventions nor American
military and domestic law apply to such garbage. Bush is now free
to subject anyone he likes to the "military tribunal"
system he has concocted - a brutal sham that some top retired
military officials have denounced as a "kangaroo court"
that will be used by tyrants around the world to "hide their
oppression under U.S. precedent."
One of the kowtowing jurists on
the appeals panel was none other than John G. Roberts. Four days
after he affirmed Bush's autocratic powers, Roberts was duly
awarded with a nomination to the Supreme Court. Now he will be
sitting in final judgment on this case - and any other challenges
to Bush's peremptory commands. This is what is known, in the
tyrant trade, as "a safe pair of hands."
The ruling by Roberts and his
fellow Republican jurists ignores the fact that the Geneva
Conventions - which lay down strict guidelines for the handling of
any person detained by military forces, regardless of the
captive's status - have been incorporated into the U.S. legal
code, as Deep Blade points out. They cannot be abrogated by
presidential fiat. And anyone who commits a "grave
breach" of the Conventions - by facilitating the killing,
torture or inhuman treatment of detainees (e.g., stripping them of
all legal status and subjecting them to rigged tribunals) - is
subject to the death penalty under American law.
This is why the Bush Faction
labored so mightily to advance the absurd fiction that the Geneva
Conventions are somehow voluntary - while simultaneously
promulgating the sinister Fuhrerprinzip of unlimited presidential
authority. The fiction was a temporary sop to the crumbling legal
form of the Republic, a cynical perversion of existing law to keep
justice at bay until the Fuhrerprinzip could be firmly established
as the new foundation of the state.
It doesn't matter anymore if the
president's orders to suspend the Conventions, construct a
worldwide gulag, torture captives, spy on Americans, fabricate
intelligence and wage aggressive war are illegal under the
"quaint" strictures of the old dispensation; the courts,
packed with Bushist cadres, are now affirming the new order, the
"critical authority" of the Commander, beyond law and
morality, on the higher plane of what Bush calls "the path of
action."
This phrase - with its
remarkable Mussolinian echoes - was incorporated into the official
"National Security Strategy of the United States,"
promulgated by Bush in September 2002. That document in turn was
drawn largely from a manifesto issued in September 2000 by a Bush
Faction group whose members included Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld,
Paul Wolfowitz and Jeb Bush. Their plan, often detailed here,
envisioned the transformation of America into a militarized state:
planting "military footprints" throughout Central Asia
and the Middle East, invading Iraq (even if Saddam Hussein was
already gone), expanding the nuclear arsenal, massively increasing
the defense budget - and predicating all these
"revolutionary" changes on the hopes for "a new
Pearl Harbor" that would "catalyze" the lazy
American public into supporting the militarist agenda.
This agenda is designed, the
group said, to establish "full spectrum dominance" over
geopolitical affairs, assuring control of world energy resources
and precluding the rise of "any potential global rival"
that might threaten the unchecked wealth and privilege of the
American elite. The rule of law could only be a hindrance to such
a scheme; hence its replacement by the Fuhrerprinzip and the
"path of action."
There has been virtually no
institutional resistance to this open coup d'etat. It's now clear
that the American Establishment - and a significant portion of the
American people - have given up on the democratic experiment. They
no longer wish to govern themselves; they want to be ruled, by
"strong leaders" who will "do whatever it
takes" to protect them from harm and keep them in clover.
They have sold their golden birthright of American liberty for a
mess of coward's pottage.
Chris Floyd is a
columnist for The Moscow Times and regular contributor to
CounterPunch. "Empire Burlesque," his blog of political
news and comment, can be found at www.empireburlesquenow.blogspot.
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