America is a ‘battlefield’? Oh boy.
Lots of drama now around the Defense Reauthorization Bill, a provision of which gives the US government the right to detail without charge anyone, including American citizens in this country, without charge, as long as they are suspected of being or aiding a terrorist. Some say no, the bill exempts US citizens. The ACLU contends that this is not true. From the ACLU’s blog:
Don’t be confused by anyone claiming that the indefinite detention legislation does not apply to American citizens. It does. There is an exemption for American citizens from the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032 of the bill), but no exemption for American citizens from the authorization to use the military to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial (section 1031 of the bill). So, the result is that, under the bill, the military has the power to indefinitely imprison American citizens, but it does not have to use its power unless ordered to do so.
But you don’t have to believe us. Instead, read what one of the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Lindsey Graham said about it on the Senate floor: “1031, the statement of authority to detain, does apply to American citizens and it designates the world as the battlefield, including the homeland.”
There you have it — indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial. And the Senate is likely to vote on it Monday or Tuesday.
Today in Washington, Sen. Rand Paul attacked this provision of the bill. John McCain more or less accused him of being soft on terrorism:
Paul argued the amendment, which is cosponsored by McCain, “puts every single American citizen at risk” and suggested that if the amendment passes, “the terrorists have won.”
“Should we err today and remove some of the most important checks on state power in the name of fighting terrorism, well then the terrorists have won,” Paul argued, “[D]etaining American citizens without a court trial is not American.”
McCain, however, who has spent hours of floor time in the last weeks promoting his amendment, hurried to the floor to defend it against Paul’s onslaught.
“Facts are stubborn things,” McCain repeated from the floor several times. “If the senator from Kentucky wants to have a situation prevail where people who are released go back in to the fight to kill Americans, he is entitled to his opinion.”
This is killer:
But McCain ended the conversation by suggesting the junior senator from Kentucky did not understand the gravity of the danger the U.S. faces from terrorism.
“An individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat,” said McCain. ” We need to take every stop necessary to prevent that from happening, that’s for the safety and security of the men and women who are out there risking their lives … in our armed services.”
By any means necessary. Am I actually reading this correctly? Is there no liberty that John McCain would not take away from Americans for our own safety?
Maybe I’m overreacting on this. I don’t like being on the same side as the ACLU, and have a strong mistrust of their alarmism. But I trust Rand Paul far more on civil liberties questions than I trust John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Post clarifying information in the combox if you have it.
I don’t much enjoy being on the same side as Rand Paul, either, but I definitely agree with him on this issue.
Rod, if you are overreacting, so is every news source I’ve looked at that talked about the same bill.
Does anyone believe this bill should be passed into law? Anyone?
Next step: OWS as “domestic terrorists.”
Game over, man.
“indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial”
There’s something striking (and chilling) when you realize/think about how this is actually happening, that it’s real life, not a novel or a debate or an interesting hypothetical or something.
I think it was Jason Kuznicki who a few months back had a post at The League where, if I remember correctly, he wrote about how he basically had this epiphany about how all of this is actually happening and how badly it freaked him out.
If you’re a political and news junkie, I think it can sort of dull your perspective on things. There are new controversies, outrages, allegations and revelations, not even every day, but sometimes multiple times a day. I think everything begins to sort of meld together into one big blob of information, but..
“indefinite military detention of American citizens without charge or trial”
Like…wow. This is actually really going to happen, in real life, in America. It is truly extraordinary. There’s also the despairing irony that it couldn’t happen without the support of “limited government” “conservatives.” Maybe someone should introduce an amendment saying that those detained will be mandated to purchase health insurance..I hear that’s unconstitutional.
Senator McCain has gone off the deep end, as has every senator who votes to pass this bill with the described provision.
Don’t shoot the messenger, Rod. I for one should expect every American worthy of that label to thank Sen. Paul for speaking up against this provision, and I would go so far as to charge every senator who doesn’t join him with incipient violation of their oath of office. It is on its face unconstitutional, the Posse Comitatus act notwithstanding.
It bypasses both the commander-in-chief as the representative of civilian control of the military, and violates every core protection of US justice. Rod, if the ACLU doesn’t attack it immediately upon passage, but especially if Obama fails to veto it, then you have lived to see the death of the American republic.
I intend not one whit of hyperbole. Not one.
Maybe I’m overreacting on this…
Nope, you are right on target. This is exactly the sort of thing the Bill of Rights was designed to protect US citizens against.
Maybe someone should introduce an amendment saying that those detained will be mandated to purchase health insurance.
This is clearly the new leader in the clubhouse for best comment EVAH. Congrats
Time to move to Scandinavia, I have family there on my mom’s side, who I know. If this is where America is headed it is game over. Reading about the exchange between senators Paul and Mc Cain is very disturbing and reviling. The elite view the commoners as enemies and are going to everything possible to protect theirs.
…then you have lived to see the death of the American republic.
Well, I was thinking exactly that, but didn’t write it because it seems too crazy to be true. That’s why I’m asking you readers to send me any links showing that the critics are being alarmist here. The fact that Sen. McCain is trying to shame Sen. Paul into silence by claiming, essentially, that he’s soft on terrorism makes me more sympathetic to Paul.
But if it’s true, it’s true. This sounds like something out of a novel.
Again: if anybody can show that Rand Paul and the ACLU are overreacting, please send in those links. I really hope they are.
“An individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat,” said McCain. ” We need to take every stop necessary to prevent that from happening, that’s for the safety and security of the men and women who are out there risking their lives … in our armed services.
Has John McCain ever asked himself what those men and women are risking their lives for? He’s apparently forgotten the oath he took as a Navy officer to “… support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”. What a pathetic, bitter old man he is. Also can we pass a law making it legal to severely beat anyone who refers to the United States of America as “The homeland”. Seriously, I’m sick of that nonsense.
Re: Well, I was thinking exactly that, but didn’t write it because it seems too crazy to be true.
In a strictly literal sense it is. Republics can be hideously repressive. Islamic Republic of Iran. People’s Republic of China. And so forth.
Perhaps if the term “democracy” were substituted it would be a bit less hyperbolic– and quite bitterly still true.
What mainstream Republicans do not comprehend is that a large, bloated DOD is just as dangerous as the leviathon that has become Washington DC. The fears of the founders of our country now seem to coming to life. Our founders were afraid of large standing armies as a threat to the freedoms that we all take for granted. Legislation like the Patriot Act and the bill desribed in Rod’s post must be defeated. I never thought I’d live to see the day when our own military would be used against the very people it is supposed to protect.
Oh, joy. Just imagine a government that uses this “Defense Reauthorization Act” together with FACE.
It’s at times like this that I DO think that Judgment Day is at hand.
This sounds like something out of a novel.
Actually it sounds like something out of a bad novel, one too shamefully bad to be used as a paperweight or doorstop. This is too ridiculous even for Hollywood. Who but a cartoon villain has the chutzpah to even suggest something like this? This is the kind of thing that happens in a silly fantasy when theocrat thugs take over the government and subject all the decent normal folks to sundry atrocities. And yet it is happening on the watch of one of our most liberal and progressive Presidents, as well as a majority-liberal Congress. Indeed it is becoming baldly apparent that it isn’t Dem vs. Rep, but the elite vs. the rest of us. What are we to tell our children? And what will they tell their children?
Could we please retire the ridiculous word “theocrat” used to describe Republicans? It’s meaningless, truly meaningless. No Republican politician proposes rule by clerics. That is what a theocracy means. Iran is a theocracy. Afghanistan under the Taliban was a theocracy. Just because you don’t happen to like it when Christians get involved in politics, and when politicians actually listen to them, that doesn’t mean we are living in a theocracy. Somehow, I doubt you would have condemned Martin Luther King’s political work as theocratic, nor the work of religious liberals who involve themselves in politics. (Nor, let me be clear, should you.)
I don’t want to derail the thread, but boy, this slur against religious people who involve themselves in politics really chaps me.
(And by the way, I don’t let people use the word “Christianist” on this site. It is a completely meaningless concept, only useful as a slur. “Islamist” has actual meaning as a descriptive word, because there are political parties and movements that wish to make the Koran and shariah the basis for a system of law and government. Nothing like it exists in this country.)
What a pathetic, useless, bitter old hack McCain is. I guess that in addition to going down in history as the man who lost to Barack Obama he’d also like to go down in history as the man who destroyed habeas corpus. I have to say, if I became POTUS the first thing I’d do is invoke this clause and order the military to indefinitely detain anyone who votes for this clause, or who voted for the PATRIOT act. Really, ask yourself this question: is there any group out there that is more of a threat to the life and liberties of US Citizens than the members of our own government?
…then you have lived to see the death of the American republic
Gore Vidal has argued that the American republic died with the establishment of the National Security state after World War II. So, an argument can be made that most of us alive today have never really known the American republic.
Really, ask yourself this question: is there any group out there that is more of a threat to the life and liberties of US Citizens than the members of our own government?
Not Mark Twain, as I first thought, but rather Gideon John Tucker said, “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session,” back in 1866.
With nearly 1/2 of the American people dependent on one government program or the other it comes as no surprise to me that our central government desires to use it’s power to force the individual citizen to conform to it’s will. Recently, the Indiana supreme court upheld the power of local police departments to command individual citizens to do what police tell them to do even if SWAT teams break into the wrong home. Our central government wants to micromanage every part of our lives. Individual rights as enumerated under our Constitution have been declining since the Union won the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln shut down opposition newspapers, threatened Maryland’s governors and legislators with jail if they did not vote to remain in the Union and he even deported an Ohio congressman who voiced oppostion to the war. Like Britain’s Queen who is the nominal ruler of Britain, our presidents, legislators and judges pay nominal homage to our Constitution while ruling as petty tyrants.
They must think that the “citizens” who immigrated here from authoritarian countries now outnumber the natives. Because real Americans – including the “men and women out there who are risking their lives”.- won’t stand for this crap.
Stop immigration, and kick McCain and his kind out of office.
I thought this Star Chamber non-sense ended with the English Civil War. Truly, those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. But in my heart there is a hope, for all mortal plans are fleeting and will follow their progenitors to their graves. God grant us strength to be patient, meek, and faithful.
Woody Weaver wrote:
Individual rights as enumerated under our Constitution have been declining since the Union won the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln shut down opposition newspapers, threatened Maryland’s governors and legislators with jail if they did not vote to remain in the Union and he even deported an Ohio congressman who voiced oppostion to the war.
Plus he took away our rights to own black people and force them to work for us without paying them. Yeah, things sure were better back in the day, before that black Monday in March of 1861 when Lincoln took office. White men could own black people and you didn’t need to worry about women getting all uppity and thinking for themselves, owning property or voting. Plus we didn’t have to take any nonsense from those filthy Irish papists!
Pilgrim wrote:
They must think that the “citizens” who immigrated here from authoritarian countries now outnumber the natives. Because real Americans – including the “men and women out there who are risking their lives”.- won’t stand for this crap.
Stop immigration, and kick McCain and his kind out of office.
Actually from my experience it’s the citizens who immigrated from authoritarian countries who appreciate our freedoms the most. The folks who appreciate them the least seem to be the native born who don’t understand how lucky they are or that freedom means more than the freedom to watch Fox News and then drive down to the local mall on Black Friday buy lots of stuff that you can’t afford and immigrants like Rupert Murdoch, Peter Brimelow and Mark Steyn who appreciate them the least.
I’m actually not surprised at the wording cited above from Graham, even though it is shocking, per se. It seems to me that if one was reading between the lines of some of the military’s doctrinal manuals on intelligence, operations, and information operations for the last decade or so, that one could detect some creep in the direction of declaring the world a battlefield. The definition of a commander’s “battlespace” has been morphing beyond mere geographic parameters for some time. I remember the “global information grid” as a glaring example of this that startled me years ago when I read the new FM 3.0.
This aside, Mr. Dreher, you are not over-reacting. It would be hard to over-react to this. Twenty years ago a bill like this would have existed only in the imagination of a conspiracy nut writing an internet tract about FEMA camps and barcodes on foreheads. Now it’s advocated by senior senators without any hint of irony or shyness. We are living in scary times.
This is depressing in a long line of depressing events. Google laws on structuring financial payments and bulk cash transfer to make your day.
Why do John McCain and Lindsey Graham hate us? They hate us for our freedoms.
But but it will keep my children safe from those brown-skinned moooslems!
Please, someone think of the children!
We shouldn’t limit this debate to indefinite military detention of American citizens only. Indefinite detention of ANY person, American citizen or not, without trial is un-American.
Even the torturing Viet Cong allowed McCain to leave after five years of hell.
““An individual, no matter who they are, if they pose a threat to the security of the United States of America, should not be allowed to continue that threat,” said McCain. ” We need to take every stop necessary to prevent that from happening, that’s for the safety and security of the men and women who are out there risking their lives … in our armed services.” ”
I would say it’s time to lock up John McCain and Lindsey Graham in order to save what’s left of the American republic. They clearly are threats to the security and liberty of American citizens. Put them in the same cell where they can enjoy each other’s company and consumate their relationship.
The bad news and good news: The Senate voted down the Udall amendment to its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would remove the detention provisions. That’s bad enough. The good parts: The bill has not yet been brought before the full Senate for a final vote. The House version of the bill does not include those provisions, so if the current Senate version passes there’s more wrangling before a bill appears on Mr. Obama’s desk. The White House reiterated an earlier veto threat if the provisions are not removed.
Actually from my experience it’s the citizens who immigrated from authoritarian countries who appreciate our freedoms the most. The folks who appreciate them the least seem to be the native born who don’t understand how lucky they are or that freedom means more than the freedom to watch Fox News and then drive down to the local mall on Black Friday buy lots of stuff that you can’t afford
“It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.”
–Eric Hoffer
Remember…this guy was one of two finalists to be President.
So let me get this right: We spend about a $trillion/year to defend us from a rag tag bunch of yahoo’s, and we still lose our freedoms too?! Even though they lost the vote, thank God for Rand Paul. I already sent an email to Mike Lee asking him if he was body snatched before voting against an amendment to water down this abomination.
Audio interview with ACLU rep providing more detail on bill’s provisions: http://antiwar.com/radio/2011/11/29/christopher-anders-3/
Peace be with you.
I’ve been reading Andrew Bacevich’s book “The Limits of Power” and had no idea this was going on until yesterday. Reading that book, which critiques the National Security state, coupled with hearing about this, has literally made me nauseous. By the way, I’m going through concepts of due process, habeas corpus, constitutional rights of the accused, etc., with my sophomore Government classes right now. Maybe I should start tomorrow’s lecture, “Well, kids, forget everything I’ve tried to teach you, because we’re all screwed now…”
I’m glad Rand Paul spoke up. For the record, I have always loathed the ACLU but my husband and I just joined because they are the only group standing up for our freedoms right now. What we are living through is far more insidious than the McCarthy era. It brings to mind the old “they came for the communists, and I wasn’t a communist so I kept quiet, etc.”
Our civil rights are precious and hard earned. We are in some sort of consumerist and stress induced stupor–take my rights as long as I still have a job! Radiate me at the airport, read my emails–but DON’T FIRE ME PLEASE! That is the state of quiet desperation we live in here today. Our economic insecurity has led us to a state of terrified passivity and the forces of evil are taking advantage.
Who knows how “terrorism” might be defined in the future. Maybe a protest against abortion? A protest against prison brutality or the death penalty? A loan strike?
This is why I voted for Rand Paul.
I worry about the fact that so man senators could support it, but I don’t worry about it ever becoming law- it’s clearly unconstitutional.
if ever there was a time to write your Senator – I’d say now is that time.
I felt a chill as I read this. Geez – what happened to our love of liberty?
Canada has something similar to this proposed law, the Emergencies Act, but very different in a few key aspects. To use it, an emergency must be declared and then reviewed by our legislature, and any new laws passed under the act still have to pass the tests set forth by our constitution. A majority parliament could in theory abuse the act – the winning party forms the executive branch – but the accountability to the constitution is supposed to offset that risk.
It sounds like this proposed bill doesn’t even allow for either of those things, and contains no checks or balances. Wtf, America?
Thomas tucker, it’s only unconstitutional if the Supreme Court rules on it. I am not sure I would count on that.
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress”– James Madison. Remember him? Remember the Constitution, for that matter?
McCain is quite consistent. He has degraded US citizenship by doing nothing about the millions of illegal aliens, nothing to secure the borders, even proposing a “path to citizenship” for law-breakers.
Now he is proposing to further degrade US citizenship by stripping real Americans of their rights and liberties. It’s all of a piece.
@MH- if we can’t count on that, then we really are sunk.
Very disappointing. Just as disappointing to read that one of my Senators, Bob Casey, voted down the Udall amendment. I just wrote to him. This cannot stand.
Hey Rod – just caught up with your comment. To clarify, I was using “theocrat” and “Christianist” as terms of ridiculous fantasy, how some folks always think it is the wiley Christians out to squelch civil liberties, etc. Specifically, I was thinking of things like Alan Moore’s “V for Vendetta” which depicts a Christian government being elected in England and immediately becoming an oppressive police state (Moore was expressing his opinion of Maggie Thatcher’s election). There is a certain segment of the population that catches a hint of religious belief in a politician and their minds immediately jump to fantasies of jack booted thugs running a prison state. This always seemed to me like a huge over-reaction, way over the top.
So the point I was ham-handedly trying to make was this sounded like something out of one of those insanely over-the-top over-reaction fantasies rather than coming from a rather bland, technocrat-oriented, fairly liberal government that actually exists in the real world. To my mind only cartoon characters in fantasy worlds acted this way. And now I have to tell my children that this is the country I have bequeathed to them through my own inaction.
At any rate, I meant no offense to any religious point of view (I even have one of my own). I was simply struck (even dumb-founded) by the unreality of it all. In the future I will choose my words more carefully. My apologies.
“Who knows how “terrorism” might be defined in the future. Maybe a protest against abortion? A protest against prison brutality or the death penalty? A loan strike?”
EXACTLY.
I hate that I now have to pray for Obomba (that great friend of the Constitution!) to veto this disaster if it gets past the House.
Peace be with you.
[...] Rod Dreher America is a ‘battlefield’? Oh boy. McCain… Yep, he would have made a good CiC. __________________ 2008 2500 4WD Laramie [...]
“‘Islamist’ has actual meaning as a descriptive word, because there are political parties and movements that wish to make the Koran and shariah the basis for a system of law and government. Nothing like it exists in this country.”
You’ve said that many times, at the Beliefnet site and here. Without invoking the banned word, you doth protest too much — not because you are a theocrat, but because you gloss over some inconvenient truths about others, for whom you display an excess of respect.
Let’s start with Pope Boniface VIII, in his Bull Unam Sanctum (1302): “Therefore, whosoever resists this power so ordained by God, resists the order of God [cf. Rom. 13:2] … Furthermore, we declare, say, define, and proclaim to every human creature that they by necessity for salvation are entirely subject to the Roman Pontiff.”
Yes, yes, that was many centuries ago. We don’t do things like that any more in America, nor in Europe. This does not change the fact that it remains very much a part of the Roman canon. The currents of thought that find expression in the AK party in Turkey were there during decades of enforced secularism under Kemal Attaturk and his successors. They simply couldn’t find political expression. Among both certain schools of Roman Catholic thought, and Protestant Dominion theology, there is plenty of potential for theocracy. However, they all recognize that they live in a culture, among a population, that won’t tolerate such a thing. They lack the means to coerce and cow that population. So, they act accordingly.
It is disingenuous to protest that all we see in America is people of various faiths who seek to bring into the public square, and the political life of the country, values that are dear to them. Yes, that happens, and it should happen. But, there are those who seek, as far as they can go, to establish the Ten Commandments or some concoction of “Biblical law” as The Supreme Law of the Land. Plenty of Catholics still assert that the government should give precedence to, and aid, the Roman Catholic Church, BECAUSE it is “the one true church established by Christ and his Apostles.” How is that different from “Islamism”? Only in one respect: lack of arms, and social space to create an army.
The Republican Party is not, per se, theocratic. It’s political base does not possess sufficient agreement as to exactly WHICH theocratic vision to embrace. It merely seeks to opportunistically attract the votes of each and all. There are also many nontheocrats in the GOP. But to deny that there is any “Christian” counter-part to “Islamism” is burying your head in the sand.
Read Judge Andrew Napolitano’s column in the Washington Examiner today. As he points out, what part of the Fifth Amendment does Senator McCain not understand? “No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” As he goes on to say, “Note the Founders used the word ‘person’. Thus the requirement of due process must be accorded to all human beings held by the government — not just Americans, not just nice people, but all persons.”
Given how clearly the Fifth Amendment is written you would think that McCain and others would understand this and not even consider the amendment he sponsored.
But remember something here, William F. Buckley supposedly said many years ago that he was prepared to see a dictatorship at home if that was what it took to defeat the soviets abroad. Well are we not seeing that come to pass now? Look at what “conservatives” are willing to support in the name of the war on terror? First came the misnamed “Patriot Act” which was anything but patriotic. Then the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and other facilities. The rendition program. The way Padilla was denied his Fifth Amendment rights and then held in conditions in Charleston that may very well have violated his Eight Amendment rights too.
Look at all the praise given to Bush/Cheney even though they totally trashed the Constitution. Cheney openly defends his unlawful actions on TV to adoring fans like Hannity and others. We have been ignoring Ben Franklin’s warning for over a decade now. So why should McCain’s amendment come as a surprise?
When you cross lines for whatever “good intention” it’s hard to come back as we saw so many times in the last century. If this amendment gets signed into law, is it so hard to see those detention camps out west where we put the Japanese being reopened? Or worse?
[...] to Dreher’s concerns regarding the AUMF reauthorization in the § 1031 of the pending National Defense Authorization [...]