The ACLU, MoveOn.org, and a variety of other civil liberties groups have made today a “Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice” on Capitol Hill. The goal is straightforward: convince Congress to “restore the right of habeas corpus.”
Coinciding with this important effort is an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal from James Taranto who, predictably, offers the opposite perspective.
Some politicians have … undertaken efforts on behalf of enemy fighters. Senate Democrats, joined by Republican Arlen Specter, have introduced legislation that would restore habeas rights to Guantanamo detainees, although this is unlikely to become law as long as George W. Bush is president.
Colin Powell would go even further. “I would close Guantanamo, not tomorrow, but this afternoon,” the former secretary of state told NBC’s Tim Russert earlier this month. “I’d get rid of the military commission system and use established procedures in federal law or in the manual for courts-martial.”
Mr. Powell claimed that “I would not let any of [the detainees] go,” but his proposal would inevitably have that effect. Once inside the criminal justice system, detainees would become defendants with full constitutional rights, including the right to be charged or released, the right to exclude tainted evidence, and the right to be freed unless found guilty of a specific crime beyond a reasonable doubt.
I suppose this is about what one should expect from Taranto, but it’s probably worth noting how shamelessly demagogic this is.
First, Senate Dems and supporters of American civil liberties aren’t working “on behalf of enemy fighters,” and Taranto has to know it. They’re taking a stand in support of the rule of law, the American system of justice, and the U.S. Constitution. If Taranto disapproves of these bedrocks of our democracy, he should explain why.
Second, Taranto neglected to mention the next sentence from Powell’s Meet the Press interview: “[E]very morning I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds…. [W]e have shaken the belief that the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open…. We don’t need it, and it’s causing us far more damage than any good we get for it.”
Taranto, like far too many supporters of the Military Commissions Act, misses this simple point: abandoning habeas and the Bush/Cheney military commission system makes us less safe.
Taranto proceeds to lay it on really thick.
By granting constitutional protections to detainees, Mr. Powell’s proposal would endanger the lives of American civilians. It would also afford preferential treatment to enemy fighters who defy the rules of war. This would make a mockery of international humanitarian law.
In the long run, it could also imperil the civil liberties of Americans. Leniency toward detainees is on the table today only because al Qaeda has so far failed to strike America since 9/11. If it succeeded again, public pressure for harsher measures would be hard for politicians to resist. And if enemy combatants had been transferred to the criminal justice system, those measures would be much more likely to diminish the rights of citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism.
I find this utterly fascinating. Taranto is effectively arguing that if we don’t give up civil liberties now, terrorists will attack, which in turn will lead to a more drastic crack-down on civil liberties later — from people like Taranto.
I don’t expect much from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, but this demagoguery is unusually offensive. The point of the piece seems to be that if we fail to ignore our legal system, and if neglect to disregard habeas and the Geneva Conventions, we’re all going to die.
The mind reels.