Will the Supreme
Court Save the Day?
By Siddique Malik
Louisville, KY
On
September 28, 2006, the Senate passed the bill
for interrogation and trial of suspected terrorists.
Nineteen days later, President Bush signed it
into law. This law is unfair, dangerous, wrong
and in complete contravention of the American
values. It is obvious that the Republican senators
initiated it in the spirit of October surprise
so as to look tough on terrorism and/or corner
their Democrat opponents before the Nov. 7 midterm
elections, knowing or perhaps even hoping that
the Supreme Court will eventually declare the
measure unconstitutional.
The law wrongly assumes that the habeas corpus
distinguishes between citizens and non-citizens.
The regime of habeas corpus protects any body
found under the canopy of the constitution, regardless
of his/her citizenship status. But the law gives
the president power to declare a non-citizen,
an enemy-combatant and detain him/her indefinitely
with no right of appeal to courts. This means
that all Green card holders, too, have now lost
their habeas corpus protections. It is almost
certain that the Supreme Court will not let this
discrimination and the laws disregard of due process,
stand. This law will make America lose its judicious
outlook and will eventually harm its national
security by gradually shifting the law enforcement’s
focus from finding strong evidence against potential
terrorists to keeping a watch on non-citizens.
Anti-terrorism efforts should always focus on
all possible suspects, within the confines of
due process. Removing judicial controls from the
law-enforcement domain constitutes the recipe
for self-defeat. When the reason to find evidence
that will withstand judicial scrutiny evaporates,
so does the motivation to find such evidence.
Over time, laziness and incompetence creep in.
Consequently, culprits may walk free, while the
innocent may get dispatched to oblivion. Look
at any country where law enforcement activities
are free of judicial controls, and you will see
rampant anarchy and abuse of power.
Consider this scenario: A plane coming from Islamabad
lands at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
Among the arriving passengers are two men, both
of whom started their journey in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s intelligence service, ISI has
tipped the FBI about one of them (an American
citizen) because his activities during his stay
in Afghanistan were shady. Both are wearing long
tunics and religious skullcaps, have long beards,
and are holding strings of concentration beads.
Since they sat next to each other during the 20
hour flight, they held conversation and exchanged
contact information.
The FBI agents pounce upon the citizen suspect
and whisk him away. Among his personal items,
the agents find the contact information of the
other guy, who is a non-citizen, and has come
to America on a religion-based visa, to be a temporary
prayer-leader at a mosque in Chicago, during the
month of Ramadan. He is the gullible kind, who
would never hurt a fly, let alone participate
in a terrorist plot. When he reaches his intended
place of residence in Chicago, the sun is setting;
so, he starts his Maghrib prayers. As his nose
and forehead touch the ground in complete submission
to his perception of the creator, the FBI agents
crash in and seize him. The poor man, through
his broken English, pleads innocence. He rightly
says that he has no association with the other
man. But nobody believes him. How could one trust
a “terrorist-looking” man, who is
also a non-citizen, as if being a non-American
was a proof of being America’s enemy?
Since the citizen detainee turned out to be a
dangerous terrorist, the non-citizen detainee
is declared an enemy combatant. He has no access
to lawyers, and courts are beyond his reach; the
law is clear on non-citizens. He is tortured (oh
sorry, I mean “interrogated aggressively”)
day and night, and one day, he dies. Returning
his body to his family in Afghanistan would reveal
the operation and thus jeopardize national security.
So, he is secretly buried in accordance with the
Islamic rituals. You see: America respects all
religions.
The citizen terrorist refuses to talk, gets a
lawyer and has his day in court. This is not a
far-fetched scenario. Similar instances can and
will happen, hence the law’s provision indemnifying
interrogators.
It is madness to assume that a citizen cannot
be a terrorist while a non-citizen is most probably
a terrorist. Those legislators who voted for this
bill fully understand this. Then, why did they
do it? They were simply dancing to the tune of
the government which otherwise has nothing to
offer to the electorate in the forthcoming mid-term
elections. At first, President Bush was extremely
sensitive to any talk of the existence of secret
CIA operations. When it became politically beneficial,
he publicized the program, asking Congress to
provide strict (read bad) anti-terrorist law.
Initially, some Republican legislators acted with
reservation, pretending to be champions of human
rights. A drama was staged of a tussle between
them and the White House. Then, suddenly these
law-makers agreed to just about every thing the
president demanded. Let us be proud of those Republicans
who voted against this bill and call those Democrats
who voted for it, a bunch of intellectual cowards.
Next time a judicial nominee appears before these
legislators for confirmation hearings, they’ll
have no moral authority to question him/her over
the concept of limitation of presidential powers.
They have backstabbed the good old American values.
If they appear before the sovereign with an intention
to get re-elected, on Nov.7 or in the future,
the voters must punish them. These opportunists
do not deserve to sit in the house of freedom,
the Congress of the United States of America.
Let us hope that the Supreme Court will save the
day. But did the government and these legislators
who, under the guise of this bill, played politics
with the American values and America’s national
security, pause to think what would happen if
the high court failed to clean up their mess?
America would be on a declivitous path to being
a tyranny. The founding fathers must be turning
in their graves.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
