It has been clear from the beginning of the Obama Administration that this government simply does not agree that we are a nation of laws, not men (you know our founding principle?). From the willingness to give different trials based on likelihood of conviction to the willingness to assassinate our own citizens, it has become constantly clear that the Administration believes that in the name of combating terror, laws do not matter. Additionally, the whole "look forward, not back" for political elites, means that generally, they are exempt from the rule of law, meaning that we are, either by calling something terror-related, or by immunizing elites, a nation under the rule of not law, but men. (That's what I mean when I say that if Obama says so, we can operate essentially as a temporary monarchy.)
So, this latest suggestion by our Attorney General that Miranda rights should be altered for terrorism suspects shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Now Miranda rights are not completely absolute and weren't thought to exist before Miranda v. Arizona, but the idea that they should be suspended based on the type of accused crime and not some external circumstance like urgency goes against the heart of our concept of justice. That is, until the accused is convicted, they should be treated as any other suspect, and the whole idea of Miranda rights is that they are the minimum required to have a fair system of justice. Again, Obama's DOJ supports the show trials, so this isn't really much of a leap, but it's another offense to the rule of law - these are terrorism suspects, not terrorists, and they deserve due process.
That is the central issue in all of this. We're debating assassination, stripping citizenship, indefinite detention, and now altering our conceptions of due process, based solely on the government's statement that someone is a terrorist based on secret information. Judge, jury, and executioner. That was exactly why we didn't want a king.
2 comments:
When you say "It has been clear from the beginning...", how are you qualifying "beginning"? I ask because I'm very surprised by the Obama Administration's stance in the issues you've raised here, in other posts, and elsewhere. Maybe I'm misremembering, but I thought that during the 2008 election, Obama pledged to do exactly NOT this and roll back many of the executive power expansions of the Bush II era.
The "when" matters to me because (assuming I'm remembering the campaign correctly) I wonder what mechanism caused him to take what is an increasingly-radical stance on civil liberties and executive privilege.
Did he get to the presidency, grab hold of the power and simply not want to let go?
Is he seeing things in intelligence briefings that have scared him into taking this stance? Things we probably can't comprehend?
Did he just surround himself by the wrong people?
Is he overcompensating to preempt "soft on terror" attacks that may come his way?
Is this stance part of a bargain with another set of actors we don't yet see or understand?
Beginning = Presidency, not campaign. Civil liberties is the area where he most diverged from campaign promises of any area. People had no right to be surprised at some of his non-liberal economic or gay rights tendencies, for example, but this definitely came out of nowhere. More specifically, timewise, probably when he first started talking about his system of sham trials, though his mid-campaign reversal on FISA might have been an earlier clue.
1) Did he get to the presidency, grab hold of the power and simply not want to let go?
Seems very likely to me, and it may even be well-motivated, like thinking he can really do good with it.
2) Is he seeing things in intelligence briefings that have scared him into taking this stance? Things we probably can't comprehend?
There is no possible logical connection between the Miranda stance in particular and anything he could see in intelligence briefings. But generally, he was unequivocal during the campaign, and that argument didn't stop him then, did it? To me, there is no possible thing in any intelligence briefings that says you can assassinate a US citizen in a coffee shop or imprison people indefinitely with not enough evidence to charge them with a crime. The latter, especially has nothing to do with intelligence, since they're already locked up.
3) Did he just surround himself by the wrong people?
Maybe. The difference b/w this and (1) is how much you want to put your faith in the idea that he is a great guy. I have no idea which is a better hypothesis - probably a little of both, but I don't think it really matters.
4) Is he overcompensating to preempt "soft on terror" attacks that may come his way?
Possibly. This is asking whether we want to believe he's seizing power or that he's just too weak to cede it and confront the political fallback. Again, probably something of all of them. But it can't be purely this, because he wouldn't have had to go nearly as far as he has, and we've seen that the "soft on terror" attacks didn't work in the campaign anyway.
5) Is this stance part of a bargain with another set of actors we don't yet see or understand?
I'm not sure what this could be. What could he legitimately be trading for basic tenets of our system of justice? I can't for the life of me see this would legitimate anything if we found it to be true.
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