Obama’s Tortured Logic On Bagram
During his European trip, President Obama had this to say to the Turks:
He implored the Turks to embrace “an enduring commitment to the rule of law” as the “only way to achieve the security that comes from justice for all people.”
But it’s been do as we say, not as we do for far too long, hasn’t it? From the motion filed Friday by the Obama administration:
…the President has established, by Executive Order, a deliberative process to address questions concerning Executive detention authority and options. The Task Force will be reviewing the processes currently in place at Bagram and elsewhere, and will make recommendations to the President regarding those processes. If this Court were to proceed with these cases during the pendency of the appeal, the Court would impose serious practical burdens on, and potential harm to, the Government and its efforts to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. Although in this Court’s view the burdens of litigating these habeas petitions are not insurmountable, there is no dispute that Bagram Airfield is in a theater of war where the Nation’s troops are in harm’s way….
The re-location of the defendant to a war zone does not negate the need for the rule of law and application of justice.
These are not mutually exclusive concepts, nor have they been in the years that we have operated under a military code of justice — from George Washington’s day forward. Nor should they be.
As you can see from the YouTube above, candidate Obama understood the need for the rule of law, calling this sort of indefinite detention without lawful habeas checks and balances a "black hole." Without a means to challenge detention — and habeas was such a sacred right to the Founders that they wrote it into the Constitution itself — how can an innocent prove that detention is unlawful? Just ask the Uighurs how that’s worked for them.
It is the decisions made to uphold the rule of law in the tough times that show our character. We are still failing the test that Robert Jackson set forth at Nuremberg:
In a wiser past, we tried Nazi war criminals in the sunlight. Summing up for the prosecution at Nuremberg, Robert Jackson said that "the future will never have to ask, with misgiving: ‘What could the Nazis have said in their favor?’ History will know that whatever could be said, they were allowed to say. . . . The extraordinary fairness of these hearings is an attribute of our strength."
The world has never doubted the judgment at Nuremberg. But no one will trust the work of these secret tribunals.
Glenn has more. Much more. As does Digby.
I’ve run out of blogging time this am, I look forward to working through all your links later in the day.
but this excerpt, also from the speech to the Turkish Parliament stuck in my craw
have a great day ‘dogs !