Jose Padilla is a test case, by Jacob Snyder, 11/04
At some point, America will begin to wonder about ends and means, and slippery slopes.
Jose Padilla is an American citizen. He was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare Airport, on May 8, 2002. Initially, he was put into the civilian justice system. Then, on June 9, 2002, the President labelled Padilla an "enemy combatant", and directed Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld to move him into military custody, where he remains today. He has never been charged with any crime. He has never been tried or convicted of anything by any court.
The White House says that Padilla was associated with Al Queda, and was planning on setting off a "dirty" nuclear bomb. We are asked to take this on faith, since no evidence has been presented, no proof offered. Our government simply applied the label of "enemy combatant", made their assertions, and kept repeating them, until Padilla was convicted and/or forgotten, by the court of public opinion.
Jose Padilla is a test case.
Question: What is the definition of "enemy combatant"?
Answer: Whatever the government says it is. This newly invented term cannot be found in any case law or treaty. It's a flexible phrase, an elastic and rubber phrase, whose meaning can be stretched and expanded creatively, as needed. Today, the American government is using the term, the same way the Soviets used the term "Enemy of the State." It means, "inconvenient people who we want to dispose of."
In 1976, the government of Argentina had a problem. There were about 500 terrorists in the country, who were setting off bombs and assassinating people. This problem was solved by unleashing the security forces on the terrorists, almost all of whom had been Disappeared, within a few months. Next, University professors who (per the security forces) were fundraising for the terrorists, they too Disappeared. Then, journalists who wrote articles approving of the terrorist's goals. Then, trade union officials, and any left-of-center politicians who criticized the government. Relatives of the Disappeared would go to government offices, ask where their daughters and fathers and husbands had gone to, and they too would Disappear. People learned not to ask questions, not to criticize. Over the next 6 years, 340 secret detention centers were set up. By the end, the death squads were roaming the streets, looking for pretty girls to kidnap, rape, torture, and kill.
The Argentine foreign minister, Adm. Cesar Guzzetti, had meetings in October 1976 with U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger, and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, who gave their approval to this program. Argentine military officers (like Leopoldo Galtieri, head of Argentina's junta during the dirty war) come to the U.S. to be trained in counter-insurgency tactics, at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia.
Jose Padilla is a test case, the first step down this slippery slope.
Don't think it can happen here? Look at what happens in America during wars. Look, without first asserting, "It Can't Happen Here". Look, and you'll see a pattern:
Alien and Sedition Acts, during the Napoleanic Wars.
Lincoln ordered the Post Office not to deliver newspapers he considered insufficiently patriotic. If that didn't work, he jailed the editors for the duration.
In WW1, pacifists and Suffragists were arrested, for reading in public President Wilson's pre-war speeches. Wilson had campaigned in 1916, on a promise to keep the U.S. out of the European war.
In WW2, concentration camps for Japanese-Americans.
In the Cold War, Senator McCarthy waving his lists of Communists in the State Department.
In every war we fight, basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution get suspended for the duration, for Enemies Of The State.
Question: If it is sedition to criticize the President during wartime, if the President is to be given the wartime power to seize anyone anywhere, and hold them as long as he wants, and if the war is permanent, then, is the U.S. still a democracy? Are we a Republic, or an Empire? Citizens, or subjects?
Jose Padilla is a test case.
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