Glenn Greenwald: The warped platitude of DC "centrism" (National Security Courts)

[tpsbmam]

(snips)

Far worse is the specific, Graham-endorsed policy which Milbank endorses -- not by making any substantive arguments in its favor, but simply by declaring it to be in between Liz Cheney and the ACLU, at the center of the two "purist" extremes (which, in Washington, means, by definition, that it's superior regardless of content):

Graham has provided Obama a way out of this standoff: Send KSM to a military tribunal in exchange for Congress abandoning legislation that would deny funding to close Gitmo. Next, the administration would work with Congress to create a "national security court," which would govern how other current and future terrorism suspects can be held in preventive detention.

This is the so-called "centrist compromise" -- the one Graham (along with the Brookings Institution) is pushing, Milbank is endorsing, and the administration may be heading towards adopting. But just think about what it actually is. According to its advocates, there is and will continue to be a group of people whom we deem Too Dangerous to allow to be free, yet who have committed no crime and/or against whom there is no evidence of actual wrongdoing. Therefore, we want to imprison them even though we can't prove they did anything wrong. Thus, we're going to create new, special courts -- and christen them with the Orwellian title "National Security Courts" -- and empower them to approve the President's decision to imprison human beings in cages even though they've committed no crime (not even the extremely broad criminal offense of "providing material support to Terrorist organizations," of which anyone who even gets near an actual Terrorist group is easily convicted).

This new judicial system will be devoted to imprisoning people "preventively" -- for being Dangerous. In other words, we're dispensing with the idea that the Government can only imprison those who we can prove have committed crimes, and are instead creating by statute a new category of human beings -- people who have committed no crimes but belong in prison anyway -- along with courts to keep them imprisoned (this idea was unveiled in Barack Obama's "civil liberties" speech last May when he described the so-called "fifth category" of people, and I wrote about everything wrong with that proposal here). But why stop with accused Terrorists? Why not dispense with this "due process" annoyance entirely, and imprison all people who we know deep down are guilty of something really bad, or at least will be in the future -- such as those we know murdered someone or raped children but can't find the evidence to prove it (or those we believe likely will in the future)? What decent person would possibly allow such monsters to go free just because we can't convict them in court?

More at link: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/13/centrism/print.html

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I'm sooooo excited to be living in this rejuvenated USA where rationality & freedom have finally replaced the fascist tactics of the previous 8 years!!
:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:


Ed b/c I left out his great title.

[BeFree]

1. I'm all for this radical change...

...as long as the first imprisoned are members of bushco.

[Grand Taurean]

2. K AND R!

[Vinnie From Indy]

3. Sadly, 97% of Americans have no clue as to what this means to THEIR freedom

Greenwald is absolutely right! Simply declaring that the center ground of an argument is superior is madness. In addition, it is lazy and cowardly. For example, the halfway point between being beaten to death by the police and simply being arrested is to be beaten to the point of broken bones and arrested. Sound reasonable to anyone? I weep for America!

The ability of the modern, insane conservative to willingly give up their most basic rights because they have been told to be scared is astonishing.