The new normal, potentially even for American citizens. (Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy, via Wikimedia Commons)
With a looming veto threat and a diminished legislative calendar, the Senate voted Thursday to essentially
not vote on whether the executive can arbitrarily detain American citizens indefinitely, simply by declaring them terrorists.
After a passionate debate over a detainee-related provision in a major defense bill, the lawmakers decided not to make clearer the current law about the rights of Americans suspected of being terrorists. Instead, they voted 99 to 1 to say the bill does not affect “existing law” about people arrested inside the United States. [...]
Before voting to leave current law unchanged, the Senate rejected, 55 to 45, a proposal by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, to instead say that Americans are exempt from detention under the 2001 authorization to use military force.
Those brave Democratic senators willing to stand up for the arbitrary and indefinite military detention of American citizens: Mark Begich (AK), Richard Blumenthal (CT), Daniel Inouye (HI), Amy Klobuchar (MN), Mary Landrieu (LA), Carl Levin (MI), Joe Manchin (WV), Ben Nelson (NE), Mark Pryor (AR), Jack Reed (RI), Debbie Stabenow (MI), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) and of course Joe Lieberman (I-CT).
Glenn Greenwald sums up the absurdity.
There are several very revealing aspects to all of this. First, the 9/11 attack happened more than a decade ago; Osama bin Laden is dead; the U.S. Government claims it has killed virtually all of Al Qaeda’s leadership and the group is “operationally ineffective” in the Afghan-Pakistan region; and many commentators insisted that these developments would mean that the War on Terror would finally begin to recede. And yet here we have the Congress, on a fully bipartisan basis, acting not only to re-affirm the war but to expand it even further: by formally declaring that the entire world (including the U.S.) is a battlefield and the war will essentially go on forever.
Indeed, it seems clear that they are doing this precisely out of fear that the justifications they have long given for the War no longer exist and there is therefore a risk Americans will clamor for its end. This is Congress declaring: the War is more vibrant than ever and must be expanded further. For our political class and the private-sector that owns it, the War on Terror — Endless War — is an addiction: it is not a means to an end but the end itself (indeed, 2/3 of these war addicts in the Senate just rejected Rand Paul’s bill to repeal the 2003 Iraq AUMF even as they insist that the Iraq War has ended).
In the end, they punted on that part of the bill, leaving it essentially up to the courts to eventually decide whether due process still exists for American citizens that the government says are terrorists. But that doesn't, by any means, mitigate the problems with the legislation, or answer all of the administration's concerns with it. Adam Serwer notes:
The compromise amendment however, does nothing to address the Obama administration's concerns about the bill. The Directors of the FBI and CIA, the secretary of defense, and the director of national intelligence have all said that the bill's provision mandating military detention of non-citizen terror suspects apprehended on American soil would interfere with terrorism investigations and harm national security. That hasn't changed. The question is whether or not the administration is willing to make good on its threat to veto the bill, or whether it was just bluffing.
Meanwhile, "[t]he last U.S. troops to occupy Camp Victory, once one of the largest and most high-profile American military bases in Iraq, left Friday afternoon as the Iraqi government assumed control of the sprawling complex near Baghdad's main airport." But the war will never be over.