I am finding many must reads in my morning perusal of emails and news websites. Ray McGovern is a former ranking figure at the Central Intelligence Agency who took his oath of office to the Constitution seriously. He sought the impeachment of the last administration. He has opposed the expansion of military and administrative power at the expense of civil liberties. In short, he is as we say in Yiddish a mensch. I was honored to have him speak to my students several years back.
Today he has a profound, important piece reposted at Alternet, originally posted at Consortium News on December 4. I borrowed its title for this post. I strongly urge you take the time to read the entire piece here.
Let me entice you some with this, his opening paragraph:
Ambiguous but alarming new wording, which is tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and was just passed by the Senate, is reminiscent of the “extraordinary measures” introduced by the Nazis after they took power in 1933.
And that's just the beginning.
McGovern notes that
The Senate approved the expanded military authority despite opposition fro Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI Director Robert Mueller -- and a veto threat from President Obama.
Of course we now know that veto threat was nothing but words. As to the thrust of the bill and how it is intended to be used, all you need to know is this:
What speaks loudest to me is the fact that two key amendments did not pass. Senate Amendment 1125 would have limited the mandatory detention provision to persons captured abroad. And Amendment 1126 would have provided that the authority of the military to detain persons without trial until the end of hostilities would not apply to American citizens. Both amendments were voted down 45 to 55.
McGovern asks bluntly
Is the all-consuming ten-year-old struggle against terrorism rushing headlong to consume what’s left of our constitutional rights? Do I need to worry that the Army in which I was proud to serve during the 1960s may now kick down my front door and lead me off to indefinite detention — or worse?
He will give you a history lesson, comparing the famous assertion of Roman citizenship, Civis Romanus Sum with what used to be a justifiable sense of pride in saying "I am an American" which meant a citizen of a country with a Constitution and a Bill of Rights that protected individual liberty while limiting the reach of the government. We adhered to a Constitution and as a nation projected power.
Of course that has been changing. As McGovern notes
Adherence? Lately not so much. Not since power-hungry politicians set out to exploit 9/11 so that “everything changed,” including even the rights formerly guaranteed us by the Bill of Rights and the habeas corpus protection in the Constitution itself.
I will not recapitulate the entire article, because I do want you to read it, and to pass it on to others. The following paragraph really caught my attention:
What has been happening in this continuation of a seemingly endless “war on terror” – amid widespread public indifference – makes Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List” look like a board game. At least, the Nixon White House had a modicum of good sense not to flaunt its skirting the law and violating constitutional rights.
I was immediately reminded of John Dean writing of the Bush 43 administration that it was
Worse than Watergate (using link from unionized and independent Powell's rather than anti-union and anti-worker Amazon).
The heart of what is wrong can be seen in these two paragraphs:
Conflicting legal interpretations of the bill are now more about whether military detentions would be mandatory or would the president still retain some discretion.
In sum, the wording appears to create a parallel military justice system that, theoretically, we are all subject to. All that would be needed is an allegation by someone that we assisted someone who in some way assisted someone else in some way. An actual terrorist act would not be needed – and neither would a trial by one’s peers as guaranteed by the Constitution to determine actual “guilt.”
As I read this, I thought back to something I experienced after the Senate passed the Military Commissions Act. I wondered if I might be subject to arrest. I posed that to my classes, as I wrote in What I dol my students yesterday in October of 2006.
There is more. Read McGovern about being at a Rick Perry townhall in NH when - without prior notice - who is there to introduce the Texas governor but Sheriff Joe Arpaio!
I have often written about my struggles with teaching government, as what our government is and what our Constitution now seems to mean changes rapidly before our eyes.
Yesterday, at Netroots New York, I found myself saying at one event that it may not be possible to change what is happening in our society unless people are willing to take risks - not merely of arrest, but of loss of livelihood, of personal injury or death. That was in fact the power of the Civil Rights movement in which I participated however marginally as a white middle class teenager.
But then we were a society that still seemed to respect the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment with the extension of the Bill of Rights against state actions and the enforcement of an equal protection clause? Now?
Now I wonder that we are reverting to the America of the Sand Creek Massacre, with its multiple Medals of Honor for the brutal slaughter of Native Americans who were not warriors. Now I wonder that we are back to the America of 1942 and Executive Order 9066, which allowed indefinite detention of American citizens upon judgment of military commanders solely because they lived on the West Coast and were of Japanese descent. Now i see a new No Nothing movement, like that of the 1850s which was anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic, directed at other immigrants or those of "other" religions and cultures.
We need to seriously consider the implications of what our elected representatives and those in the executive branch are doing. Given those in positions of judicial power, we cannot rely upon the courts to reverse the damage.
We are at real jeopardy. Ray McGovern is right to ask, and we should all ask ourselves, whether Gitmo is in our futures.
