It’s a sad day when only liberals and “some government lawyers” are disappointed to learn that we, as a country, are incapable of holding public trials for terrorism suspects in normal courts of law. Of course, that characterization in the Washington Post’s article on the subject is false. There are people from every ideological point of view who are disappointed by this.
How did we get to a situation where the price for closing Guantanamo Bay is to have sham-trials for the most notorious criminals in the world? We’re too afraid to hold on to our system of justice?
It’s more like the Republicans will stoop to any level to score political points. They’ll even wet their pants in public to score a few political points. No leadership, no statesmanship, no concern for our cherished system of justice.
Why don’t we save time and a lot of nauseating political drama and have him publicly waterboarded and then drawn and quartered? Anything less humiliates the monarchical pretensions of executive power.
In my amateur attempts to understand the political process in america, I’m coming around to the idea that both parties engage in primary positioning campaigns where they pander to their bases fondest hopes, then progressively fall back from these positions through the general elections and then actual governing, until they reach the sweet spot of corporate/ruling class constituent service. Why is this? Because the votes come from people, but the money comes from the ruling elite. The difference is that A)The republican base is authoritarian and so is largely immune to disillusionment by their leaders. Reality is what daddy says it is and look there’s a scary dark man over there! B) The republican base is far more aligned, culturally, ideologically and economically with the ruling class. So democrats are perpetually disappointing their base whereas republicans can satisfy their base simply by being in power and indulging the fantasies of the right wing. In essence, republicans get to pretend that the primary phase of campaigning never ends, regardless of their legislative actions, and never have to tone down their rhetoric to match their actions. Just the opposite.
The party platforms are constituted in such a way as to roughly divide the electorate, but the Republican’s closer ideological identification with the ruling class, as well as the authoritarianism of the base, gives them an enormous political advantage. Not, of course, in necessarily pursuing the dearly held fantasies of the base: “drowning” the budget or prayer in school or ending abortion or whatever. But in maintaining absolute party unity regardless of what is actually happening. Democratic politicians are no doubt envious of how republicans can always shake down their base, regardless of policy. They never have to make these circuitous rhetorical apologies whereby the promises (hope!) of the campaign are sold out to our real masters. This is my attempt to explain how deranged, psychotic nut jobs like Frank Gaffney are representative of the right, have mainstream credibility, etc., whereas the equivalent on left is unimaginable: the rhetoric of the right is monolithic and has an uncanny synchronization, whereas lefty rhetoric is constantly fractured and at odds with itself. Whether the media lays down for right wing rhetoric because of this or because of corporate reasons, I can’t say.
Picture a pyramid.
Divide it in half vertically. That’s the “left” and “right” in this country.
Now draw a horizontal line about 1/10 from the top.
That’s where government happens. I’d argue this is a right-leaning pyramid, but you get the point. A small segment of the public, the richest segment, is very well represented. The rest of us, nada.
Yet we bomb and invade other countries because their governments are giving their countries “democracy.”
that should have read, “because their countries AREN’T giving their countries ‘democracy.'”
“How did we get to a situation where the price for closing Guantanamo Bay is to have sham-trials for the most notorious criminals in the world?”
Well, we have a principle-less coward in the WH who will always roll over and curl in a little ball when a Republican yells “You lie!”
Uh, no.
They won’t appropriate any money and will actually forbid its use for closing Guantanamo unless they get their show-trials.
Who is “they”. Last time I looked the Democratic Party held both houses. Appropriation is a matter for reconciliation so the filibuster can’t stop it.
Why have a sham trial? Why not just take him out back and shoot him in the head? We could make him dig his own grave first like the Nazis did. Why stop with terrorists? How about gang bangers and drug dealers? States and cities are strapped for cash, so just have police hit squads shoot it out with them. The public love it, just like Judge Dredd. Save money on all those pesky courts and trials.
I used to think that Obama’s experience in growing up oeverseas was a plus, now I see that he learned the Indonesian system of justice instead of the American.
I don’t know whose Constitution he was lecturing about in those classrooms all those years ago, but it certainly could not have been the USA’s.
You’re missing the point. This fearmongering appears to work well enough that a few Democrats in Congress will join an unanimous block of Republicans and simply refuse to let the president close Guantanamo. If the Democrats didn’t cave, this wouldn’t be a problem. But how is that Obama’s fault? It is easy to demagogue this issue, but true leaders would give it a pass and defer to the commander in chief’s completely reasonable strategy.
But what if CIC’s strategy was Constitutionally illegal? I don’t see the ambiguity here. It’s just politically expediency masquerading as “policy.”
I don’t understand your question. Obama doesn’t have the votes to close GITMO. That is what is driving this crisis.
My thing was about all these commissions and tribunals and other rancid nonsense passed off as “pragmatic” “solutions.”
Oh….Poor Obama…He’s merely a powerless figurehead. There is nothing he can do.
This argument will never die.
Sure he can close GITMO. He just can’t use any funds appropriated after the stop the funding bill passes. His best move would be to effectively close it now and transfer all the prisoners to secure detention facilities in the US. Let the firestorm die down and then try as many as he can in civilian Section III courts.
It’s the disposition of the prisoners that is the issue, not where they are locked up.
And he should call out the Republicans for endangering national security by glorifying criminals as “warriors”.
You’re right, Tarheel. But that would be too “partisan” for Obama to express because he really does care what these sociopaths think and believes that everyone has something positive to contribute to his agenda. He shies away from hurting their tender mercies because he wants to look like the good, educated, fancy-pants to everyone even if (prolly “especially” if) those same people will call him a fascist, Marxist, socialist at every turn. He’s turned into something of a self-fulfilling masochist.
Pathetic.
Boo, the buck stops with him. If a Democratic President can’t control a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House enough to carry out his oath to “Preserve and Protect the Constitution”, then he should resign and let Joe Biden have a turn at bat. And if he can’t, then he should resign and let Nancy stop the buck. My guess is she’s got more spine than the two of them combined.
Please, Booman. There are ways to play hardball if Obama actually cared. I’ve defended him enough on health care, and I will continue to do so. I didn’t expect much out of this bill from the get-go, like yourself.
However, fuck these excuses. There are none. You and I both know that if it came down to brass tacks, Obama could get the funding he needs. Moreover, even without these trials, he’s setting up a system of indefinite detention. That’s bullshit, and it’s why I was so offended by the Bush administration.
Obama can take his “bridging the parties” kumbayah crap, and shove it up his Constitution-hating ass. Some Constitutional law professor…
Here’s where I hit Village thinking again.
The authors: Anne E. Kornblut and Peter Finn
The paper: Washington Post
The source: Lindsey Graham and an anonymous White House adviser (widely believed to be Rahm Emmanuel)
The supposed deal: McCain and Lieberman withdraw their bill in exchange for getting military commissions trials instead of civil trials for Guantanamo prisoners
The narrative: Obama is weak on national security; the GOP (and Joe Lieberman) are strong on national security; Obama is weak, period, because Congress can roll him. A secondary narrative is the defense of military action and not law enforcement as the proper means of responding to 9/11; so far Obama has split the difference on this issue, arguing that military action in Afghanistan is necessary to prevent the exploitation of a potentially failed state.
The reality: The real narrative is that KSM and company are military (Arabic translation: holy warriors) and not ordinary criminals who conspired to murder 3000 or so US residents. The reality is that military commissions take longer to reach a decision, provide fewer checks and balances on arbitrary decisions, and have a poor record of conviction. The open question is whether a military commission can sentence to death a person who was a co-conspirator but not directly involved in murder. That is not an open question in a civilian court.
The situation: No decision has been announced yet.
If you don’t like this trial balloon by whoever, call the White House and Lindsey Graham’s office.
You might call your Congress critters too since they are the ones freezing the money to do all this crap and that includes DEMS. Everytime the Admin goes out on a limb, they happily saw it off in Congress. Witness “progressive” Schumer and then Gillibrand backing down from supporting NY terror trials.
took the lunatic page down, but saved here.
You might be doing everything you can to stop electing Republicans, and I’ll help in that, but this is one of the reasons I cannot vote for Barack Obama in the 2012 election. I can deal with moderacy on domestic issues, but this isn’t moderacy. This is continued shredding of our rule of law, and I won’t be a part of that.
If we cant even use our justice system, which was once seen as a bedrock of what the nation was, to deal with al-Qaeda then al-Qaeda have won a mighty victory.