The Supreme Court To Rule On Guantanamo Detainees
The American flag is the powerful symbol of an ideal that thousands upon thousands of Americans have fought and died to preserve. That ideal, loosely expressed, is that as an American citizen, no single individual has the authority to deny you the freedoms guaranteed you by the Constitution. Instead, American citizens are guaranteed fair and equal treatment under the laws that exist within the framework of the Constitution.
The question of whether the rights of U.S. citizens extend to the inmates at Guantanamo will come before the Supreme Court this week. Regardless of what the over-heated commies at the ACLU would like us to believe, our constitutional rights are a privilege of citizenship and do not extend to non-citizens. Period.
The thought that captured enemies of the United States, otherwise known as people who would like to kill us, would be afforded the privileges of citizenship in a U.S. court of law, is thoroughly repulsive. And the people who support that view are despicable.
The legal lizards who hide under that rock called the ACLU and the smug denizens of the liberal media who consider themselves too sophisticated for the likes of you and I are beating the drum for the release of the Gitmo “detainees.” Perhaps knowing that they will fail in their attempts to have our enemies tried in U.S. civil courts, they cite the Geneva Convention, but they won’t be able to make that stick either.
The Geneva Convention clearly applies only to enemy soldiers captured in battle and not to terrorists that wish to attack civilians within our borders. Let’s get real here - no prisoners of war have ever, in the long history of mankind, been treated as well as the Gitmo “detainees.”
The hyperventilating left is falling all over themselves in a rush to provide aid and comfort to the enemy while condemning the victims of 9/11 as somehow deserving of their fate. While they have the right to spout venemous hatred for America and to burn stolen American flags, they don’t have the right to usurp the U.S. Constitution in order to force a dangerously twisted agenda on the rest of us.
March 28th, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Hello, I too am a strong supporter of the undeniable rights which are/were granted to us by the foresight of this country’s founders in the formation of our Constitution as the basis from which our government is run. America is not what worries me; the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are ideals worthy enough to fight and die for. The Constitution is paramount, it is the driving vision that spawned a revolution. THE Revolution, the American Revolution; and we must never forget.
The thing that worries me is the framework that’s being laid, the sleights of hand that are being dealt. The double-talk. You stated it best when you wrote above: “as an American citizen, no single individual has the right to deny you the freedoms guaranteed you by the Constitution.”
But instead what we see, and the thing that worries me, is this. The unquestioned compliance, the fierce loyalty to a party, ANY party, that usurps and attempts to override the freedoms that built this great nation.
I am not Republican, I am not Democrat, or Independent/Libertarian. It is my duty, as a citizen of this country, to know, uphold, and defend our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
You are correct, our freedoms do not legally extend to the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, nor do the Geneva protections as they are currently established. But I do see one thing, one thorn in my side, one anomaly that, as a freedom-loving American, has caused me to rise and take notice. And his name is Jose Padilla. If you do not know the name, I would advise you, I would advise everyone, to investigate what has happened, what is happening, and, if left unchecked, what is most likely to happen.
Jose Padilla is an American citizen who is being housed in a cell, under military observation, in the east coast of the good ol’ USA. He’s been there for more than two years without trial, without a charge against him, without due process, or any evidence. Waiting. But HOW?!! THE OUTRAGE! Exactly, this is my point.
In November 13, 2001 a little known bill was signed into law by the president. It’s name is ‘The Presidential Military Order’; more than just signed into law, the president wrote it and passed it himself after receiving the abnormally unbalanced power that Congress historically grants to president’s in American times of war. The title of the document states, “Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terror” and it follows to describe our current situation and what the president wishes to do about it.
There is a section, a small section, a section which might be overlooked if reading at an uncritical level, in section II, under definitions, which states: “a) The term “individual subject to this order” shall mean any individual who is not a United States citizen with respect to whom I determine from time to time…”.
Did you catch it?
Read it again.
Who determines? “I”, who is “I”? The president; what does he determine? If YOU/HER/ANYONE OF US is a citizen of the United States and “subject to this order”, mainly imprisonment without due process.
Theoretically speaking, and this is more than theoretical because this is Jose Padilla’s story, a president can state you have ties to Al-Quaida, with NO FURTHER PROOF than the statement itself, strip you of your rightful citizenship, and then proceed to deny your American rights in the manner stated within this order!
And THAT, my friend, is what scares me.
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759