Could You Become an Unlawful Enemy Combatant? You Have Rights at the Whim of President Bush

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The right of habeas corpus is one of the oldest and most basic rights in the West. Habeas corpus is a Latin phrase meaning roughly “you must have the body” and means that those who have power over the physical persons of prisoners are required to bring them before an independent judge for the purpose of evaluating whether their detention is just. To put it simply, the right of habeas corpus is the right of each person to not be subject to arbitrary, unreviewable arrest, detention, or imprisonment. It is the right of each person to have an independent, impartial judge examine their case and determine whether the law allows for their continued detention or if the law requires that their freedom be restored to them.

In practice, this “Great Writ” is an important check against authoritarian, totalitarian, and dictatorial state power. Unless the courts themselves are completely subverted, they are able to prevent the state from arbitrarily imprisoning people without sound legal grounds. Without it, the state never has to justify its actions or tactics — it can simply act at will. Political leaders with a more authoritarian inclination have long worked to undermine the right of habeas corpus because they don’t like being expected to justify their actions or simply believe that their authority places them above such requirements. Either way, they believe that they should be above the law, above critical questioning, and above having to justify any of their decisions.

This is a fundamentally anti-democratic perspective because democracy is based upon the principle that political leaders are answerable to the people and subject to the same laws as everyone else. When politicians are unwilling to make a case for their actions in a court of law, they also can’t be expected to make a genuine case for their actions in the court of public opinion. They may pretend to do so and insist that they are acting justly, but they can’t be expected to fully disclose what they are doing, how they are doing it, and what they are really accomplishing. Secrecy goes hand-in-hand with opposition to the principle of habeas corpus: just as political leaders are unwilling to reveal to an independent court whom they have detained and why, they are also unwilling to reveal to the general public what they are doing and why.

Habeas corpus is not a principle which should be treated casually. It’s an integral part of the foundation of a free, democratic society in which sovereignty rests with the people and the power of the state is limited. Unfortunately, it is precisely this right which President Bush, his sycophantic Republican fluffers, and the timid Vichy Democrats have so perilously damaged. They wish to deny to suspects detained in the War on Terror a right to have their imprisonment evaluated by independent courts. Why? If someone’s detention is justified, it should be possible to establish that in a neutral court. Otherwise, the person shouldn’t be detained in the first place.

As many have noted, there is nothing about Bush’s new Enabling Act which seriously limits the president’s power to detain people at will. If the president labels someone an “unlawful combatant,” they can be imprisoned without trial, without review, and indefinitely. The designation can be applied to anyone, any time, anywhere — even American citizens — and that status also lies outside judicial review. Even the law itself will be difficult to impossible to get before a court to rule on its constitutionality. Habeas corpus is a limit on arbitrary, dictatorial state power and the Congress has removed it in a manner that opens up a door that should have forever remained shut. They have authorized the president to imprison people permanently, without trial or review. How is that not the basis for tyranny?

Conservatives have traditionally insisted that the Constitution doesn’t create or grant rights, but instead guarantees rights that are a gift from God. President Bush sometimes continues to mouth these phrases, but it’s clear that this is nothing but rhetoric because now these same conservatives are treating constitutional rights as something which the government can arbitrarily withdraw at will. Isn’t that interesting?

We’re not talking about a bit of legal posturing here. The right to be free from arbitrary state power, wielded without the possibility of review or challenge, is a basic moral right due to all human beings. It’s not something that any government can justifiably ignore or deny either to their own citizens or to the citizens of another nation. It is owed to people not by virtue of their citizenship or even their “good conduct” in following the law; instead, it is due to them as human beings worthy of the same dignity and respect we all demand for ourselves. No state that denies people this is worthy of anyone’s allegiance or blood.

This image is based on a World War II poster encouraging people to donate money to aid Allied prisoners of war. How ironic that America once insisted that its own citizens be treated with the dignity and humanity it is so eager to deny to those it seeks to imprison today.

You can see many more posters I’ve created in this gallery on my site, including some new ones since last week: Christian Right Propaganda Posters