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Congress is dithering and the
American public doesn’t even seem
particularly concerned as the admin-
istration of George W. Bush system-
atically trashes such fundamental
American values as justice, due pro-
cess, respect for human rights and
submission to the rule of law.
In the kangaroo courts that the ad-
ministration concocted to try detain-
ees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a de-
fendant could be prevented from see-
ing the evidence against him, would
not have the right to attend his own
trial and would not have the right to
appeal the sentence to a civilian
court.
That’s slapstick justice, a process
worthy of the Marx Brothers.
“You have been accused of being a
terrorist.”
“Where is the evidence?”
“We can’t show it to you.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“So is this court. We find you
guilty. Take him away.”
The Supreme Court now says, in a
vote that was closer than it should
have been, that this sort of madness
cannot be permitted. In its recent de-
cision striking down the tribunals for
terror suspects at Guantánamo, the
court said of the defendant, Salim
Ahmed Hamdan: “He will be, and in-
deed already has been, excluded
from his own trial.”
The court said, in effect, that this is
not the American way, that ours is
not a Marx Brothers republic. Not
yet, anyway. (It most likely will be if
Mr. Bush gets to appoint one or two
more justices to the court.)
The Bush-Cheney regime believes
it can do whatever outlandish things
it wants, including torturing people
and keeping them incarcerated for
life without even the semblance of
due process. And it’s not giving up.
The administration now wants Con-
gress to authorize what the Supreme
Court has plainly said was wrong.
White House lawyers, in a torturous
pun intended) interpretation of the
court’s ruling, seem to be arguing
that the kangaroo courts, otherwise
known as military commissions, will
be quite all right if only Congress will
say so.
They’re not all right. They’re an
abomination (like the secret C.I.A.
prisons and the practice of extraordi-
nary rendition) that spits in the face
of the idea that the United States is a
great and civilized nation.
“Can you imagine if the Hamdan
decision, among others, had gone the
other way?” said Michael Ratner,
president of the Center for Constitu-
tional Rights, which has been waging
an extraordinary fight to secure bas-
ic legal protections for prisoners at
Guantánamo. “I mean we’d be look-
ing at a dark nightmare.”
The court’s decision brought into
sharp relief the importance of one of
the most fundamental aspects of
American government, the separa-
tion of powers. Checks and balances.
The judicial branch put a halt — a
check — on a gruesomely illegal
practice by the executive.
Mr. Bush has tried to scrap the
very idea of checks and balances.
The Republican-controlled Congress
has, for the most part, rolled over
like trained seals for the president.
And Mr. Bush is trying mightily to
pack the courts with right-wingers
who will do the same. Under those
circumstances, his will becomes law.
Justice John Paul Stevens, who
wrote the majority opinion in the
Hamdan case, referred to a seminal
quote from James Madison. The en-
tire quote is as follows: “The accu-
mulation of all powers, legislative,
executive and judiciary, in the same
hands, whether of one, a few or
many, and whether hereditary, self-
appointed or elective, may justly be
pronounced the very definition of ty-
ranny.”
As the center noted in a recent re-
port, “The U.S. government has em-
ployed every possible tactic to evade
judicial review of its detention and
interrogation practices in the ‘war
on terror,’ including allegations that
U.S. personnel subject prisoners to
torture and cruel, inhuman and de-
grading treatment.”
There is every reason to be
alarmed about the wretched road
that Bush, Cheney et al. are speeding
along. It is as if they were following a
route deliberately designed to un-
dermine a great nation.
A lot of Americans are like spoiled
rich kids who take their wealth for
granted. Too many of us have forgot-
ten — or never learned — the real
value of the great American ideals.
Too many are standing silently by as
Mr. Bush and his cronies engage in
the kind of tyrannical and uncivilized
behavior that has brought so much
misery — and ultimately ruin — to
previous societies.
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