Obama Protects the Rule of Law by Violating the Rule

by Tex Norman⁽⁷⁸⁾

President Obama’s speech on Guantanamo was powerful and inspiring to his fans except for one part. Some have voiced grave concerns over something being called indefinitely held detainees. Some feel this Indefinite Detainee idea falls so short of our expectations from him, that it feels like that esteem went skydiving while carrying a bolder instead of Para shoot. Obama attempted to outline a plan for closing the make-shift prison in Guantanamo. He reassured Americans that no terrorists were being released on the streets of our country that every threat will be carefully assessed, and then he came to a part where he divided the detainees into five categories:

1. In the first group the President lumps together detainees who have American law and therefore they will be tried in American federal courts.

2. The second category is made up of detainees who can’t be tried in federal court because the evidence against them is classified. The detainees in this group can be tried in a newly designed Military Commission that will be similar to a military court marshal where the rule of law can be followed, evidence can be presented but classified information will not be released to the world.

3. A third category of detainees includes people already ordered to be released by the courts. These are people where the courts have found that there is no legitimate reason to hold them. Twenty-one of the detainees currently held at Guantánamo are being held after a court has already said there are no legal grounds for holding them.

4. In the fourth category there are detainees that may be bad guys, maybe not, but there are reasons the United States is not going to prosecute them, and they will instead be transferred safely to another country. One of these hosting countries, Saudi Arabia, detains these people again, and puts them through a sort of re-education program, and when they are deemed to be safe, they are not only released into the Saudi Arabian public, they are set up, supported, given a place to live, a car, a salary.

5. Finally (and here is the shocking category) Obama states that there is a fifth and final group of detainees at Guantánamo who cannot be prosecuted, yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.

Consider what the President is saying about this fifth category of detainees. If they cannot be prosecuted that means that the government has no evidence that they have committed a prosecutorial crime, OR the evidence of their criminal acts is tainted in some way and inadmissible under our rule of law.

. . . there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States. Examples of that threat include people who have received extensive explosives training at al Qaeda training camps, commanded Taliban troops in battle, expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden, or otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans.

Now, when we are afraid, it is easy to say, “I don’t give tinker’s damn if it is legal or not, if they did it, they should not be released on some technicality.” That is the human, emotional way most of us respond to threatening dangerous criminals.

Let us remember, that we have criminals all the time that win their trials, or are not prosecuted because the judge won’t allow the most incriminating evidence to be presented in court. The rules of evidence are pretty clear. Every day, numerous times each day, bad people catch a break because the rules of evidence keeps incriminating stuff from being presented to the jury. For example, if you got your evidence by beating it out of a subject, or water-boarding the accused our courts say that was not fair and they won’t allow it in. Watch some of the shows on TruTV, or American Justice, or Cold Case Files, and you will learn of lots of bad people that live freely among us because the DA screwed up and evidence has been excluded.

You may be saying, “Two wrongs don’t make a right. If a guy is guilty, and you know it, then he should be imprisoned are killed and I don’t care if they get a fair trial or not.”
Watch television shows on TruTV, American Justice, and Cold Case Files and you will see examples where people have looked guilty, everyone thought they were guilty, and they went to prison, but years later DNA proves they are NOT GUILTY! I remember one where a woman was raped, and as the rape was taking place, she thought, I am going to memorize this face and if I survive I will identify my attacker. She later picks the guy out of a line up, he is convicted, and 16 years later DNA identifies the real rapist and gets the man identified by an eye witness released.

Our laws are there to ensure that the innocent are not wrongfully convicted, and our guilty people are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The laws of the United States have for 233 years has believed that it is better for a guilty man to go free than to incarcerate an innocent man by mistake.

If we can’t prove someone is guilty in a court of law then they can’t be convicted and should not be in prison. In the case of detainees these category 5 people should be deported far away from the United States and if they rejoin the fight they should be eliminated by military action.

What Obama is suggesting is something brand new. It sounds like he is wanting to imprison people for crimes they might do, have not done but likely will do if given a chance, and that is not exactly what the President is suggesting. His motive is good, because Obama wants to protect the American people from dangerous people. What could be so wrong about that?

Obama is not proposing that we lock people up and throw away the key because they might hurt us some day in the future. Obama is suggesting that we consider these people “prisoners of war.”

I want to be honest: this is the toughest issue we will face. We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantánamo who pose a danger to our country. But even when this process is complete, These are people who, in effect, remain at war with the United States.

If an enemy is captured on the battle field and detainees they are usually sent to Prisoner of War camps and released back into their country once hostilities have ceased. We don’t normally charge every prisoner of war with a crime. We just take them out of the war, so they can’t pose additional threats to us.

Is that what Obama is suggesting? If it is, does the argument hold water, and is it water-boarding water? Can we make a case to ourselves and to the world that these Category 5 detainees are not criminals but they are prisoners of war to be held until hostilities have ended?

Obama has attempted to turn what looks illegal into something that is legal. Sadly, this is starting to smell like someone left a big pile of Cheney under Bush.

. . . our goal is to construct a legitimate legal framework for Guantánamo detainees — not to avoid one. In our constitutional system, prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man. If and when we determine that the United States must hold individuals to keep them from carrying out an act of war, we will do so within a system that involves judicial and congressional oversight.

In all wars the United States has taken prisoners of war, and unless there were specific crimes involved we did not prosecute our prisoners of war, we just detained them. It is a cleaver argument on the part of President Obama, and it is motivated by his desire to protect Americans from dangerous people.

I want some commonly understood way of knowing when someone is a prisoner of war, and when they are just criminals, because we have held these people for years and not actual war has been declared. You can’t defend American values by violating American values. You can’t protect freedom of speech by silencing anyone voicing opposition to freedom of speech. You can’t stop the crime of murder by murdering potential killers. We can’t have a rule of law, and protect it by violating our own rule of law.

Article submitted Friday, May 22, 2009 & read 1258 times.

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