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This is how a dictatorship starts
The Washington Post, in a recent set of editorials, has done a much better job than I was able to in a previous set of essays of explaining the danger to all of us from Bush's unilateral decision to detain an Amercian citizen, Jose Padilla:
...Yet the government's actions in this latest case cut against basic elements of life under the rule of law. If its positions are correct, nothing would prevent the president -- even in the absence of a formal declaration of war -- from designating any American as an enemy combatant. Without proving the correctness of the charge before a court, the military could then detain that person forever. And having done so, it could prevent that detainee from hiring a lawyer to argue that the government, in fact, has it all wrong. If that's the case, nobody's constitutional rights are safe...
-- June 10, 2002, Washington Post
"Pool on how long before this is used in the war on drugs?" asks Faisal Jawdat
...If Mr. Padilla is, as Mr. Bush said, "a bad guy," then it's a relief to have him behind bars. That said, we had thought that it took more than the determination by the president that someone was a "threat to the country" before an American could simply disappear and be locked up without charge or trial or prospect of release.
International law permits the detention of captured enemy soldiers, even those who have committed no crimes, and it would be reckless of the government simply to release people bent on detonating dirty bombs. The question is not whether the government can detain an enemy combatant bent on doing America great harm but whether it can designate anyone it chooses as such a person without meaningful review.
The government's position would be easier to swallow were it not actively seeking to frustrate judicial review of the president's designations. When the government detains a citizen as an enemy combatant, that person must be permitted to consult with counsel and challenge the lawfulness of the detention in court.
The idea of indefinite detentions of Americans who have not been convicted of any crime is alarming under any circumstances. Without the meaningful supervision of the courts, it is a dangerous overreach of presidential power. If such a thing were happening in any other country, Americans would know exactly what to call it.
-- Washington Post, June 12, 2002.
I call it dictatorship. It would not be the first time in history that a leader with a dubious claim to power used the reality and the excuse of an outside threat to do away with civil rights and to suppress dissent. See for example the rise to power of the Roman Caesars. We Americans need to guard our rights as citizens -- no one else is going to do it for us, certainly not this administration.
Thanks to Faisal Jawdat and the Strangelove mailing list for alerting me to these editorials.
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