When Bush came for the Al-Qaeda’s,
I remained silent;
I was not Al-Qaeda.
When they locked up the terrorists,
I remained silent;
I was not a terrorist.
When they came for the political activists,
I remained silent;
I was not a political activist.
When they came for the unpatriotic,
I remained silent;
I was not unpatriotic.
When they came for me,
There was no one left to speak out.
Is it corny to take a well known poem about those who didn’t speak out against the nazis and paraphrase it for today’s America? Not really. The associated press reports:
On June 23, 2003, Bush declared al-Marri an enemy combatant, which stripped him of those rights. Bush wrote that al-Marri possessed intelligence vital to protect national security. In his jail cell in Peoria, however, he could refuse to speak with investigators.
A military brig allowed more options. Free from the constraints of civilian law, the military could interrogate al-Marri without a lawyer, detain him without charge and hold him indefinitely. Courts have agreed the president has wide latitude to imprison people captured overseas or caught fighting against the U.S. That is what the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba is for.
But al-Marri was not in Guantanamo Bay.
“The president is not a king and cannot lock people up forever in the United States based on his say-so,” said Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer who represents al-Marri and other detainees. “Today it’s Mr. al-Marri. Tomorrow it could be you, a member of your family, someone you know. Once you allow the president to lock people up for years or even life without trial, there’s no going back.”
But most worryingly is the governments reason. From the same article:
The full appeals court is reviewing that decision and a ruling is expected soon. During arguments last year, government lawyers said the courts should give great deference to the president when the nation is at war.
“What you assert is the power of the military to seize a person in the United States, including an American citizen, on suspicion of being an enemy combatant?” Judge William B. Traxler asked.
“Yes, your honor,” Justice Department lawyer Gregory Garre replied.
This is just what the Nazis did. They imprisoned those whose philosophy differed. They send them to concentration camps. They put them to death.
We now have lawyers for President Bush standing up in court and saying that the kind of behaviour everyone is horrified over when the Nazis did it is fine for President Bush purely because his country is at war. We now have an attempt to say that Bush can, at any time, without justification, strip someone of all rights and imprison them without charge or appeal for the rest of their lives, just because he believes they’re an “enemy combatant”.
Of course it’s not just Bush. It’s the government as a whole. If you make the wrong enemy, you get the equivalent of a 21st century witch hunt. How is a person imprisoned without access to any evidence against them, supposed to know how to defend themselves from their accusers? Answer: They’re not. Burn the witch. America is a Christian country.
While right wing blogs like this one trot out pseudo-military hymns (while its authors still dodge actively serving themselves) and are happy to fall in line, America strays further and further from being a “land of the free” and closer and closer to being a land where the illusion of freedom can only be maintained by saying and doing the “right patriotic” thing at the right time. Albeit a few decades late, we are finally reaching George Orwell’s vision, in a land where the populace blinds itself to the changes rather than let go of a long dead dream of what their country once was.
How long will people stay silent? Until Bush comes for them?