The Ox-Bow President

Does anyone else remember when America stood for the rule of law, for justice and fair play? Does anyone else remember when our wartime movies, even the ones that didn't have Nazi villains, even the ones that weren't overt propaganda, featured the kind of values that made the United States the last best hope of earth? Not anymore. Habeas Corpus has been flagrantly abolished without even a pretense of invasion or rebellion to justify it.

From the New York Times editorial:

While the Republicans pretend that this bill will make America safer, let’s be clear about its real dangers. It sets up a separate system of justice for any foreigner whom Mr. Bush chooses to designate as an “illegal enemy combatant.” It raises insurmountable obstacles for prisoners to challenge their detentions. It does not require the government to release prisoners who are not being charged, or a prisoner who is exonerated by the tribunals.

The law does not apply to American citizens, but it does apply to other legal United States residents. And it chips away at the foundations of the judicial system in ways that all Americans should find threatening. It further damages the nation’s reputation and, by repudiating key protections of the Geneva Conventions, it needlessly increases the danger to any American soldier captured in battle.

In the short run, voters should see through the fog created by the Republican campaign machine. It will be up to the courts to repair the harm this law has done to the Constitution.

I think a Hollywood writer said it far better in the darkest days of World War II, when the US and the world faced an enemy far greater than al-Qa'ida and Usama bin Ladin:

A man just naturally can't take the law into his own hands and hang people without hurtin' everybody in the world, 'cause then he's just not breaking one law but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It's everything people ever have found out about justice and what's right and wrong. It's the very conscience of humanity. There can't be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody's conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?