Every time I see these unfortunately ambiguous wire story headlines — “Key US lawmakers assail Obama on detainees” — I think some American lawmakers are finally standing up to the executive-run torture-state and its gulags. A closer look is always disappointing. They’re not attacking Obama for his attacks on our liberties, they’re bitching that he isn’t stealing and undercutting them enough.
The representatives, all Republican, are upset that Somali national Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, imprisoned for months on a US Navy ship “somewhere in the Gulf region,” could be given a real criminal trial in New York. Warsame is accused of belong to militant Muslim organizations deemed “terrorists” by the United States. Increasingly, the GOP expresses its dislike of the ancient Anglo-Saxon legal concept of habeas corpus as well as its utter lack of faith in the ability of the American system of justice to operate competently. They don’t even want terror suspects to touch American soil to be tried.
In a recent breathtaking admission, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell unironically proclaimed that the trial of Casey Anthony, a mother who probably accidentally killed her daughter but was found not guilty of premeditation and walked free, is evidence our justice system isn’t fit to try terror suspects. McConnell, and many other Americans lately, seem to think intimation — she like, totally did it, come on, duh — can be admitted as actual evidence used to convict someone of murder.
What they’re saying is that the courts don’t produce enough guilty verdicts. Do we need to point to other countries that decided to “remedy” this “problem”?
Antiwar.com of course agrees Warsame shouldn’t be tried in the United States. Or by the United States. His alleged “crimes” — “providing material support,” a nearly meaningless charge that can include giving someone a ride or buying textbooks for children in “enemy” madrassas — had nothing at all to do with this country. Al-Shabaab are a Somali problem (caused by previous US intervention), and “al-Qaeda” in Yemen is also a local issue America’s military nonetheless loves to bring home. Warsame should be immediately released, compensated for his suffering, and his kidnapping should be considered an international crime.
And these lawmakers should be immediately removed from office for willful violation of American bedrock civilizational concepts.
