Deporting and torturing
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about whether I’ll move out of the country if President Bush is re-elected. Quite often I fear that Americans right now are living in Germany, circa 1932. Now I read a story describing the Bush administration’s support for a bill that would allow the U.S. to deport suspected terrorists to countries where they’re likely to be tortured (my cache). Here’s the lead:
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership’s intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture that the United States signed 20 years ago.
This government condones torture. This government’s lawyers have written reports in which they tried very hard to “prove” that the president has the authority to permit torture — that the sole military authority vests in him, and that the war on terror has rendered parts of the Geneva Conventions “quaint.” This government has tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib, with the explicit backing of Don Rumsfeld. This government proudly arrested 5,000 people in the wake of September 11, and kept many of them in jail. It has turned out since then that none of those people — some of whom, like Yaser Esam Hamdi, were held without access to an attorney for years — have been convicted of a crime. We’re holding innocent people for no good reason.
I don’t know that I can continue living in a country whose government — I separate the government from its people — does this. If Bush is re-elected, despite his atrocious failings as a president and as a human being, I don’t know whether I will still be able to hold the president and the people apart in my mind. They knew the bloodshed that Bush has caused. They know the depths to which Iraq has sunk on Bush’s watch. They know the torture — has any word throughout human history evoked greater horror? — that Bush has condoned. And yet — if my nightmares come true — he will be re-elected. Is this the sort of country I want to keep living in? Can a country with so little humanity long endure as a democracy?
Comment by Adam Rosi-Kessel — January 1, 1970 @ 8:00 am
Granted, traditionally oppressed groups are getting more shafted here. But even American citizens, like Jose Padilla (granted, it’s an extraordinary case) are getting harmed. And of course the new wave of anti-civil-liberties laws is construed — by Ashcroft et al. — as applying to anyone even suspected of “terrorism.” One of the earliest post-9/11 regulations was a change in Bureau of Prisons policy such that those suspected of terrorism will not have attorney-client privilege. And “terrorism” is remarkably vague.
But yes, I see your point. I’m just feeling remarkably powerless nowadays — like I couldn’t cause any change here in the States, and that our days as a democracy are numbered.
Relatedly, it’s not clear to me that the constitutionality of laws is an especially big hurdle for the Bush administration to step over. Judges and Congress have lain down before the Bush administration during this never-ending war on terror.
That said, I did just give my representative a call to express my opposition to Hastert’s deport-and-torture bill.
Comment by Steve Laniel — January 1, 1970 @ 8:00 am
whenever i stumble across your site (and adam’s) my head always threatens to explode… anyway, to the topic, i hate to break it to you but this nightware scenario has already happened: to a poor canadian named maher arar who was detained at JFK and subsequently sent to syria where he was brutally tortured for more than one year (and being canadian myself i was particularly interested in the story).
he now has his own website and you can read his story here:
http://www.maherarar.ca/mahers%20story.php
Comment by doktor jahn — January 1, 1970 @ 8:00 am
correction: he was held in the syrian jail for ten months and ten days, not “more than one year” as i at first said.
Comment by doktor jahn — January 1, 1970 @ 8:00 am
As some sort of blogospheric (I hate that word, but moving on) defense of my own world-wisdom, I’ll point out that I mentioned the Arar case a while back. And I apparently also mentioned it when attacking George Will. So that’s … something.
Comment by Steve Laniel — January 1, 1970 @ 8:00 am
your blogospheric world-wisdomhood has been restored in my eyes once again. so when do you pack your bags for the south of france?
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