Safeguards against Tyranny

The recent Boumedienne opinion from the Supreme Court corrects another folly of the Bush regime: holding captive men who were suspected of being terrorists or combatants with no proof that they were such. This means that some dangerous individuals are likely to be released due to insufficient evidence against them, which is a price we can and must pay. Sometimes there is evidence that they had planned to become combatants (letters or email messages saying so, for example). Practically, it is difficult to find sufficient evidence in many cases; and a further difficulty arises in the form of evidence that may be decisive, but threatens national security if provided to the court.

However, the Bush administration's solution of arbitrarily imprisoning anyone who in their unsupervised and unaccountable opinion might pose a risk to America is not a defensible proposition--as the Supreme Court finally indicated. Without this judicial check upon executive authority we give the President the option to exercise tyrannical power. In fact, this is the very definition of tyranny: unchecked executive authority. Contra Bush, we must exchange this exacerbated risk of tyranny for the certain contingency of facing some of the released prisoners on the battlefield. Of course, a further benefit to doing justice is that a competent public relations machine will ensure that we are also seen to be doing it.

I would define my position as intelligence reinforced by skepticism, spiced with some misanthropy. I do not trust our government; nor do I trust the people running it. I never have and I never will. Consequently, I favor the imposition of transparency and accountability upon government actions and agents whenever this is practical.

Some might reject the Court's decision as too charitable to our enemies. But, in terms of altruistic sacrifice for our principles--is it simply altruism? By flaunting its brutality and injustices, the Bush administration encourages anti-American sentiment around the world, and even at home. This costs lives, and not only money and power. Apparently, the critics adopt a more cynical perspective on this issue and assume that our actions and our image in the world have no impact upon this anti-American sentiment. I am not so pessimistic as to believe that we have no control over international perceptions of America. And such perceptions, among our allies and our enemies, absolutely matter. They matter economically, militarily, politically, culturally--and their importance increases apace as the world becomes ever more interconnected and interdependent.