Attorneys Heidi Boghosian, Michael S. Smith and Michael Ratner (Center for Constitutional Rights) are the co-hosts of Law and Disorder Radio (which begins airing Mondays on WBAI and around the country on various radio stations throughout the week). Michael Ratner is also co-author with Margaret Ratner Kunstler of the forthcoming Hell No, Your Right To Dissent.
Last week, at the top of the radio show, he addressed The Guantanamo Syndrome that has taken over the United States. It was probably the most important radio moment of the week.
Last week, at the top of the radio show, he addressed The Guantanamo Syndrome that has taken over the United States. It was probably the most important radio moment of the week.
Michael Ratner: On Law and Disorder, we've often brought you up to date news on Guantanamo, the so-called war on terror, military commissions -- all that goes with Guantanamo, torture, indefinite detention -- what I would like to call "The Guantanamo Syndrome" or "The American Operation Condor." If you remember, Operation Condor was when Chilean dictator Pinochet went around the world picking up people, torturing them, murdering them and jailing them. We have our own. Let's call it The Guantanamo Syndrome. Right now as we speak, there's a new national authorization defense act going through our wonderful Congress. It's passed the House, it's now in the Senate. This is the yearly bill that basically funds the empire's wars all over the world. And it's always like a Christmas tree and people put in some of the worst provisions you can imagine. And they're continuing to put in more and more ways of expanding The Guantanamo Syndrome. And the main one is one that we've talked about before in a different context or a different statute but it's now about to be amended. People may not recall but the statute that began the War in Afghanistan was called the Authorization to Use Military Force -- the AUMF. It's a very broad statue. It allowed the president on his own to attack any nation-state, person, individual, whatever anywhere in the world who was in any way involved with 9-11 -- peripherally, in any way at all. But it was linked to 9-11. And it's a terrible statute because that's what the president -- whether it was Bush or Obama -- is now using to go after not just Afghanistan, but to go after Pakistan, to go after Yemen. The AUMF is an awful statute as currently written because the president is using that not just for the War in Afghanistan, which it was originally written for, but the war in Pakistan, the war in Yemen, probably war in North Africa, detention of people he can pick up anywhere in the world, etc. So it's an awful statute. As broad as it is, and as bad as it is and as much authority as it gives the president to make war anywhere in the world without going back to Congress, without going to the American people, it's about to get worse. The House of Representatives just made it worse and the question is whether the Senate will continue with leaving it in the statute as it is. As I said, the old AMUF allowed attacks on any nation-state, etc., involved in 9-11, anywhere in the world. This one takes out any link with 9-11. It essentially says that anyone who's a threat to the United States, involved in an act of terrorism, whether in the US or abroad, can be subject to an attack by the president -- military attack and detention. So it takes out any link with 9-11 essentially broadening the so-called War on Terror even more than President Bush had done. Now it's interesting. The Obama administration says this is unnecessary and I wouldn't say that they're dead against it, but they'd rather not have it in there. And it's not that they're being so wonderful about this. It's just that they're already going way beyond the current AMUF in attacking anybody in the world. So they're essentially saying, "Don't put it in writing and make a red flag out of it, let's keep it away." So they're expanding war powers. So if you look at the American empire as one that is now sustained by war, some 771 military bases plus the power in one person -- the president -- to attack anywhere in the world, you're talking about an empire that's built on tanks, aircraft carriers and the Pentagon and war. And it's not going to be any good going forward. If there's any characteristic of this empire that seems out there and up front right now, it's that this is an empire of war. The National Defense Authorization Act also has some special provisions about Guantanamo. I won't go through all the details but basically we've already said on this show, Guantanamo is becoming a permanent aspect of the detention system in this world or in this country. It's open now forever, it seems. there's laws that say you can't bring people to the US for trial. There's preventative detentions and military commissions. This National Authorization Detention Act -- hard to believe -- but makes those provisions even worse. It now says that any non-citizen held by the US military -- any non U.S. citizen held by the US military in a foreign country cannot be brought to the United States. Not just people in Guantanamo can't be brought here but people in any foreign country. So if someone's picked up -- as they have been in the past -- for like bombing the USS Cole or something -- they can no longer be brought to the United States for trial even though the Cole people were brought to the US for trial -- or at least some of them. That means they have to be tried in the so-called military commissions or rum trials, trials that are completely no good for anything. A pretty amazing bill basically saying "No more Constitutional courts, let's just try these people in some court we set up somewhere in the world." Very, very bad provision. It also says that any non-US citizen in the United States who's involved in a terrorist attack cannot be tried in a regular US federal court but must be tried in a military commission. So there you go. If you thought we were moving towards fascism in this country -- at least certain aspects of it -- there we see it -- open and notorious. Perhaps we'll be lucky and these three provisions that I've talked about -- the broadening of the war, the prohibition on bringing anybody from any foreign country to the United States for trial, and the prohibition on trying any alleged US terrorists non-citizen in the United States in a regular court -- we're hopeful that those three provisions won't pass. But they've passed the House already and it's not clear to me that they won't go through the Senate. So it's not getting better, it's getting worse and worse and worse.