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Let's be clear what the US Congress has just authorised.
The President or the Secretary of Defense can now designate as an "enemy combatant" any non US citizen who is considered to be aiding or abetting any enemy of the United States or any of its allies. There is no legal definition of 'ally' but supposing it means anybody the US has a military co-operation agreement that runs pretty wide. So anybody who gives aid to any organisation opposing Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza, opposing Turkish oppression of the Kurds, supporting First Nations activists in Southern Ontario and a thousand and one other causes, could be picked up while passing through the US and treated as an "enemy combatant".
Such "enemy combatants" can be shipped off for detention and interrogation to anywhere the the Pres or the SoD chooses. Their only right to challenge their status or treatment (including what constitutes torture) will be through a military tribunal. They are denied access to the US Federal Courts.
This is a massive power grab by the administration. The US now asserts the right to detain interrogate, judge, and if it feels like it, execute any person (except US citizens), anywhere that the administration deems to be an enemy of the US with no legal recourse except to very dubious military tribunals.
What, of course, is particularly brazen about this is that it doesn't apply to US citizens. Most governments assert their right to police and judge their own citizens and, indeed, that's what any notion of social contract is all about. Western democracy is built more or less explicitly on the notion of a compact between governors and governed. What this extraordinary piece of legislation asserts is the right of the US government to apply standards to the citizens of other countries that it daren't even begin to suggest (yet!) for the people who vote for it.
My guess is that the next step will be legislation allowing the Administration to strip citizenship from any non-native born citizen suspected of 'anti-American' activities, followed after a decent interval by the extension of that principle to native born citizens and so on. Come on Americans, you have already let the Pentagon take over your foreign and industrial policies, are you going to let them have the judiciary too?
The President or the Secretary of Defense can now designate as an "enemy combatant" any non US citizen who is considered to be aiding or abetting any enemy of the United States or any of its allies. There is no legal definition of 'ally' but supposing it means anybody the US has a military co-operation agreement that runs pretty wide. So anybody who gives aid to any organisation opposing Israel's policies in the West Bank and Gaza, opposing Turkish oppression of the Kurds, supporting First Nations activists in Southern Ontario and a thousand and one other causes, could be picked up while passing through the US and treated as an "enemy combatant".
Such "enemy combatants" can be shipped off for detention and interrogation to anywhere the the Pres or the SoD chooses. Their only right to challenge their status or treatment (including what constitutes torture) will be through a military tribunal. They are denied access to the US Federal Courts.
This is a massive power grab by the administration. The US now asserts the right to detain interrogate, judge, and if it feels like it, execute any person (except US citizens), anywhere that the administration deems to be an enemy of the US with no legal recourse except to very dubious military tribunals.
What, of course, is particularly brazen about this is that it doesn't apply to US citizens. Most governments assert their right to police and judge their own citizens and, indeed, that's what any notion of social contract is all about. Western democracy is built more or less explicitly on the notion of a compact between governors and governed. What this extraordinary piece of legislation asserts is the right of the US government to apply standards to the citizens of other countries that it daren't even begin to suggest (yet!) for the people who vote for it.
My guess is that the next step will be legislation allowing the Administration to strip citizenship from any non-native born citizen suspected of 'anti-American' activities, followed after a decent interval by the extension of that principle to native born citizens and so on. Come on Americans, you have already let the Pentagon take over your foreign and industrial policies, are you going to let them have the judiciary too?
