 | What Is A National Security Prison? |
Morris Davis, the former Chief Prosecutor at the Office of Military Commissions for the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, testified before the House Armed Services Committee. He had a lot of important things to say, and I suggest that you read his testimony.
One particular idea in Davis’s remarks caught my attention. It has to do with the fundamental legal status of the prisons at Guantanamo Bay. Davis said of these prisons,
“The aims of national security/intelligence are not the same as law enforcement/criminal prosecution. The former has a prospective focus to prevent harm in the future while the latter is retrospective and punishes those who inflicted harm in the past. There is clearly a strong national interest in conducting both of these missions effectively, but they are separate and distinct missions. Guantanamo Bay presents a unique challenge in that its primary focus from the start was intelligence – to collect information that might prevent the next 9/11 – and criminal prosecution was at best a third or fourth tier consideration.”
In this statement, the chief prosecutor exposes the fundamental illegality of the Guantanamo Bay prisons. The Bush Administration has stated Guantanamo is not a prisoner of war camp, and has withheld the legal rights bestowed by the Geneva Conventions and other laws that apply to prisoners of war. On the other hand, as Davis points out, the prisons at Guantanamo Bay are not established as law enforcement prisons either. If Guantanamo was a law enforcement facility, then the Guantanamo Bay prisoners would have to have been given the full legal rights of criminal suspects under U.S. domestic law.
Instead, Guantanamo has occupied the status of a third kind of prison - a sort of prison that the President of the United States has no authority to create: A national security / intelligence prison.
What is a national security / intelligence prison? It’s a place where the American government locks people up in order to protect the national security of the United States and to gather information from people.
The mere existence of Guantanamo as a national security / intelligence prison indicates that the Bush White House asserts the right to put people in prison for the purposes of getting information out of them - even if the prisoners have not committed any crime and are not participating in any violence action against the United States. The existence of Guantanamo in this shadow realm also indicates that President Bush has taken on the power of kidnapping people and holding them prisoner as a pre-emptive move based on the unproven assumption that a person might pose a national security threat to the United States in the future.
With these powers, the President could order the imprisonment of any person for any reason, asserting that the person held prisoner has no rights under any system of law.
These are the powers of a tyrant. As long as we Americans allow Guantanamo to remain open, we allow our government to engage in tyranny.
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Let’s write letters to our Congress!
Oh, we did that already and no change has taken place (well, we did get habeus corpus back, but Guantanamo is still there accepting new “prisoners.”
Uh, let’s sign some more petitions . . .?
Comment by Tom — 7/31/2008 @ 4:47 pm
How about “whatever it takes”? Do the ends justify the means? Is getting our way what matters? Or do we accept that sometimes our efforts will fail?
Comment by Jim — 7/31/2008 @ 5:02 pm
Oh, Tom you tried once, a few years ago, and then that didn’t work, so now you advocate burning down buildings!
You’ve been saying that there’s no use in trying any more FOR YEARS, Tom. When did you stop trying? 1978?
Comment by Peregrin Wood — 7/31/2008 @ 8:47 pm
No Peregrin, i haven’t stopped - it’s just frustrating. i suppose you have no problem accepting all this shit the government is sticking up your ass and down your throat ’cause you can blog about it. Trouble is the people who can do something about it either aren’t listening, don’t care what the populace thinks or do what “they” want anyway. Look, if over 80% of the country now recognizes (far too late i’m afraid) that the neocons have taken us down the road to destruction, but our legislators aren’t responding by changing anything for the better or undoing what’s been done (and in fact continue to dismantle the Constitution) WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO? Writing Congress doesn’t help, voting in new people doesn’t help, and (though if your read what i said i don’t advocate burning down buildings or rioting, but it does get their attention) destruction and mayhem won’t help. So i guess we’re just supposed to feel better by blogging about all this misery.
Great.
Comment by Tom — 8/1/2008 @ 7:32 am
Tom, what I have no problem with is concluding that doing nothing will make things worse than doing something, and FOR YEARS you have encouraged people to do nothing.
You make the mistake of concluding that because a particular action doesn’t end up winning the day on the national stage, that it doesn’t help.
I wish you would focus on the negative emotion of how you feel, and start focusing on action.
If you really think that writing about political subjects doesn’t do any good, then why would you write comments about writing about political subjects?
Comment by Peregrin Wood — 8/1/2008 @ 10:35 am
“…why would you write comments about writing about political subjects?”
To be brief: Out of frustration at the glacial pace of reform and the lightning pace of corruption. By the way i’m not advocating that people do nothing. i’m commenting about how despite what we’ve done over the past 8 years (including march in the streets, write letters to the editor, sign petitions, write Congress and the “president”, and blog endlessly) it is NOT doing enough to stop the erosion of our rights, the fascistic actions of our government, the mounting debt, the falling dollar, and our quality of life (just to name a few of the negative impacts).
What do people have to do (besides have the patience of saints and the hope of eternal optimists) to get ACTUAL PROGRESSIVE CHANGE out of Washington?
Comment by Tom — 8/1/2008 @ 12:14 pm
Tom, if all the people who say that they care about these issues do what we do, that WOULD be enough to get actual progressive change.
The problem is that too many people merely complain in person, grumbling merely to friends and family, without making public statements and communicating with public officials.
So, what we have to do to get ACTUAL PROGRESSIVE CHANGE, as you put it, is to get the word out to more people, to encourage them to do the basics - contacting members of Congress, writing letters to the editor, taking part in public demonstrations, writing political blogs and the like.
Also, withholding financial support from groups like the DCCC and DSCC, while giving financial support to progressive organizations (not politicians) helps a great deal. Just think about all the great work that groups like the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Center for Biological Diversity have done.
This stuff will work, IF enough people do it. The fact that not enough people are doing these actions is not reasonable grounds for the conclusion that these tactics are ineffective and not worth doing.
Comment by Peregrin Wood — 8/1/2008 @ 1:58 pm
i used to believe that Peregrin, but since our government doesn’t work for us citizens any longer, it no longer seems to be the case that even if “enough” (however vague that is) people write and complain that things will change.
Just keep doing what you’re doing and i’ll keep complaining, talkin’ to people and writing also. i just no longer expect anything to change for the better. It looks more hopeless each week.
Comment by Tom — 8/2/2008 @ 9:13 am
Tom, the government is a reflection of what we citizens do, and if citizens would stop caring more about what’s on television than they do about their government is doing in their name, government would work for the people.
Comment by Peregrin Wood — 8/2/2008 @ 10:06 am