Lawfare
Two Clinton judges on a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals have announced to the world that they have still not gotten it through their belfried cranial cavities that we...are...at...war:
Judges with the mindset of Diana Gribbon Motz and Roger Gregory (the Clinton appointee foolishly reappointed by Bush as another unrequited bipartisan olive branch) have already wreaked disastrous consequences ON the Constitution by effectively amending it outside the democratic process in order to write left-wing ideology into the text. But this ruling, if left intact, will have precisely the effect it purportedly seeks to avert by handcuffing the government and leaving us vulnerable to catastrophic terrorist attacks that would throw the balance the President and previous GOP Congresses have sought between security and civil liberties completely up in the air.
Let's start with a rather important fact that the New York Times left out of their narrative: al-Marri is alien al Qaeda operative from Qatar, sent to the United States the day before 9/11 to conduct follow-up attacks and explore the potential for electronic disruptions of our reeling nation’s financial system. As such he was no different status-wise from any of the nineteen jihadis that flew four airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, but for heroic passenger intervention, the U.S. Capitol or White House almost six years ago. They were all "legal" resident aliens as well, and I have no doubt that if any of them had survived their little "operation," the two robed Clintonoids would apply this ruling to them as well.
A ruling that is sheer purblind leftism imposed in complete disregard of the facts and of the reality of the world we currently live in. By its terms, the Bush Administration would have two choices: put al-Marri on trial in a civilian court with full constitutional rights, meaning he would have the right via the discovery process for his legal counsel to comb through every bit of intelligence that the feds have gathered on al Qaeda and broadcast it to his bloodmisting comrades; or let him go, where he would immediately rejoin the Islamic jihad against the West in general and the United States in particular.
It ought not bear repeating, but for the very existence of such court decisions, that this ruling is insane. It's also itself argubly unconstitutional, or at the very least laughably wrong in its assertion that the President's inherent war-fighting powers are. Recall the language of the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which empowered the President to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons” involved in the 9/11 attacks, as necessary to “prevent future acts of international terrorism against the United States[.]” Detaining enemy combatants is part of that power, and always has been. And since al Qaeda is not a sovereign nation but a transnational terrorist network - the very grounds on which Judges Motz and Gregory assert that jihadi operatives have to be treated as civilian "criminals" - that, in legal fact (the SCOTUS' 2004 Hamdi decision), makes captured terrorists "unlawful" combatants outside the perview of the Geneva Convention, and consequently "holdable" without trial for the duration of hostilities. A state of war, if you will, the existence of which Congress, again, recognized on September 20, 2001.
This is not about the law or the Constitution; it is about two judges deciding, on their own usurped authority, that the United States is no longer at war. I'm sure this would be happy news for our enemies, who have not, to my knowledge, made a similar declaration of peace with the infidels they've been trying to annihilate for all these years - and still are. It must warm their hearts to know that they have such staunch dhimmis in the American federal judiciary, as Andy McCarthy was scathingly candid in pointing out yesterday:
McCarthy makes a whole laundry list of devasting ripostes, including the implications this decision would have for the burgeoning call even within Bush's own inner circle to close Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay and transfer all 380 or so remaining jihadis to the civilian court system right alongside Ali al-Marri. It would be to functionally wave the white flag in front of bin Laden. Everything we have gained - the captures, the intel, the rolling up of al Qaeda networks and thwarting of who knows how many of their post-9/11 plots - in the "War On Terror" would be forfeit. It would make more devastating attacks on the homeland inevitable, all but unstoppable, and would correspondingly reduce the likelihood that we would come to our senses in their aftermath and resume fighting this war as the one of annihilation that it is and always will be as long as a single one of the enemy still live.
Or maybe that likelihood is irrelevant, since judges like Mr. Gregory and Ms. Motz will simply overrule any common sense steps the American people (those still alive, anyway) take through their elected representatives and elected president. And with the likely partisan control of both elected Branches likely to be simpatico with two thirds of this Fourth Circuit panel, such steps wouldn't likely be taken in any case.
You do recognize what this decision, if left standing, means for national security, don't you? An American enemy has finally found the means of attacking us with complete impunity. Forget massed tank armies and massive fleets of bombers and huge naval task forces and battle groups; just retain the services of untraceable ("Warrantless wiretapping" of terrorists is "unconstitutional," don'tcha know....) terrorist organizations, have them send individual operatives with the skills and knowledge to carry out mass casualty attacks on civilian targets to infiltrate our country, prepare your statements of plausible deniability, and sit back and watch the fireworks as one US city after another goes up in flames, or radiological fallout, or toxic clouds, or just grinds to a halt from cold, choking, artificially-induced plague, and the federal courts - those whose judges are still alive, anyway - step in, citing the Gregory/Motz precedent, and require any captured terrorists to be tried in civilian courts with full constitutional rights. Because, after all, we can never be at war if we decide we'll never fight.
Justice Robert Jackson, who before he ascended to Olympus was FDR's attorney general, famously remarked that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. That is still the case, as it is written. It is blind guide ideologues like Judges Motz and Gregory who are determined to turn it into one. And it is the duty of the SCOTUS to reverse their unauthorized mass deathwish, and the oligarchical horse it rode in on.
The federal appeals court in Richmond, VA, ruled [Mon]day that the President may not declare civilians in this country to be “enemy combatants” and have the military hold them indefinitely. The ruling was a stinging rejection of one of the Bush Administration’s central assertions about the scope of executive authority to combat terrorism.
The ruling came in the case of Ali al-Marri, a citizen of Qatar now in military custody in Charleston, S.C., who is the only person on the American mainland known to be held as an enemy combatant. The court said the Administration may charge Mr. Marri with a crime, deport him or hold him as a material witness in connection with a grand jury investigation. ...
The court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, said a fundamental principle is at stake: military detention of someone who had lawfully entered the United States and established connections here, it said, violates the Constitution.
“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians,” Judge Motz wrote, “even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution — and the country.”
Judges with the mindset of Diana Gribbon Motz and Roger Gregory (the Clinton appointee foolishly reappointed by Bush as another unrequited bipartisan olive branch) have already wreaked disastrous consequences ON the Constitution by effectively amending it outside the democratic process in order to write left-wing ideology into the text. But this ruling, if left intact, will have precisely the effect it purportedly seeks to avert by handcuffing the government and leaving us vulnerable to catastrophic terrorist attacks that would throw the balance the President and previous GOP Congresses have sought between security and civil liberties completely up in the air.
Let's start with a rather important fact that the New York Times left out of their narrative: al-Marri is alien al Qaeda operative from Qatar, sent to the United States the day before 9/11 to conduct follow-up attacks and explore the potential for electronic disruptions of our reeling nation’s financial system. As such he was no different status-wise from any of the nineteen jihadis that flew four airliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and, but for heroic passenger intervention, the U.S. Capitol or White House almost six years ago. They were all "legal" resident aliens as well, and I have no doubt that if any of them had survived their little "operation," the two robed Clintonoids would apply this ruling to them as well.
A ruling that is sheer purblind leftism imposed in complete disregard of the facts and of the reality of the world we currently live in. By its terms, the Bush Administration would have two choices: put al-Marri on trial in a civilian court with full constitutional rights, meaning he would have the right via the discovery process for his legal counsel to comb through every bit of intelligence that the feds have gathered on al Qaeda and broadcast it to his bloodmisting comrades; or let him go, where he would immediately rejoin the Islamic jihad against the West in general and the United States in particular.
It ought not bear repeating, but for the very existence of such court decisions, that this ruling is insane. It's also itself argubly unconstitutional, or at the very least laughably wrong in its assertion that the President's inherent war-fighting powers are. Recall the language of the post-9/11 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which empowered the President to use “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons” involved in the 9/11 attacks, as necessary to “prevent future acts of international terrorism against the United States[.]” Detaining enemy combatants is part of that power, and always has been. And since al Qaeda is not a sovereign nation but a transnational terrorist network - the very grounds on which Judges Motz and Gregory assert that jihadi operatives have to be treated as civilian "criminals" - that, in legal fact (the SCOTUS' 2004 Hamdi decision), makes captured terrorists "unlawful" combatants outside the perview of the Geneva Convention, and consequently "holdable" without trial for the duration of hostilities. A state of war, if you will, the existence of which Congress, again, recognized on September 20, 2001.
This is not about the law or the Constitution; it is about two judges deciding, on their own usurped authority, that the United States is no longer at war. I'm sure this would be happy news for our enemies, who have not, to my knowledge, made a similar declaration of peace with the infidels they've been trying to annihilate for all these years - and still are. It must warm their hearts to know that they have such staunch dhimmis in the American federal judiciary, as Andy McCarthy was scathingly candid in pointing out yesterday:
Strike another blow for lawfare: The use of the American people’s courts as a weapon against the American people in a war prosecuted by the President — the only public official elected by all Americans — under an authorization for the use of military force overwhelmingly passed by the American people’s representatives in congress. And all for the benefit of an alien sent here to attack us....
Despite all this; despite the fact that the nation remains at war; despite the fact that Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and other assorted Qaeda mouthpieces continue to promise the organization is planning devastating attacks against our homeland; and despite the fact that, as we catastrophically saw less than six years ago, such attacks cannot occur absent the machinations of terrorists, like al-Marri, planted inside our country; a federal court Monday intervened on the enemy’s behalf.
McCarthy makes a whole laundry list of devasting ripostes, including the implications this decision would have for the burgeoning call even within Bush's own inner circle to close Camp X-Ray at Guantanamo Bay and transfer all 380 or so remaining jihadis to the civilian court system right alongside Ali al-Marri. It would be to functionally wave the white flag in front of bin Laden. Everything we have gained - the captures, the intel, the rolling up of al Qaeda networks and thwarting of who knows how many of their post-9/11 plots - in the "War On Terror" would be forfeit. It would make more devastating attacks on the homeland inevitable, all but unstoppable, and would correspondingly reduce the likelihood that we would come to our senses in their aftermath and resume fighting this war as the one of annihilation that it is and always will be as long as a single one of the enemy still live.
Or maybe that likelihood is irrelevant, since judges like Mr. Gregory and Ms. Motz will simply overrule any common sense steps the American people (those still alive, anyway) take through their elected representatives and elected president. And with the likely partisan control of both elected Branches likely to be simpatico with two thirds of this Fourth Circuit panel, such steps wouldn't likely be taken in any case.
You do recognize what this decision, if left standing, means for national security, don't you? An American enemy has finally found the means of attacking us with complete impunity. Forget massed tank armies and massive fleets of bombers and huge naval task forces and battle groups; just retain the services of untraceable ("Warrantless wiretapping" of terrorists is "unconstitutional," don'tcha know....) terrorist organizations, have them send individual operatives with the skills and knowledge to carry out mass casualty attacks on civilian targets to infiltrate our country, prepare your statements of plausible deniability, and sit back and watch the fireworks as one US city after another goes up in flames, or radiological fallout, or toxic clouds, or just grinds to a halt from cold, choking, artificially-induced plague, and the federal courts - those whose judges are still alive, anyway - step in, citing the Gregory/Motz precedent, and require any captured terrorists to be tried in civilian courts with full constitutional rights. Because, after all, we can never be at war if we decide we'll never fight.
Justice Robert Jackson, who before he ascended to Olympus was FDR's attorney general, famously remarked that the Constitution is not a suicide pact. That is still the case, as it is written. It is blind guide ideologues like Judges Motz and Gregory who are determined to turn it into one. And it is the duty of the SCOTUS to reverse their unauthorized mass deathwish, and the oligarchical horse it rode in on.
posted by JASmius at 5:32 PM
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