6.12.2008

We Have Met The Enemy

I'll be the first one to admit that I don't understand everything that's going on, both factually and legally, in connection with the detainees and Guantanamo Bay. And I'm not exactly sure what will be the long term effect of today's Supreme Court decision which, I think, means that the detainees (who have been jailed for years without charges and without the benefit of a trial) can force the government to justify in federal court why they are being held. But I was shocked regarding the first couple of paragraphs of Justice Scalia's dissent. He sounds like Limbaugh or Hannity instead of a Supreme Court Justice:
Today, for the first time in our Nation’s history, the Court confers a constitutional right to habeas corpus on alien enemies detained abroad by our military forces in the course of an ongoing war . . . . . I shall devote most of what will be a lengthy opinion to the legal errors contained in the opinion of the Court. Contrary to my usual practice, however, I think it appropriate to begin with a description of the disastrous consequences of what the Court has done today . . . . America is at war with radical Islamists. The enemy began by killing Americans and American allies abroad: 241 at the Marine barracks in Lebanon, 19 at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, 224 at our embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and 17 on the USS Cole in Yemen. See National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Commission Report, pp. 60–61, 70, 190 (2004). On September 11, 2001, the enemy brought the battle to American soil, killing 2,749 at the Twin Towers in New York City, 184 at the Pentagon in Washington, D. C., and 40 in Pennsylvania. See id., at 552, n. 9. It has threatened further attacks against our homeland; one need only walk about buttressed and barricaded Washington, or board a plane anywhere in the country, to know that the threat is a serious one. Our Armed Forces are now in the field against the enemy, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week, 13 of our countrymen in arms were killed.
But I guess he believes that the government should not have to prove that those held in Guantanamo have anything at all to do with that list of tragedies. They look like Islamic Terrorists so let's keep them locked up without justification? Who does that sound like? Jack Nicholson from A Few Good Men?: "You [deleted] people... you have no idea how to defend a nation. All you did was weaken a country today, Kaffee. That's all you did. You put people's lives in danger. Sweet dreams, son."