Liberty & Justice For All

[The following was sent as an e-mail to President Obama on 2/26/09.]

Dear President Obama:

I am already seriously concerned about your re-election in 2012, given that you were elected to make a clean break with the horrific, unconstitutional practices of the Bush Administration.

It appears that you and your Justice Dept. have, in support of the former Bush Administration, taken the position in a recent filing in US District Court that "war" detainees being held incommunicado at the US Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan are not entitled to civil-liberties protections, presumably including "due process" (also guaranteed in the 5th Amendment, not merely in the 14th) and habeas corpus. This is flat wrong.

[See NY Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/washington/22bagram.html?scp=4&sq=detainees&st=cse

FIRST: by no legitimate means may those detainees be described as "war" detainees since there is no legitimate "war" pending, the Congress not having "declared war" as is its exclusive province under Article I of the US Constitution, the same entity that you and Mr. Eric Holder, your Attorney General, are sworn to uphold and defend. (BTW: you are NOT sworn to uphold and defend "the United States," according to the oath prescribed in Article II of the Constitution).

SECOND: notwithstanding whatever nonsense a five-person majority on the US Supreme Court may decide, the natural rights of humans (including "due process" and habeas corpus) are surely universal and not limited merely to US citizens.

THIRD: because those rights are universal, the US Constitution makes it abundantly clear in the 10th Amendment that the POWERS of the US government (including yours) are limited and specifically prescribed; otherwise, they simply do not exist. The US government and its minions do not and cannot magically gain powers not otherwise enjoyed merely because the US government is operating offshore. The 10th Amendment does not acknowledge in any respect that the POWERS of the US government are thus expanded.

FOURTH: the RIGHTS already universally enjoyed by everyone are properly and legally a prior and superior restraint that circumscribe even legitimate government POWER. They are not, as someone else has observed, "dispensations from a benevolent government" to be handed out or withheld, as with candy and children. The violation of our universally-held rights can never be legitimized, not even by the United States government. In fact, as the Constitution is the sine qua non-creating document for the very existence of the United States and its government, the powers of the United States can NEVER, under any circumstances, exceed what is SPECIFICALLY granted thereunder, REGARDLESS of whatever any other country or government has ever done. Thus, the past military experiences of other governments are simply not instructive nor do they serve as valid precedents for actions taken or not taken by the US government. In short, what you and your Administration are proposing is exercising (as did George W. Bush) brute military force in an ultra vires manner. Nor are there any legitimate IMPLICIT powers under our Constitution, notwithstanding what some other self-serving dunce may conclude.

The LEGITIMATE powers of the United States government (regardless of any other government that has ever existed) are thus circumscribed by the universal rights of all people everywhere, even offshore. The recognition of those universal rights antedates the existence of the United States and its government, as you may remember, by several hundred years.

In examination of the real civil-liberties elements of your Administration and that of former President George W. Bush, the similarities I personally now see are frightening. You should not buy into the politically convenient yet illicit conversion of what happened in 2001 (the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City) from a civil criminal matter into a phony, unauthorized military exercise fraudulently labeled a "war." Afghanistan may well become your Vietnam, I suspect, Osama bin Laden's machinations notwithstanding.

Now that you have moved into the White House, have you become informed of something that you did not know before to justify these deplorable actions? That is unlikely.

You will surely be the recipient of many accolades for your well-intended (if somewhat mis-allocated) efforts to reverse our pathetic economic fortunes, and perhaps in your list of priorities, those immediate, scary issues far transcend the "rights" of swarthy "towel-heads" in far-off Afghanistan. You may even achieve re-election in 2012 (despite the possible bloody disaster-to-come in Afghanistan), but you are seriously risking the loss of support by which you won the last election from those of us who are deeply concerned about individual rights and government restraint. Please don't proceed in such fashion.

I am not a believer but Jesus did say, I think, that "inasmuch as ye do unto the least of my bretheren ye do also unto me." That is my take on the Bill of Rights.