Administrative Disappearance

Sometimes, the left inadvertently uses framing that makes the right drool with envy.

Dow concludes that the administration of U.S. President George W Bush has "exploited our national trauma to extend law enforcement authority, as the long-standing biases within the Justice Department against Muslims and Arabs became politically correct."

Implication
Bush administration policies of disappearing people into "administrative detention" are just an extension of the things FBI and others are already supposed to be doing.

This frame makes it seem that our law enforcement agencies are supposed to pick people up at random, hold them for days, weeks, or months with no legal representation, with no charges, and no trial; and that the Bush policies just allow more of the same.

Of course, the reality is that the US constitution has some very different views on how people are to be treated.

According to our Constitution
There are things called rights. It's illegal for the government to violate those rights. Here are some relevant to detention:

Article IV:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons ... against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The Bush administration's policies violate this right - people are being seized unreasonably. Note: this doesn't say "arrested," it says "seized." It applies even outside of the context of law enforcement. It is as illegal for someone to unreasonably seize you for administrative reasons as it is to unreasonably seize you for law enforcement reasons.

Given how poorly the administrative cases hold up on those rare occasions that they ever come before a judge, I'm guessing that the oaths or affirmations being used for issuing warrants might also be suspect, but that's just speculation on my part:

What resulted? Not one of the 1,200 individuals detained, nor any of the 80,000 people fingerprinted, nor any of the 10,000 interviewed, have been charged with anything more than visa violations.

Now there's a record to be proud of: 0 crimes for 91,200 suspects. Even the Red Sox can do better than that!

Article V:

No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...

By denying trials, denying access to a lawyer, denying access to character witnesses, the Bushinistas are depriving people of liberty, and in some cases life and property, without due process of law (see article VI).

Article VI:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed ... and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

This spells it all out:

• No detention without speedy public trial;

This means there MUST be a trial, the trial MUST happen soon after arrest, and the trial MUST be public - that means NO secret courts. The government cannot lock people up for random periods of time just for the heck of it.


• Trial must be by impartial jury;

Note the word "impartial" - the jury can't be selected by the government to ensure the person will be found guilty. The jury must be made up of people who care only that the person will get a fair trial based on the evidence presented.


• Trial must occur in the state in which the alleged crime occurred;

For example, if a Cuban immigrant overstayed his visa in Florida, he'd have to be tried in Florida, not Guantanamo.


• The person must be told what crime he committed;

The FBI cannot barge into your house, pick you up, and drag you off without telling you what law you broke.


• The person must be presented with the witnesses against him,

You must be able to confront your accuser, so you can understand who is accusing you and why. The reason for this is to enable you to figure out how to defend yourself.


• The person must be allowed to find witnesses in his favor;

You must be able to get your own witnesses who may be able to defend you against the other side's witnesses.


• The person must be given a lawyer.

You must be allowed to have a person who is a legal expert help you.

Not allowing a seized person any of ONE these rights is against the law, according to our constitution. The Bush regime hates those pesky rights. They would just as soon do without them, which is why they use innocent-sounding weasel words (like "administrative detention") to disguise what they're doing.

Article VIII:

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

That means no torture. It means no stomping on people's bare feet. It means no terrifying people with dogs. It means no rape. It means no throwing prisoners against the wall, dragging them along the floor, denying them food or water, keeping them trapped in tiny stinky cells 24 hours a day for days on end. It means no beatings.

I often hear people say "Well that's the way things are in prison." as if that's an excuse. It's the same as the "But, all the kids are doing it!" excuse that didn't work in junior high school. It's against the law, no matter who's doing it. Period.

Article IX:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

This means that the constitution includes some, but not all of the rights available to people. Just because it's not spelled out, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Here's one I bet you might agree with: You can't be held indefinitely as a non-prisoner.

Picture This
You're eating your morning toast and someone knocks on the door. You open the door and some folks come in and start asking you questions. They grab stuff from your house, grab you, and bring you to a processing center. This center looks like a jail. People in it are kept in little jail-like cells. You're put into one of those cells. Have you or have you not been arrested? If you haven't been arrested, what would you call it? Kidnapping might fit, I suppose. But in any case, you probably don't think anyone should have the right to do that to you.

Better yet, you haven't been charged with, or even accused of, any crime. You may be beaten, raped, or otherwise "stressed." You may be let go in a few days, or maybe not. You may be transferred around from one place to another, without being allowed to contact your family or a lawyer. You may be deported to another country - a country where there's a pretty good chance you'll be brutally tortured or killed.

That scenario is what's currently called "administrative detention." In Central America and South Africa, it was called being "disappeared."

Anywhere in the world, no matter how friendly its name, it is an evil. It is wrong. It must not be allowed to continue. Not even if it's being done by "the good guys."

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Toddling About in the Middle East

Every once in a while, President Bush forgets his terminology handbook and muddies the message. He tries so hard to follow Rove's framing rules, but as a non-English speaker, sometimes he has a little trouble. Paraphrasing some of my favorites, in order of utterance:

I'm a War President. I don't want to be a war President, I want to be a peace president. We have won the war in Iraq. We can't win this war. We will win this war. We don't want to send mixed signals.

Amazingly, in light of the fact that there's an extensive documented trail of his shifts on every position he's had, he either won't admit that he has been inconsistent, or he simply doesn't recognize it. The latter tends to be true among toddlers, which set me to thinking about the distinguishing characteristics of toddlers.

The Toddler

After some pondering, I've decided that, in the world of foreign policy, Bush appears to be a typical toddler.

Shocking as it may be to you (and onlookers), aggressive behavior is a normal part of your toddler's development. Still-emerging language skills, a fierce desire to become independent, and undeveloped impulse control make children this age prime candidates for getting physical. ... That doesn't mean you should ignore [his aggression], of course. Let your toddler know that aggressive behavior is unacceptable, and show him other ways to express his feelings.

How Does Bush Measure Up?

• He is fierce in his desire for independence.
Example: referring to the idea of increasing strength through strategic alliances as asking for a "permission slip"),


• It's well known that his language skills are still emerging,
Example: "It will take time to restore chaos and order."


• And he's got a long history of impulse control problems.
Example: His recent anger management issue in the second Presidential debate.

The Danger

Just about everyone remembers watching a toddler rush headlong into danger. It may have been your own child, a friend's, a neighbor's, or even a total stranger's. In any case, you probably remember that sudden panic in the pit of your stomach. Everyone has heard a story of a kind-hearted neighbor scooping up an errant little speed demon just in the nick of time.

In the foreign policy world, Bush made a toddler-esque headlong rush to war against a country that posed no threat and was not about to pose a threat. He toddled along into war, ignoring the adults around him, including top US Military strategists:

General Schwarzkopf, who became known as "Stormin' Norman" during the 1991 Gulf War, called for United Nations weapons inspectors to be given more time to assess whether Iraq had any illegal weapons.

and Christian leaders:

"We are concerned about the situation in Iraq," the leaders say in their statement. "We believe that the Iraqi government has a duty to stop its internal repression, to end its threats to peace, to abandon its efforts to develop weapons of mass destruction, and to respect the legitimate role of the United Nations in ensuring that it does so. But we also believe that the international community is weakened and respect for law undermined when national governments act individually rather than collectively to secure these goals."

The leaders express concern for the impact that military action would have on Christian-Muslim relations and the possibility that it would trigger an attack on Israel. They also say they don't believe that "all reasonable alternative means of containing Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction have been exhausted."

Signers include the Rev. Robert Edgar, top staff executive of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and NCC President Elenie Huszagh. Edgar is a United Methodist. Click for long list...

The Kind-Hearted Neighbor

The rest of the world, in trying to stop Bush from charging into danger, played the part of the kind-hearted neighbor that unfortunately, was unable to save the child from himself.

However, unlike the heartwrenching tragedy of a single lost child, Bush's tragic error brings death, destruction, and increased danger to all of humanity:

Indeed, war with Iraq is as likely to aggravate the problem of terrorism as it is to reduce it: It threatens to deflect our efforts from the struggle against terrorism, jeopardize cooperation from our allies, intensify hostility in the Arab world, and entangle us in further conflicts in the region.

...

The reactive posture of deterrence that Bush says is obsolete reduced the chances of disaster. Preemption increases the "nervousness" of weapons, the risk that they will be fired off before diplomacy has had a chance to work. In a crisis, knowing our strategic doctrine, any adversary with weapons of mass destruction might be inclined to use them first rather than suffer their destruction.

The Community

In all of these toddler stories, the community comes together, either to celebarate a rescue, or mourn an unjust death.

In this mistake of a war, the community is a heartbroken world in which thousands of broken families grieve in the wake of our Toddler President's blind dash to war - a war that makes toddlers pay with their lives:

... today’s armies fight on with hard drives and software, with white noise and satellites, with specks on monitors erupting in flames. And smart weapons create the same images of disfigured women holding expressionless children — head too small for the hospital pillow, body too short for the bed.

War has never fit children.[WARNING: graphic photo]

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