A Fettered Nation Unbound

January 3rd, 2005 at 17:58 Björn Hallberg

Washington Post informs us that the US regime is looking for new ways to detain suspected 'terrorists' indefinitely (login info: BugMeNot).

The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts. The outcome of the review, which also involves the State Department, would also affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.

Words fail me. If one could only be sure that this was the act of random madness, paranoia and fear.

As opposed to a well placed agenda of total domination. Then we could all just sit back and watch the great republic tear itself asunder. Still, when an empire crumbles, disaster is often spelt even for those that are not under its domain.
The article says it all basically. New laws to make sure that the perfectly good and sound laws of old can be bent and broken. If there are not enough evidence to hold a man then he should be set free until such time that new evidence has been unearthed or his innocence is proven beyond any doubt. No amount of whining and fear mongering can change that. Innocent until proven guilty. That is the way enlightened nations have aspired to act for millennia. Proponents of this cosy little amendment will most likely say that it's 'better to be safe than sorry' and that essentially 'only a terrorist would fear the anti-terrorist laws' (a twist on the old 'only a criminal would fear a police state' but still as deeply flawed). No amount of clever rhetorics on my part will convince them of their wrongdoing. It's just that in my understanding of history, moves like these often forebode the ill deeds of lesser men. It's just a bad omen.

Essentially this is an early sign that the situation is getting out of hand. It's one thing to enslave or eradicate people of another color of skin or culture in a faraway land. That is despicable enough, but it happens and has always happened throughout history. And it is usually done with certain limits because of constitutional constraints of the homeland. But the line is drawn at destructing the internal workings of one's own country to accommodate for further advances abroad. It's a case of what the old British Empire always feared and dubbed the 'Boomerang Effect'. Not only does it represent a clear and present danger to the domestic population but combined with an expansionist agenda, any country which sheds the 'burden' of one's own constitution will wield limitless authority.

The consequences down the road could be dire.

Entry 9 filed under: North America. This entry was posted 4 years ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.