Ashcroft's detention camps

[For some of the relevant background:
     Ignore the Past, Damn the Future  
     http://monkeyfist.com/articles/787 ]

Los Angeles Times - August 14, 2002

Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish Vision

By JONATHAN TURLEY, Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional 
law at George Washington University.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft's announced desire for camps for U.S. 
citizens he deems to be "enemy combatants" has moved him from merely 
being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.

Ashcroft's plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would 
allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and 
summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the 
courts by declaring them enemy combatants.

The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional 
hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft's fitness for this important 
office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, 
Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.

The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft's small 
inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see 
whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla 
and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held 
without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority 
of the government.

Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case 
are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. 
Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in 
Taliban units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi 
rots in a floating Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.

This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who 
ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's 
treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must 
simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the 
president's absolute authority in "a time of war."

In Padilla's case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped 
a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. 
The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there 
was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that 
Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United 
States--two facts that should trigger the full application of 
constitutional rights.

Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made "enemy combatant" stamp for any 
citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.

Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological 
terrorism, aides have indicated that a "high-level committee" will 
recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional 
rights and sent to Ashcroft's new camps.

Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish 
such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps 
on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese 
American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with 
thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that 
unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.

We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft's America. Some of 
his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation 
unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured 
from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of 
loyalty.

For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as 
coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this 
relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty.

Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty 
has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.

Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging 
citizens to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding 
massive terrorist attacks.

His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear 
that would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won 
by their ancestors.

In "A Man for All Seasons," Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young 
lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter's hand. Roper proclaimed 
that he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil.

More's response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: "And when the 
last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you 
hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? ... This country's planted 
thick with laws from coast to coast ... and if you cut them down--and 
you are just the man to do it--do you really think you could stand 
upright in the winds that would blow then?"

Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and 
traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of 
peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional 
landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, "Enough."

Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good 
faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian 
ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of 
American camps, we have already lost what we are defending.