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<a href="http://www.justleft.org/" eudora="autourl">www.justleft.org<br>
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</a>News and Analysis from the frontlines of the progressive
movement<br><br>
</font><font size=4><b>November 13, 2001: Coup d’etat in America<br><br>
</b></font><font size=3>I am writing this on November 13th. That
day probably has little significance for most readers of this blog. But
it is a day, as they say, that should live in infamy. On that date in
2001, two months after 9/11, President Bush issued Military Order Number
1.
(<a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011113-27.html" eudora="autourl">
www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011113-27.html</a>) I remember
the shock I awoke to upon reading the military order in the newspapers of
November 14th. I remember thinking to myself that there has just been a
coup d’etat in America, perhaps an exaggeration, but nonetheless a
watershed moment in a country that I still though had some semblance of a
democracy and of the principle that Presidential authority was under
law.<br><br>
As most of
you may not recall the order, let me remind you of its three key
provisions. First, the President claimed the authority to capture,
kidnap or otherwise arrest any non-citizen (it was later extended to
citizens) anywhere in the world including the United States whom the
President believed was involved in international terrorism and hold them
forever without any charges, proceedings or trial. Amazing—a person could
be held forever just because the President wanted them so held; he took
on the power to disappear people. Second, the order did provide that if,
and if is the crucial word here, if the person was tried (there never
needed to be a trial) such trials were to be held by special ad hoc
courts called military commissions. These commissions had no resemblance
to regular trial courts. The entire proceeding could take place in
secret, with evidence from torture, and those found guilty could be
executed in secret. Third, to the extent the names of those imprisoned or
tried could be determined and lawyers found, no court could hear any
case. This order embodies within it the violations of fundamental
rights we are facing today: indefinite detention without trial,
Guantanamo, secret sites, special trials and disappearances. While it
does not mention torture, that appears to have come a bit later, a secret
detention system is part and parcel of a torture system. Let’s also
repeat: this was a military order in a society and country that was
us still or purported to be under civilian rule.<br><br>
This orders more then any other single document embodies our lost
liberties. It was this document that pushed the Center for Constitutional
Rights into action. It was this document that made CCR begin the historic
fight the rights of those who would a few months later be imprisoned at
Guantánamo. We said, despite the hate and the anger that ensued, that we
would represent the first detainees imprisoned under this order and we
did.
(<a href="http://www.law.uchicago.edu/tribunals/nyt_113001" eudora="autourl">
http://www.law.uchicago.edu/tribunals/nyt_113001</a>) We are still doing
so today. On December 5 the latest in the Guantanamo cases will be argued
in the Supreme Court. We will never give up this fight.<br><br>
November 13th, 2007 by michael [Ratner]<br><br>
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