[Peace-discuss] Preventive detention?!

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Mr Obama: Resign Now
	With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators?
	By Ted Rall
	June 03, 2009 "Information Clearing House"

MIAMI--We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations 
that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the 
broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton 
look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.

 From healthcare to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges 
real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of 
offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged 
on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president 
doesn't have the 'nads to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for 
work in the morning?

Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any 
patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with 
corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he 
ought to step down now--before he drags us further into the abyss.

I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other 
government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could 
be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply 
that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in 
this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also 
kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.

In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else 
they deem annoying off the street.

Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military 
dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, 
their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. 
They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what Orwell called 
"thoughtcrime"--contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.

Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and 
a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is 
contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever 
been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the President of 
the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our 
moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea 
offends the idea of civilization itself.

Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike 
the Republicans who backed Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I 
voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove 
himself from power.

"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon 
"terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."

"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.

Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a 
crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a 
Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the 
Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried.
Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?

The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in 
American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a 
couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with 
the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national 
security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because 
evidence is tainted."

In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against 
whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent. They walk free. In countries 
where the rule of law prevails, in places blessedly free of fearful leaders 
whose only concern is staying in power, "tainted evidence" is no evidence at 
all. If you can't prove that a defendant committed a crime--an actual crime, not 
a thoughtcrime--in a fair trial, you release him and apologize to the judge and 
jury for wasting their time.

It is amazing and incredible, after eight years of Bush's lawless behavior, to 
have to still have to explain these things. For that reason alone, Obama should 
resign. 	

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22762.htm