From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Mon Dec 30 2002 - 17:24:38 MST
On Monday, December 30, 2002 12:48 PM Ron h. Dehede011@aol.com wrote:
> You are attempting to apply criminal law to a battlefield
> with an enemy army. It may well be true that once a
> prisoner is designated an "enemy combatant" he can
> be held without charges but you don't tell us that an
> American citizen still has to be presented to the court
> to appeal that designation.
It's still a disturbing thing, since any citizen defendants have to
fight the full weight of our central/imperial government. IIRC, these
things are still playing out in the government's courts.
> I know the term "enemy combatant" was applied to
> American Citizens as far back as at least the 2nd
> world war. If I remember correctly those "citizens"
> were eventually hung as enemy spies still under the
> title "enemy combatant." I also believe that was a
> military court not a civilian court.
I'm not so sure about that, BUT there was an actual declaration of war
back then, which kind of made these things finite. (I'm not praising
the US government or the FDR administration back then either. They were
pretty much out for an end run around constitutional limits to
government power. Remember the goal of these limits was not for cunning
prosecutors to find fancy ways of getting around them but to actually
limit government power. The limitations have pretty much failed, so
it's time to reconsider an anarchist paradigm here -- instead of relying
on monopoly governments to play by the rules when they enforce, revise,
and interpret these rules.) Once the enemy was defeated -- the enemy
being, more or less, clearly defined -- the detentions would likely end.
(I'm not sure people thought that way, but that seems to have been the
outcome and the underlying assumption. A cessation of hostilities,
i.e., would lead to freedom for such prisoners.)
The current situation seems to allow for perpetual imprisonment
incommunicado of just about anyone without trial. We shall see how this
plays out in coming months, since there have been several challenges to
the Bush Administration's policy here.
Best wishes for 2003!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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