We hold these truths to be self evident…right?
Well, those liberties are now under fire. The Senate recently passed the National Defense Authorization Act, a law that, if passed, would place domestic terror investigations and interrogations in the hands of the military.
According to the language of the bill, if someone is suspected of being “a member of, or part of, Al-Qaeda or an associated force,” he/she can be held in military custody “without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.” This forbids criminal trials for terror suspects.
In essence, It means that the government can imprison anyone for an indefinite amount of time without having given him/her a fair trial, as long as the government considers the detainee to be a terrorist.
If that doesn’t terrify you enough, the law has no specifications on how to categorize people as terrorists. Therefore incarceration is completely based on the whim of the feelings of the government.
The detention clause of indefinite military detention in terrorism cases is not limited to foreigners. According to Texas Representative Robert Chesney, “U.S. citizens are included in the grant of detention authority.”
This law would completely override the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a right to trial. The law would let the government lock up for an infinite amount of time any citizen it declares a terrorist without the duty of proving its claim to a nonpartial judge.
It does not matter if you are a liberal or a conservative, libertarian or socialist. All Americans need to write to their congressman urging for the removal of this law. If Obama could do one thing with his presidency’s remaining time, it should be the veto of this law.
What ever happened to “innocent until proven guilty?” America is now straddling a crevice in terms of the future of our civil liberties. America will either reinforce the freedoms cemented in our own Constitution, or throw them away in the name of security as we go all-in for the War against Terror.
The subject of the proposal is our most basic freedoms. Without them, the government could deem me a terrorist for trying to spread panic with this article, put me in prison and make sure I never get out.
The whole point of the War on Terror is to defend our rights against those who wish to destroy them with extremist methods. Yes, in this situation we would be self-defeating the War on Terror by throwing away our rights. However, we would, in turn, lose the most valuable part of what makes the United States the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
