Senator Leahy is Right

Today’s Senate agenda contains an item put forward by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont that is extremely important to America’s standing in the world, the problem is that it could be presented in a better package.

Senator Leahy has made it his mission to restore Habeas Corpus to the American justice system. People detained in Guantanamo Bay and a few lesser known sites around the world by the U.S. as enemy combatants have been denied the right of Habeas Corpus – i.e. the right to have representation and hear the charges against them.

Proponents of holding prisoners the way we have at Gitmo say that our enemies don’t deserve due process, and that the U.S. has never extended Habeas to such prisoners during wartime. As NPR’s Morning Edition pointed out today, this is not true. America did extend Habeas to German saboteurs captured during WWII. Then after the war, acting against the wishes of people like Winston Churchill who advocated summary execution rather than trial, the United States wanted the opportunity to demonstrate to the world the power of fair justice and insisted on holding the Nuremberg Trials. The result was the same, but allowing the defendants to hear the charges against them and state their defense gave the trial judges the high moral ground over defendants who had summarily executed so many innocent victims. By the time the trials were over, the entire world knew that the defendants were guilty.

By contrast, the hundreds of prisoners held in Gitmo today have not been charged with nor proven guilty of anything other than the blanket accusation that they are enemies of the United States of America. Many if not most of those prisoners have been held there for over five years without charges.

In a nation which holds other nation’s feet to the fire for human rights violations, this is unconscionable. Colin Powell has spoken out even more harshly than Leahy, saying that he would close Guantanamo Bay immediately.

Senator Leahy’s desire to obtain justice for these prisoners and thus to begin to restore America’s standing as a nation that believes in the rights of man is laudable and should be supported. The problem comes when you realize that he amendment he put forward to achieve this goal is attached to a bill to fund support for the men and women we have stationed in Iraq, and President Bush has said he will veto that bill if the amendment is attached.

In my view, the military has plenty of money in its “black” budget to provide whatever support our troops need, so the bill ought to be presented to Bush with the amendment attached. Let Bush be the one who denies the funds to the troops. Let Bush be the one standing alone in defense of inhumane treatment of prisoners held by America. Let Bush continue to show his *** to the world while the rest of us try to rein him in.

If you agree, call or email your Senators today and tell them so. If there are valid reasons to hold these people in prison, then let’s hold them, but let’s not do so without proving that our reasons are valid. Otherwise we are no better than the Nazis or the Communists who imprisoned so many people without justification in earlier times. The America I believe in would not do that for one minute, let alone five years. I think that’s the America all true patriots believe in, and it’s high time we reinstated our national dignity and honor. Reinstating Habeas Corpus for these prisoners is just the first step.

Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR