We look back at the torture regime and rightly bemoan the lack of accountability from George W. Bush to Dick Cheney to David Addington and John Yoo. The entire culture and society shifted in a dark direction. Dick Cheney said famously and ominously, we would have to work the dark side. He was giving voice to a voice being articulated in our papers and cable news channels. I remember the second tower had hardly fallen when I started reading commentators openly contemplating or advocating for torture, the suspension of due process and all kinds of harsh draconian measures.
Ultimately, the people responsible for the torture regime are the government officials who made the key decisions, but the fertile soil into which the seeds of torture were planted were provided by the commentators, pundits and law professors who made it seem acceptable in the minds of the public in the wake of 9/11. That is why the aftermath of an event like Boston, we have a duty to fight the darkest impulses in ourselves, in our fellow country men and women, to make clear to our leader that we desire security and justice and the application of the rule of law. That there is no reason that our remarkably capable law enforcement officials and courts can't handle apprehending, trying and convicting the perpetrators of this slaughter.
And it is why I was so angered and disappointed when i saw Slate's great reporter David Weigel report that Susan Collins said this today: “The question is: What do we do once we do capture the individual? How’s he treated? If he’s an American, obviously, then the constitutional protections pertain. If he is a foreign national, in my view, then he should be held by a military tribunal and he should not be read his Miranda rights as [the Christmas Day Bomber] was.”
Yes, Susan Collins, a voice of bipartisan reason telling reporters that if the person apprehended happens to be a foreign national-- what a disgrace and what an insult to the american system of justice. And what ignorance. The fifth amendment of the constitution which protects the right to due process is quite clear about who it applies to. It reads "no person shall be held to answer for capital or otherwise infamous crime unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury nor be deprived of life, liberty of process." Not no citizen, no person. A French national is arrested in a bar fight, he gets access to a lawyer, is arraigned, charged and tried. We don't have some special carve out in the law for foreigners. Our laws are our laws.
Watch it all if you have the time.
Did anyone else on the news shows even think about this over the past couple of days? If they did, I missed it. (In fact, apparently most of the media are themselves "tortured" by the fact that they don't know who to launch the lynch mob against just yet.)
And yet, after their terribly destructive behavior in the wake of 9/11, every member of congress and the media should be reminding herself not to be panic artists this time. These people have some very serious moral obligations to work off. It's the least they can do.