Obama has ordered the closure of Gitmo prison. Do doubt there will be a lot of rejoicing among people who are interested in civil liberties, as not only Gitmo but the whole Bush administration was a blight on the record of civil liberties and constitutional rights in the US (more on that later)
However rejoicing over the closure of Gitmo should be short. Obama may have closed Gitmo, but the existence of Gitmo has extablished a precedent that can be invoked yet again at any time in the future.
This is much like the Japanese-American internment camps created during WWII, into which American citizens who had as little as 1/16th Japanese ancestry were forcibly relocated. Even though the internment camps were judged by history to be a stain on the civil liberties of Americans and a national disgrace, and even though the Japanese-Americans who were kept in the camps eventually received an apology and compensation from the US government, the legality of the internment camps was supported by the US Supreme Court in the Korematsu case. So in other words, it was judged to be a perfectly legal thing to do then, and so it could happen again. That's why a dissenting judge in the Korematsu case characterized it as a "loaded weapon" waiting to go off again:
"The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon, ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need. Every repetition imbeds that principle more deeply in our law and thinking and expands it to new purposes."
-- and the same thing is true of Gitmo:
And another reason not to celebtrate too much: Aside from the whole question of Gitmo, the cause of civil liberties in this country has suffered massive, permanent damage. We have lost precious freedoms and rights that were once judged to be fundamental to the Anglo-American system of justice, and which will not come back (once a precedent has been set that a fundemental right can be taken away, even temporarily it then becomes much more of a conditional thing, much less "Fundamental".)
For example, when I was in law school, the idea that the government could charge someone with a crime using "secret evidence" that the accused (nor the jury -- assuming you get a trial) could neither see nor challenge -- would have been considered to be repulsive and highly unlikely. In fact, the hated Star Chamber court that the American revolutionaries complained about so bitterly didn't even do that. Well, guess what! Today in the United States, defendants can be (and have been) sent to prison based on "secret evidence" that they never had a chance to challenge in court. In fact, people have been imprisoned without ever seeing the inside of a court house!
It is a fundamental rule of police states that once they start to tread on civil liberties, they will always continue to demand yet more concessions and powers, always with the excuse that "emergency situations" or "public safety" or "national security" requires us to give up yet more rights.
To be fair, this trend towards a police state started before Bush II, but greatly accelerted under his administration. What with domestic spying programs, warrantless eavesdropping, imprisonment without charge, legalization of torture, etc etc etc -- not to mention the wholesale failure of the system of checks and balances between the Executive and Legislative branches which was SUPPOSED to prevent the likes of Wolfowitz and Cheney and Douglas Feith from misleading us into a war -- it would be no exaggeration whatsoever to say that the cause of civil liberties (indeed, the concept of constitutionalism itself) has suffered a mortal wound, and the constitution has been exposed as a paper tiger that fundamentally failed its purpose.
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