Bananas and bin Laden

A new pinnacle of chutzpah is achieved in the claim that we must not prosecute lawless torturers like Vice-President Cheney, David Addington, and John Yoo because we wouldn’t want to be like a “banana republic.” The hypocrisy is the amnesia about what deformed the economies and politics of such benighted, Latin American states to begin with. Who bought their bananas? Who upheld their dictators? Who made sure that the campesinos remained debt-peons or wage-slaves, while a few families grew enormously rich? United Fruit and the Dulles Brothers (Secrertary of State and Director of CIA under Eisenhower), that’s who!

Unfortunately, we seem to be doomed to be like “banana republics” whatever we do, because if we do not prosecute the lawbreakers of our own previous régime, it means we let them get away with torture. Such impunity is also a hallmark of a “banana republic.” If we don’t prosecute our torturers, they will do it again, as Dick Cheney frankly promised: “I’d do it again in a minute.”

Dick Cheney & co. are secret Al-Qaeda operatives, albeit maybe unwitting ones. Osama bin-Laden predicted that our Republic could not withstand the onslaught of terrorist attack. We would bankrupt ourselves in retaliation. Perhaps he also foresaw moral bankruptcy: that we would fold from within, rushing to dismantle our civil order, and exposing the hypocrisy of our endless, self-serving prattle about human rights. And so it has happened. How many Americans realize that we have lived under a state of emergency for the last thirteen years? Congress passed the Authorization of the Use of Military Force Act, on September 14 2001, and a month later the evil “Patriot” Act, which is more than 300 pages long. Was it drafted within that month? Or was it ready to go, someone having anticipated the need to suspend the Constitution? In any case members of Congress didn’t have time to read it, much less study and analyze it or hold public hearings. They figured it was an emergency measure, but it has never since been altered. “Banana republic,” indeed!

President Obama – certainly not the worst president in history, but equally certainly among the most disappointing – admitted publicly, years ago, that the evil “Patriot” Act needed a lot of revision. But then, he also vowed that nothing would be classified, on his watch, just because it was embarrassing. On May 21, 2009, shortly after his inauguration, He stood in front of the Constitution at the National Archives and promised us that.

But since then President Obama’s administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers, and invoked the 1917 Espionage Act against more people than all previous presidents combined. Since torture is secret, those who expose it will go to jail faster than those who do it.  Habeas Corpus is still suspended. (The suspension applies only to accused terrorists, of course, but that category includes anyone the President says it does.) The most basic underpinning of democratic government – going back to the Magna Carta – is compromised in this thirteen-year “emergency.” If the executive branch says you are a terrorist, you do not have the right to a hearing before a magistrate, in which the state must prove its case.

Unfortunately that’s not all. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 reaffirmed Congressional approval of the seizure of American citizens, here in the United States, by U.S. military personnel, without showing "probable cause" to believe they have committed any unlawful act. The act further provides for the “indefinite detention” of these citizens, in a U.S. military facility, without trial or an attorney. The only requirement is that an official of the Federal Executive Branch has determined that these unfortunate citizens have "provided substantial assistance to" any organization that has engaged in "any act of hostility against the United States or against any of its allies." What these organizations are, who these allies are, and what constitutes “substantial assistance” or an “act of hostility” are left to the Executive Branch to determine. The citizen detained cannot challenge it in court. [Amendments to delete the “indefinite detention” provision passed the Senate, failed in the House and were dropped by the conference committee. An interesting coalition of right-wing and left-wing senators voted against the final bill.]         

President Obama is to be congratulated for one of his first acts in office: an executive order banning torture. But there is a subtle problem here: torture was already illegal, by our own statutes and treaties of the United States, which are the “supreme law of the land,” according to the Constitution. Torture is not a policy option, as the executive order forbidding it would seem to imply. The President’s only option here is to enforce the existing law. He has publicly named the crime. “We tortured folks,” he said. Well, in that case, those responsible for committing, ordering or facilitating the crimes are felons. It is hard to imagine anything more dangerous to constitutional government than letting them get away with it. Dick Cheney says he would “do it again in a minute.” [For what the Bush White House did, see Democracy Now report on Staff Sgt. Joseph Hickman who believes the Navy covered-up the death by torture of three, possibly four, prisoners at Guantanamo]. That says it all. If someone of like mentality, became president, Obama’s executive order would be easily cancelled. In the name of “national security.” In fact, any inconvenient laws could be set aside by a president claiming the “inherent authority” to do anything at all, to anybody.

Will we ever get our liberties back? Or are we sliding down a slippery slope, incapable of clawing our way back, destined inevitably to become a “banana republic” like those at which our more imbecilic politicians sneer? Osama bin Laden must be laughing at the bottom of the sea.