Cardassian justice

Bush & Pentagon would have power secretly to declare guilt for pre-crime

I've had for some time a desire to put together a serious post on the dangers of Bush's legislation defining military commission for Terror War detainees that Congress is trying to push through following rebuke of the Administration in the Supreme Court Hamden decision. But science fiction references keep coming up in my head.

Some of us watched the old Star Trek Deep Space Nine series in the 1990s. One of the villain regimes in the series was Cardassia. There, if you were to be accused of a crime, the justice system proceeded something like this:

You are denied knowledge of what you are accused of until your trial.

You can never know who your accusers are- for "security" reasons.

Trials are a show for the public, to explain how the guilt was determined, not to find a verdict.

The verdict is always predetermined- guilty.

The duty of your Consort is get you to valiantly accept the charges and execution.

Let's combine these obviously absurd notions of justice with ``pre-crime'', from a different work of science fiction, Minority Report, made into a pretty bad movie starring Tom Cruise. Under pre-crime, the crimes for which you could be accused have not yet happened.

This is what President Bush says about Terror War suspects,

In some cases, we determine that individuals we have captured pose a significant threat, or may have intelligence that we and our allies need to have to prevent new attacks. Many are al Qaeda operatives or Taliban fighters trying to conceal their identities, and they withhold information that could save American lives. In these cases, it has been necessary to move these individuals to an environment where they can be held secretly, questioned by experts, and -- when appropriate -- prosecuted for terrorist acts.

Wow, pre-crime. The suspects can be ``prosecuted for terrorist acts'' just because ``we [the president and presumably the Pentagon] determine that individuals we have captured pose a significant threat''.

The standard for detention, and probably conviction, is ``could save American lives'', not ``took lives'', as the regular notion of crime would suggest. Criminal law since the Magna Carta is out the window. A despotic executive now has the power to ``determine'' your status as a ``threat'', even if the threat is just what he says is in your mind.

And what about the trial. Here we go back to strictly Cardassian standards. Here is what the president's own sheet on Myth/Fact: The Administration's Legislation to Create Military Commissions says:

...the new bill provides that before any classified evidence is introduced outside the accused’s presence, the head of the executive department that has classified the evidence must certify that sharing the evidence would harm national security...

Sure, there's a ton of utterly meaningless qualifiers included with this sheet, but there is the bottom line--the evidence CAN be secret as soon as ``the head of the executive department that has classified'' it says so. Cardassian to be sure.

It is mildly relieving to hear that a small group of Republican Senators, including one of our own, Susan Collins from Maine, has stood up for the moment against Cardassian justice. A vote in the Armed Services Committee has rejected Bush's bill.

But there is way too much silence, way too much cowering from the Republican accusations of ``surrender'' if Bush can not have his way, like what the insufferable Sen. Bill Frist issued last night on the News Hour:

...I can tell you where our interest is: It's the safety and security of the American people.

It is going to be a wake-up call to the Democrats who basically belittle in many ways this war on terror, who do want to wave this white flag and surrender. And surrender is just simply not a solution, and that's very likely going to play out here over the next several weeks, as we address these bills that you talked about on the floor of the Senate.

The Democrats need to start standing up and saying that the way to protect America is not to throw away the American system of justice for the Cardassian one, as Bush, Frist, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and others think we should. Due process cannot be reduced to a mockery. We can not preserve our own desire to be free from terror by acting like a Terror state, the Cardassian state, where human rights of the accused are unprotected.

The accusations of ``surrender'' and ``Democrats are more interested in the rights of terrorists than the safety of America'' are so wrong headed. We cannot protect ourselves by violating the human rights of anyone we think looks like a terrorist and turning over our system of justice to a Cardassian executive authority.