THINKING FOR OURSELVES

Confidence in Justice

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, June 17-23, 2007

Fifty-three senators voted their lack of confidence in the Attorney General of the United States. The majority of the Senate, including seven Republicans, agreed with the resolution: “It is the sense of the Senate that Attorney General Gonzales no longer holds the confidence of the Senate and the American people.” While seven votes shy of the necessary 60 to carry the motion, the resolution carried the sentiments of most Americans.

President Bush, visiting Bulgaria, used the occasion to express his continued support for the “fine job” Alberto Gonzales is doing. He said of the Senate efforts, “They can try to have their votes of no confidence, but it’s not going to determine who serves in my government.”

This disdain for the majority of the Senate is typical of Bush. But those of us who care about basic fairness and human decency need to continue to press the issues behind the lack of confidence in Gonzales.

Gonzales has done much more than fire a few federal prosecutors who would not carry out the Republican Party agenda. He has been the key figure in dismantling some of our most important American values.

He is the man who advocated the use of torture. He is the architect of the horrific system designed to evade international conventions for the treatment of prisoners of war.

Judges within and without the military are rejecting this system. Recently, two military judges, in separate trials, declared they lacked jurisdiction to try people held as enemy combatants. Both judges, noted, independently, that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 only gave them jurisdiction over "alien unlawful enemy combatants." The two suspected Al Qaeda members, Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, had previously been judged to be "enemy combatants," not "unlawful" enemy combatants.

This was much more than a technicality. It is a stark reminder of the kind of legalistic tricks the administration has resorted to in order to evade international laws for the treatment of people caught in this ill-conceived war.

A stinging ruling followed this rebuke by a panel of the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz declared that Bush had overstepped his authority when he ordered indefinite military detention of an Arab student on suspicion that he was a “sleeper agent” for Al Qaeda. In a 2 to 1 decision the judge declared, “To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the president calls them ‘enemy combatants’ would have disastrous consequences for the Constitution and the country.” She further said, “We refuse to recognize a claim to power that would so alter the constitutional foundations of our republic.” Judge Roger Gregory joined in the majority opinion.

This vote of no confidence will be less easy to shake off. Jonathan Hafetz, lawyer for defendant Ali Saleh al-Marri, said, “It affirms the right of all individuals in this country to habeas corpus and rejects the administration’s position that it can lock up people in the US, potentially for life. Without charge and without trial.”

Gonzales plans to fight this ruling. If he does, the rest of us should use this as an opportunity to force a conversation in our country about the powers of government to name people enemies, snatch them off the streets and disappear them into military prisons at home and abroad. Most of us know that the justice system, even when highly regulated and operating in full public view, is flawed. How can we possibly sanction such terrors against people in the name of safety?

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