Now while living on Mars, probably in a cave, you might in fact have your head up your butt. If this is true, then you probably don't understand why the National Defense Authorization Act is so controversial. If this bill passes then the entire United States of America is declared as a wartime battlefield.
The United States Military will be free to operate within these United States with complete impunity. Specific provisions within this legislation assert that United States citizens and lawful resident aliens can then be arrested by the military, detained indefinitely without trial in military prisons, and possibly even tortured. Detainees will not receive Habeas Corpus, Miranda Rights, or protection under the Geneva Convention. Even if this law is unconstitutional and therefore the arrest and detention of a citizen is unconstitutional, detainees will never see a judge or have a lawyer and so will never have the opportunity to raise the question of their detention in any legal setting.
At first I was really skeptical about this law. After all, these types of indefinite detentions decided by government officials without evidence is exactly the kind of thing that our Founding Fathers experienced at the hands of the British, and believed should never happen here. They put specific protections against these sorts of arrests in the Bill of Rights, the first ten and most sacrosanct sections of The US Constitution. However I've come around and decided this type of indefinite military detention is exactly what we need in our country right now. It's the only way to stop the most pervasive problem faced by our democracy.
We are currently subject to shadowy hidden forces that have committed criminal acts against the people of the United States and the World. The people responsible for the worst atrocities of our nation have been able to escape any consequences for their actions for years and with this act we can finally remove them from our society and begin to restore the freedoms regular average Americans have lost. Finally bankers, corporate executives, lobbyists, and corrupt politicians can be stopped from doing further harm to this country.
We can exact true retribution on the wealthy bankers who caused the financial melt downs of the last three years. Instead of fighting the SEC in court, and then settling for a minor pittance while admitting no wrongdoing, banking executives will face real justice. Imagine that some rich Citigroup or Goldman Sachs executive is sitting at his desk, looking over corporate earnings reports. Suddenly a company of Marines acting on orders from a democratic congress kick in his door, detain his employees, beat him up, and apply plastic ties so tightly around his wrists that his hands are useless for the rest of his life. It's a satisfying thought, to think that a black bag will be put over his head and that he'll be disappeared from the world. His family will not know where he is. There will be no public record of his arrest or detention. He'll get to find out exactly how bad waterboarding is as he lives out his days in Guantanamo Bay.
I know what your thinking. You're reading this, thinking to yourself "Philmore, this is a great idea, but what about ecological disasters?" Well, consider this. Despite propaganda to the contrary, the Gulf of Mexico will be ruined for the next 100 years from BP's famous deep-water drilling accident. Fines and lawsuits will drag out in court for years and people still have to struggle to prove that they've been harmed. Where is the justice? Here's the justice: Send the army to Tony Hayward's house in the middle of the night. Have the Delta Force drag him out and throw him into a military stockade where he can suffer the indignation of perpetual imprisonment. I'll bet he'll really want his life back then. We can even have simultaneous military raids to capture other BP and Haliburton executives who were complicit in allowing the conditions that created the disaster. That will be the last oil spill of this or any other lifetime.
The fun doesn't have to stop with corporate criminals. We finally have a way to protect the public from corrupt and abusive police forces. Police who abuse citizens have long been protected by their departments. The worst cases of police abuse are typically met with paid administrative leave while an sham investigation goes on until the media attention dies down. The next time a cop shoots your dogs, murders an autistic person, assaults protesters, or beats a black man who is already handcuffed we can finally have justice. Instead of an investigation, we send in the military.
Here's how I imagine it will work. The Air force will drop a couple bombs on any police department that protects a corrupt or abusive officer. Any police who survive the initial bombing will be terminated with extreme prejudice if they even think about resisting the military incursion. Once a team of Navy SEALs locates the offending officer or officers, the SEALs can collect them. The abusive and/or corrupt police will be zip tied, black bagged, and disappeared to a military prison where they will live the humiliation of being strip searched and raped on a daily basis until they die alone in solitary confinement.
Sometimes, people who would have otherwise gone to prison for their crimes in a normal situation still escape justice. Kenneth Lay of Enron defrauded his employees and shareholders, but managed to stay free on bail, even after he was convicted. He died before the sentencing hearing having never even admitted his guilt. With this new system of justice, we wouldn't even have to wait for a trial. He could have been captured by the military the minute allegations arose, and spent his last years from 2002 to 2006, eating the 'cock-meat-sandwich'.
Roman Polanski allegedly raped a young girl over 30 years ago, but was able to flee to Europe, where he can't be extradited for trial because of his Polish citizenship. Instead of freedom for Polanski, we have the CIA perform an extraordinary rendition, and drag his ass to a military prison in some country where they don't frown on torture. We can have them hook the electrodes up to his testicles. That sounds like justice to me!
Finally all the factors that keep these douchebagels from the justice they so richly deserve won't mean a thing. They can't negotiate with the SEC, they can't pay a small fine, they can't hide behind corporate immunity. They can't hide behind an excuse of "I'm just doing my job." They can't hide behind a system that protects them. They can't even flee the country thanks to the wonders of extraordinary rendition. Our military can collect these criminals wherever they go and put them where they can't ever hurt the world again, doomed to suffer the consequences of their crimes for the rest of their lives.
This is why I now love the National Defense Authorization Act. It solves so many of our most pervasive societal problems. We can finally fix our country for good. Ethics violations in politics? No problem. Catholic priests with too much love for little boys? No problem. Slum landlords, jay walkers, parking-ticket scofflaws, or people who rip tags off of furniture? No problem! Anyone who would have normally escaped justice can now be captured without trial and dealt with. Never again will abusers go free because of their institutional protections, money, or power.
Articles and Blogs with information on the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/12/05/the-national-defense-authorization-act-is-the-greatest-threat-to-civil-liberties-americans-face/
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2011/1203/Guantanamo-for-US-citizens-Senate-bill-raises-questions
http://wearechangetv.us/2011/11/61-senators-betrayed-you-today-they-authorized-the-indefinite-suspension-of-habeus-corpus/#axzz1fFQLQpLu
http://mudblogger.com/2012/01/04/the-coming-civil-war/
ReplyDeleteI'm right there with you bro.