An American Citizen's Guide to Protecting Oneself from the American Government, Part 2

"When the government fears the people, there is democracy. When the people fear their government, there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson.

(Just as an aside: if the current crop of politicians, the ones sporting a sub-10% approval rating with their own electorate, had been in power in 1776, does anyone have any doubt we would all still be enjoying high tea at 4 pm, riding to hounds and saying things like, "Jolly good!" ?)

But now on to the exciting caffeine-driven conclusion: Yesterday we were considering the Senate's decision (by the way, I'm talking about the Senate with the Democratic majority, where no legislation can pass without the enthusiastic support of these great "liberals") to turn the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) of 2001, the one used to retaliate against an Egyptian, 15 Saudis, a guy from the UAE, and a couple of other non-Afghan Arabs, by invading, logically enough, Afghanistan - that piece of legislation passed in a fevered rush in that mangled autumn of 2001 - into an authorization to use this same military force right here at home, against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Including Americans, because now the "whole world is a battlefield." Thus raising an interesting question or two, such as, how did a President who signed an order fast-tracking the closure of Guantanamo as his first order of business turn into a leader who is enthusiastic about using Guantanamo as a prison for his own people?

Anyway, while they were at it, "broadening the scope" of the AUMF, the Senators, including those liberal Democrats, decided to upgrade the kind of people we ought to use military force against. Well, here we go:

"renews the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) with more expansive language: to allow force (and military detention) against not only those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and countries which harbored them, but also anyone who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” (Sec. 1031); "

As we said yesterday, in fact. Now, I'm a lawyer, so I'll let you in on a little secret, a trick of the trade: lawyers read statutes carefully. Every little nook and cranny might come in handy in an argument. Everything might turn on the use and meaning of one little phrase, artfully deployed. So when I read language such as that last sentence, my mind begins by seeing how far you can extend the meaning while still observing the intent of the legislation. And when you do that, where you wind up is an "enemy of the state" under this expanded AUMF is anyone, including an American, who "substantially supports" a force "associated" with Al Qaeda or the Taliban. It behooves us all to figure out what this sloppy language just might mean, because while travel restrictions to Cuba are still in force, there are exceptions for certain circumstances.

Now, what does "substantially support" mean? And what is a "force" "associated" with Al Qaeda or the Taliban? Not to sound too paranoid, but if a SEAL team shows up in your living room at three a.m., you might want to have a tentative answer on the tip of your tongue. Let us take an example: let's say that you are concerned about all of the Iraqis displaced in the period between 2003 and 2011, the millions exiled or forced out of their homes by the civil war that broke out as the result of the American invasion. You decide to give to a charitable organization named Dar Es Salaam (House of Peace), which putatively provides aid to Iraqi orphans.

Okay, stop right there. I wouldn't do that if I were you. These charities are notorious for operating as funding mechanisms for Al Qaeda. Or so I've read. In fact, if I were you, I would stop giving to charities altogether. Okay, maybe the March of Dimes, or something recommended by Nancy Reagan. But that's it. Nothing with a funny sounding name. Generally speaking, criminal statutes are supposed to be kind of specific, so you are forewarned if you're going off the rails, but "substantially supporting" something "associated with" something else, when none of these terms gets defined, does not comport with this general rule, and the consequences of being wrong could be pretty dire.

How about simple dissent? Suppose you're in a conversation (or, God help me, write a blog) in which you describe your opposition to the war in Afghanistan. Does that "substantially support" the Taliban? In regimes such as the Soviet Union and in Nazi Germany, dissent itself was criminalized, and you can imagine how far you would get splitting hairs about whether your support was "substantial" or not. The truth of the matter is that is how police states work. You don't know whether you have any rights or not, because the system has moved from one where the laws are clear and well-defined to one where we allow individuals, such as the President, to determine unilaterally who is and who is not an enemy of the State. Whether you become a target of the U.S. military, with its new mission, probably depends less on what you have done than on whether you have drawn attention to yourself, because we have eliminated due process. The accusation is the same as a conclusive finding of guilt. That is what is meant by "indefinite detention" without trial.

We have arrived here by a very strange path, but arrived here we have. The spirited opposition to this AUMF expansion was led by Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky. He actually wanted to repeal the AUMF for Iraq altogether, given that its mission of eliminating Saddam's weapons of mass destruction had already succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. The liberal Democrats were having none of that. I just throw that out there in the hopes of clarifying your voting tendencies.

An American Citizen's Guide to Protecting Oneself from the American Government

To get right to it, the Senate, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, the American penitentiary system, the American court system, and all the police departments in all the cities and states throughout this great land are insufficient to protect us from, you guessed it, terrorists. If we didn't talk about terrorists, what would we talk about? Our bankruptcy? Public approval of Congress might fall below its current 10% if they start in on that.

Now on a personal note: I'm almost as American as they come. If I trace my lineage back through four grandparents, three strands (both paternal grandparents, my maternal grandmother) run very deep into the American soil. Indeed, the arrival of these ancestors from Europe is lost in the mists of time, but it was hundreds of years ago. My "people" (as my people say) have long made North America their home. I really would not know how to be anywhere else, so I feel the need to adapt, right here, to changing circumstances.

And man have those circumstances changed. I suppose the simplest way to say it is that as soon as the first jet hit the first tower at the World Trade Center, on September 11, 2001, the country completely lost its mind. I don't know how else to put it. Yes, a lot of people died that day, somewhere around 3,000 souls. To put this number in perspective, about 1,100,000 (one million one hundred thousand) Americans die every year as the combined total for heart disease and cancer. If you divide that number by 365, you get the number... ~3,000. In the same way that the deaths of 9/11 were tragic for the loved ones of the victims, all of these deaths, happening every single day of the year in the same number, are tragic losses for the loved ones of the newly deceased. Yet the country goes on. The loved ones mourn, pay tribute to their lost relatives and friends, and go back to the process of living their lives. That's how life is.

So what ia it about 9/11 that has forced the United States government, and two consecutive presidents, to wage holy war not just on Terrorism, but on the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights, its most important charter? Was it the existence of civil liberties and legal due process that led to the attacks of 9/11? I don't think so. I've read the Report of the 9/11 Commission, and the reasons the 19 hijackers succeeded are pretty obvious. The higher-ups at the White House, at the Immigration & Naturalization Service and at the FBI (in particular) fell down on the job. George W. Bush and Richard Cheney were totally negligent and derelict in their duty to protect the country. The field agents, particularly of the FBI and CIA, did good work. They suspected something was up, detected the mysterious presence of Arabs taking flight lessons in American schools while omitting instruction on taking off and landing, and reported it up the chain of command. But no one in the White House did anything.

With such an embarrassing breach of duty to explain away, Bush & Cheney did what politicians usually do: they created a distraction by starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What is harder to understand is why, ten years after 9/11, we're still going insane. Thus, we have the Levin/McCain bill in the Senate, which will formalize and codify the madness. Here's what it will do:

"renews the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) with more expansive language: to allow force (and military detention) against not only those who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and countries which harbored them, but also anyone who “substantially supports” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces” (Sec. 1031); "

Now, when they say "anyone," they mean anyone. This law will permit the U.S. military to deal with Americans whom the President, in his discretion, designates a suspected terrorist. An American can be taken into custody by the military, detained indefinitely, sent to Guantanamo, and disappeared forever. Or an American can simply be shot dead. It is a repeal of the concept of Posse Comitatus, which used to forbid the use of the military in domestic law enforcement; indeed, the concept of "law enforcement" has actually been superseded by this bill. Realistically, was the Gestapo engaged in "law enforcement" or something else entirely?

To give you an idea of how bad all of this is (in case the above isn't bad enough), Senator Carl Levin, a co-sponsor of this bill (working with the deranged senator from Arizona, John McCain), has, I suspect, good motivations for this legislation. Under this bill, an American will at least receive the protections of a "prisoner of war," and thus be entitled to the Geneva Convention's accountability rules. An American (if he survives the initial encounter with the military in his front yard), will have the right of habeas corpus. The nebulous designations of suspected terrorists as "enemy combatants," etc., the netherworld which allows for so much extra-legal mischief, will at least be reined in somewhat. I think this is what Levin is doing; he's a guy I've generally respected, and he's probably thinking this is as good as it gets. We've arrived at the point where we allow the President simply to gun down Americans who are designated as suspected terrorists, so any kind of "formality," even something as nuts as this, is better than nothing.

Our President and former Constitutional law instructor, Barack Obama, has threatened to veto this bill. If you're deluded enough to think he would veto it because it deprives Americans of civil liberties protection, then I hate to disturb your sweet dreams, but that's not it. No, he's concerned about his "flexibility" in dealing with terrorism, and if Americans, at the very least, can claim to be "prisoners of war" then it will be harder to ship them off to black sites in torture-friendly countries to "extract actionable intelligence."

I trust this was the Change you were Hoping for. I think I'll do a Part 2 to discuss the vagueness of the actual charging elements of the new, expanded Authorization for Use of Military Force -- including Americans this time.

How long can bin Laden stay on dialysis?

"Archaeologists originally set the date of the scrolls at 4,000 B.C., or just after the massacre of the Israelites by their benefactors. The writing is a mixture of Sumerian, Aramaic, and Babylonian and seems to have been done by either one man over a long period of time, or several men who shared the same suit. The authenticity of the scrolls is currently in great doubt, particularly since the word “Oldsmobile” appears several times in the text..."

Woody Allen, "The Red Sea Scrolls," from Without Feathers.

No day is completely lost when you can quote Woody Allen. For reasons best known not even to me, I became curious about the current state of the hunt for bin Laden. I know that years and years ago, George W. Bush said something to the effect that "I don't really think about it that much," when asked where bin Laden was; but W never really evinced thinking about much at all, so I don't know how definitive that is. I thought there must be more to the story. After all, when you think about it, bin Laden was the occasion for Bush to use the phrase "casus belli" in a press conference. I remember the sly grin on his face when he said those words. You could tell he was pretty sure the half-wits in the press corps probably didn't know what he meant - a chance for George to throw some Latin around at their expense! I was proud of him, I really was. He overdid it when he started using the phrase again in relation to Iraq, but that's another story.

Well anyway, the casus belli for Afghanistan was a meticulously constructed argument built upon the following premises:

1. Osama bin Laden was the mastermind behind 9/11.

2. OBL lived in Afghanistan, Kandahar to be exact, and the Taliban "harbored" him, thus enabling OBL to plan "further attacks," using the Fiendish Jungle Gym Complex at his camp.

3. Anyone harboring terrorists is with the terrorists under the Bush doctrine that you are either with Bush or against him (echoing things he heard every Sunday at United Baptist: "I would that ye were either hot or cold, for if ye be lukewarm, I will spew thee out of my mouth.").

4. We must therefore invade Afghanistan, depose the Taliban, and install someone like Hamid Karzai, former PR man for Union Oil and current heroin dealer.

There may be some causal links in there confounding the "belli" part, but I think that's pretty close. Just about an airtight case, any way you look at it. Some caveats were noted:

A. Bin Laden himself denied any involvement in 9/11.

B. The Taliban, who had previously met with Cheney & others in Texas for a barbecue to discuss the construction of a Union Oil pipeline across Afghanistan (prior to W's ascension to the Bush Throne), asked for, but apparently did not receive, some sort of definitive proof that OBL was actually involved.

C. No one involved in 9/11 was actually from Afghanistan. They were all from Arab countries, principally Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE, and the mastermind was probably Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Gurgling Confessor of waterboarding fame, who was only too glad, between swallows, to finger OBL as much as the CIA wanted. Indeed, there seems to be a substantial pesonnel overlap between 9/11 and the Bojinka Plot and the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

But what the hell do I know? I do sometimes think, however, that one problem with a certain vintage of the Baby Boom set (among whose number you can count me and W) is that we were overexposed to the Dick&Jane primers in grammar school, and as a result a kind of infantilization of logical processes took root in the cerebral cortex and has controlled our thinking ever since. This theory, again, will make people forget neither Godel nor Boltzmann but it's maybe something to think about. That list of 1 through 4, supra, is suggestive of this weakening of the analytical faculties, because, really, that list just doesn't make any frigging sense whatsoever. And when you think that we have waged a war that has lasted almost ten years on the basis of that list, then perhaps you know all you need to know about the state of the nation, circa turn of the Millenium.

Nevertheless, I got to thinking again about the Arch-Nemesis, the Mastermind, the Lex Luthor of the Neocons' perfervid nightmares: Osama bin Laden. And it occurred to me: ten years is a long time to be on dialysis in a cave in the mountains of Tora Bora. So I Googled the Dude. The consensus of opinion turns out to be that he died on December 13, 2001, in Tora Bora, of complications from acute kidney failure. Among the people holding this view are Robert Baer, the highly-quotable ex-CIA agent who is a persistent critic of America's anti-terrorist wars; former Pakistan "President" Pervez Musharraf; the aforemention Hamid Karzai; Donald Rumsfeld, when you get right down to it; Dale Watson, head of the FBI's Counter-Terrorism division; the Israeli Mossad; and lots and lots of other people. Were you aware of this general trend in thinking?

But haven't there been videos of bin Laden after December 13, 2001? Highly debatable. There is strong evidence that a "double" appears in those videos, including the famous one where bin Laden sits and discusses the fine points of the 9/11 attacks. Cynics have noted that bin Laden referred to melting "iron" in the Twin Towers, while a person trained in engineering (as bin Laden was) would have known the towers were built of steel, not iron. Plus, he appears to write something with his right hand in the video, and bin Laden was left-handed, not to mention that the person appearing in these videos is darker than OBL, with a black (not salt-and-pepper) beard, and with a broader and flatter nose.

All "9-11 conspiracy" stuff? What's harder to believe is that an abnormally tall Arab could actually make his way around in mountainous terrain for a decade tethered to a dialysis machine, with a $50 million price on his head, and not attract some attention, somewhere, somehow. Yet what is most astounding to me is why the press has never really zoomed in on this story and figured it out. Leaving aside the invasion of Iraq, which was a foreign policy aberration of George W. Bush and had nothing to do with the "war on terror," the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan is built wholly and solely on the association of bin Laden with that country. So if the guy died within a couple of months of our invasion, isn't that, you know, newsworthy? Just how lame are the Mainstream Media?

I suppose if Elvis is still alive, then bin Laden might be too. Driving around somewhere in Waziristan in his vintage Oldsmobile.