A Reply to Barack

"Waldoswimmer-- Early this morning, the last of our troops left Iraq. As we honor and reflect on the sacrifices that millions of men and women made for this war, I wanted to make sure you heard the news. Bringing this war to a responsible end was a cause that sparked many Americans to get involved in the political process for the first time. Today's outcome is a reminder that we all have a stake in our country's future, and a say in the direction we choose. Thank you. Barack"

Dear Barack,

First of all, you're welcome. My mother did not raise an inconsiderate son, and it's important to be polite. With that out of the way...

Since you're my President, I would like to mention a few of my concerns and ask for your comments:

1. My understanding is that the December 2011 departure date was negotiated between George W. Bush and Nouri Al-Maliki a number of years back as part of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) talks. That is the case, isn't it? I think it's fine to reflect on what our military has been through in this awful war (it's something we should do), but there has been plenty of false self-congratulation surrounding this departure and maybe it's time for that to come to an end, too. Specifically, if Maliki had negotiated a different SOFA arrangement whereby American military personnel had continued to enjoy their immunity from local (Iraqi) legal jurisdiction, wouldn't you have pressed for a longer commitment in Iraq? From everything I've read on this point, it seems to me that the wily Nouri withheld this concession precisely because he knew that it would propel the Americans out of Iraq. That's the way it goes; it's important to remember that chess was invented in that part of the world.

I'm not suggesting that you're trying to take credit for a withdrawal from Iraq that was written in stone before you ever took office. On the other hand, I'm not suggesting that you're not.

2. "Bringing this war to a responsible end was a cause that sparked many Americans to get involved in the political process for the first time." Okay, here's my feeling on that one. Personally, I got involved in the 2008 campaign (even journeyed to Florida to work as a Voting Rights Lawyer for you) because I thought you were serious about returning the United States to a Constitutional form of government and one of laws, not of men. The drift toward lawlessness, disregard of the Constitution and open defiance of international norms of decency became very pronounced under your predecessor. The Iraq War was certainly part of that, but it was apparent before the election of 2008 that the occupation of Iraq had an expiration date.

Be that as it may, here is what I think is really necessary for a "responsible end." The news reports use the "standard statistics" for describing the costs of the war. The number cited for Iraqi deaths is always "100,000." It seems to me that if a country, such as my country, really wants to regain the ethical high ground that we ought to leave off with such convenient calculations and really go at the problem. The Johns Hopkins - Lancet study, using standard methodology for such epidemiological problems, calculated the number of Iraqi deaths at much higher levels, as many as one million "excess deaths" over and above normal mortality even under a dictator such as Saddam Hussein. George W. Bush dismissed this study with his famous "flawed methodology" comment, but of course (and with all due respect to our brilliant ex-Commander in Chief) this is not exactly definitive. We spend lots of money on "commissions" and panels of Blue Ribbon experts. How about just one more: a group of scientists and statisticians, modeled on the panel led by Richard Feynman to study the Challenger disaster, to delve very deeply into the question of "excess deaths" in Iraq. Let's find out how many people actually died. If we don't determine the true cost to the local population of these military adventures, it's just way too easy to justify interfering in a foreign locale whenever we perceive some interest of ours is being disturbed. I also think we owe the Iraqi people this measure of respect. If a million people in Iraq died as the direct result of an invasion built on false premises, let's own up to it. It's not as if they're not going to notice if we don't.

3. While we're at it, let's determine and publish a real number regarding American military casualties. This part is easy. We already have all of the statistics. Let's make public a full accounting of the injuries caused to American personnel as the result of the war, by body part, severity and life consequences. How many soldiers are brain damaged? How many lost one or more eyes? How many amputations? How many third degree burns? How many disfigurements? How many cases of post traumatic stress and/or insanity? Put it all out there as a counterpoint to the nonstop glorification of war once and for all.

I think doing all of those things is the minimal requirement of "responsibility," don't you?

4. "Today's outcome is a reminder that we all have a stake in our country's future, and a say in the direction we choose."

No question about that. As I exercise my "say" next year, I'll be watching to see how you handle my suggestions.

Merry Christmas, and by the way, basketball is my favorite sport, too.

Waldo

Notes & Errata on the Indefinite Detention Bill

Perhaps I spoke a little too soon in condemning the Mainstream Media for its silence in the face of the repeal of the Bill of Rights through the "Indefinite Detention" provision that passed as part of the Defense Authorization Act in the Senate this past week. Since our touchstone here at the Pond is intellectual honesty, I hasten to point out that the august New York Times, usually an unflagging admirer of the "practical" and centrist policies of President Chance the Basketball Player, used markedly harsh language in condemning what it called Obama's latest "cave-in." To wit, in an Op-Ed entitled (tellingly) "Politics Over Principle":

The bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can’t go into them all. Among the worst: It leaves open the possibility of subjecting American citizens to military detention and trial by a military court. It will make it impossible to shut the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. And it includes an unneeded expansion of the authorization for the use of military force in Afghanistan to include indefinite detention of anyone suspected of being a member of Al Qaeda or an amorphous group of “associated forces” that could cover just about anyone arrested anywhere in the world. (NYT Op-Ed.)

Not bad, as rousing defenses of the Bill of Rights go. One cavil is that the McCain-Levin amendment doesn't just "leave open the possibility of subjecting American citizens to military detention and trial by a military court." One can rest assured that with this thing on the books, the next time the feds pick up someone like Jose Padilla, there won't be an 11th hour diversion of the case to a civilian court. Still: Big Up to the Times, even if they are seen as part of the Liberal/Criminal-coddling/ACLU/Civil Liberties/mostly Jewish complex. Doing the right thing is doing the right thing.

The actual amendment is all theater, of course. There is no need for the McCain-Levin gizmo. Domestic law enforcement and the civilian courts can handle any American actually arrested (as opposed to blown to smithereens by a Predator in some distant, sand-filled land) and placed in jail, on the basis of actual probable cause. As I wrote some time back, all of these terrorist fantasies, and this need to revisit the ghost of 9-11 more than ten years later, when the actual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are winding down, are simply intended to (a) keep the American populace in a perpetual state of fear, the better to (b) sit still for a tremendous diversion of very scarce budgetary resources to the Pentagon, even as the country slides into a Banana Republican state of poverty. A big Pentagon consolidates power at the federal level, and without this clothing, the Emperors in Washington stand out in their irrelevant nakedness. They have not quite enough money to do four things: (a) re-route money coming in from FICA to Social Security beneficiaries (about $800 billion per annum); (b) pay for Medicare/Medicaid ($900 billion); (c) service the interest on the national debt (~$400 billion); and (d) invade and blow up other countries (~$700 billion, officially). Those four outlay items add up to $2.8 trillion.

In its sunny way, the Treasury Statement forecasts over $2.6 trillion in revenue this year, which I believe would be an all-time record. Yet the first two months of the fiscal year are only about $20 billion ahead of last year's pace. That suggests (extrapolating forward) that this year might produce 6 x 20 = $120 billion more than last year's ~$2.2 trillion. With the economy again hitting stall speed, and with actual average income falling according to Treasury withholding reports, it does not compute. So it appears that we'll probably fall half a trillion dollars short of even covering the Big Four of the federal government's raison d'etre.

This is not something the power addicts like to talk about too much. Troublemakers like Ron & Rand Paul, of course, talk about it all the time, and so does Michele Bachmann. As you can see, it's not that hard to figure out that we're broke. Thus, it's much better to emphasize that even though we can't possibly afford about 42% of everything the federal government does, we've simply got to keep funneling dough into defense and security, or else we're doomed, doomed, I tell you! Carl Levin and McCain are big mucky-mucks in the Armed Services Committee, and zealously guard the Pentagon's gargantuan budget, the better to bask in the reflected glory of the military. They've done so for the 80 or 90 years or so that both have been in the Senate. So if we have doubts about the military's mission(s) overseas, well hell, here's another job they can do: capture, jail and court-martial regular ol' Americans right here at home! Pretty logical, huh?

Just out of curiosity, I looked up the Senate Democrats who voted for this legislative monstrosity, to see how the "liberal" stalwarts were protecting our civil rights to due process. Sheldon Whitehouse, I noticed, voted for it, while Rand Paul of Kentucky voted against it. A total of 60 Senators voted for passage, and since the Democrats arguably "control" the Senate, it took a lot of cross-overs to give the President the unconstitutional "tool" he wanted. Rest assured, however, that the actual vote tally was a mirage, an "arranged" lineup of yeas and nays to give cover to the fake liberals who could have stopped it before it ever came to a vote, but chose not to. And our ever-compliant President will sign the bill with no hesitation whatsoever.

Bill of Rights, December 15, 1791 to December 15, 2011: R.I.P.

There is a beautiful symmetry to this sad development: two hundred and twenty years to the day between the birth and death of the landmark charter of civil liberties conceived by some of the greatest minds of the Enlightenment in the early days of the Republic. And now thoughtlessly tossed aside by a decadent Congress and a craven President. Things change over time, I guess.

The Levin-McCain amendment to the Defense Authorization Act, which allows American citizens to be arrested within the United States by the military and confined indefinitely in prison without trial, if, in the opinion of the President, such American citizens have engaged in some kind of "terrorism" by offering "substantial support" to Al-Qaeda, or the Taliban, or to "associated forces" of Al Qaeda or the Taliban, is, in my view, the official death knell of the Bill of Rights. Once a people decides to give a president, or a king, or a dictator, the right to silence the opposition by applying a label to dissidents or others, and to thereafter send such dissidents to a concentration camp (Guantanamo or a military brig), with no time limit on detention and with no requirement of a trial, a power which Congress has now given to the President of the United States, then a Constitutional democracy no longer exists.

As always, there is virtually no reaction in the Mainstream Media. One would not expect any. Would you have expected Pravda to criticize Stalin for liquidating his political opponents or sending them to Siberia? The official position of the Serious People in the media or in politics is that this power will only be used against people who deserve it, and that we can trust President Obama not to abuse such a tyrannical power because, after all, he's a good guy. And the next President, now that this power has been codified by Congress? Well, they'll all be good guys, too, I'm sure. So we can safely dispense with Due Process, or the Fifth Amendment's right to a speedy trial, and the right to counsel, or anything else that gets in the way of the President's fast and efficient determination of guilt based on his opinion.

For example, in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen assassinated on the order of President Obama, I am sure you concluded, along with the President, that he was guilty, and that the accusation, sentencing and execution (all carried out at the same time) were fully justified. You concluded this on the basis of a detailed examination of the evidence against this American citizen, which you obtained from American media reports. While in many instances you are aware that the mainstream media often exaggerate or simply misrepresent the facts of public life (you'll recall how helpful certain reporters at the New York Times were in establishing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that we must invade), in this case, given that Awlaki was the worst of pariahs, a terrorist (as you were told), and given the consequence of being wrong about that (we killed the man, after all), you have very little doubt that Awlaki got the punishment he deserved and that would have been meted out to him after a trial. Of course, in that trial the defendant would have been allowed to present himself and other witnesses on his behalf, his lawyers would have been able to cross-examine the witnesses against him, the reports in the media would probably have been placed in a different context (as always happens when the fine-grain detail of a trial is presented), and a sentence other than death might have been rendered. What a lot of messy detail compared to just dispatching him with a Predator drone guided by a technician in an Air Force base in Nevada!

To say that it's surprising that this very bad development would have reached its culmination during the Presidency of Barack Obama, with his enthusiastic support, must go down as one of the great understatements of the new Millenium, although we're only a few years into it.

Adopt-A-SSA-Beneficiary

I read somewhere recently that 10,000 Americans (or at least 10,000 people holding Social Security numbers) sign up for benefits every day. This makes intuitive sense, using that "first approximation" approach favored by the serious mathematician. The Baby Boom Generation, spanning birth dates of about 18 years from 1946 to 1964, is that infamous, self-involved demographic cohort comprised of about 75 million souls. 10,000 people per day extends out to 3,650,000 per year; multiplied by 18 = ~65 million, but I doubt that the birth rate was absolutely smooth over the whole period. My guess is that babies really started popping during the Eisenhower years, when the schools became over-crowded, the demobilized military settled down to the American dream, and suburbs sprouted like mushrooms all over this once-verdant land.

Meaning, under this tentative analysis, that the fiscal problems will get worse in the years ahead, as the Boomers, in larger numbers, keep aging, determined to stay alive and vibrant in their Peter Pan way, and to retire to that life of sublime leisure to which the Laws of Nature and Nature's God supposedly entitle them.

Except, of course, it's not going to turn out that way. In part exacerbated by this gimmicky payroll tax cut which the O Man has thrown out as a sop to his supposed supporters (in lieu of anything real), the Social Security fund is already running a $46 billion cash on cash deficit, 6 years ahead of schedule. Over the next ten years, the deficits will add up to $1.2 trillion; if this number rings a bell, it's because it's the same number the so-called Super Committee was seeking to cut from the federal budget over the same decade (they weren't really cuts, of course; they were reductions in the rate of increase). Yet the SuperDuper Group never even considered Social Security, since Obama & Co. decided ahead of time that none of the big drivers of the deficit could even be considered as part of the program of reduction (Social Security, Medicare-Medicaid/Defense/Interest Expense).

Dmitry Orlov said something interesting recently in his talk at Orcas, Washington (which you can find in mp3 format at cluborlov.com, his website) about the perceptive biases of humans when faced with change. It went something like this: humans find it very difficult to imagine very different circumstances, a fundamentally changed contextual reality, so to speak, which lies in the future; yet when that new context arrives, everyone assures everyone else that they knew all along it would be like this. We can see a lot of that in the reactions of Americans to the Depression we've been in since 2007. Things have really, really changed a lot during that time period. All of our language about the future, our plans, have all been altered. We've become inured to the idea that our economy is centrally planned by a private banking cartel (the Federal Reserve), that the monopolistic control of the market by a few surviving large banks, by a few surviving large telecommunications companies (which also own the media), by a few large surviving Big Box retailers, are now the way things are. That the federal government will run $1 trillion-plus deficits each and every year (an amount absolutely unimaginable even five years ago), that bank accounts earn absolutely no return, that your house will just keep losing value year after year, are all now in the natural order of things.

Thus, when we think of something like Social Security, the same perceptual bias (this homeostasis preference) makes it difficult for the Boomers, who are diverting the headwaters of Social Security to themselves the way Los Angeles sucks the Owens Valley and the Colorado River dry, to think there might come a day when the younger generation rebels at the idea of supporting their tennis and golf activities with a brutal, off-the-top tax that this younger generation can barely afford because of the crappy economy, all while the younger ones live with the certainty that the system will die before they can draw a penny in benefits.

When I put it that way, you have to admit that the Baby Boomers, those classic narcissists, are pretty freaking stupid. Just because AARP is swollen with Boomers now, and the average age in the U.S. Senate is about 105 years, does not mean that these conditions will prevail indefinitely. The younger generation of workers and job seekers (more of the latter than the former these days), knowing the whole dumb system is headed for extinction, are going to get rid of Social Security as soon as their voting bloc comes into dominance.

It's just the way it is. Socialism doesn't work because human beings are fundamentally selfish assholes (I'm kidding, kids - you're just doing what I would do - although see below for the meaning of this comparison). All psychological studies support this view. Humans have no sympathy for humans (or any other life form) at a distance, unless the situation is personalized. For example, I blew twenty bucks at breakfast this morning. My guess is that this is enough dough to furnish a basic staple to a West African family for about a month. So why didn't I just eat a couple of eggs at home and mail a check for twenty bucks to a relief organization? Because I'm fundamentally a selfish asshole interested in "self actualization" and "living the good life." A kind of "duh" moment there.

The only way I can think to change the Social Security dynamic, therefore, is to change its impersonality. We're at the point where only three workers support each beneficiary. I've mentioned before that I'm old enough for Social Security but I just keep on working, like the fool I've always been. That means that me and two other guys are supporting someone, somewhere, in this great land of video-viewers. We're a wage-slave team, me and these two guys. It's possible that the person I'm supporting is younger than I am. What I'm proposing is that I be given a name, and a picture, and maybe a letter once in a while from My Beneficiary, thanking me for continuing to harden my arteries and blow out my liver for his sake.

That's what I would like to call the new program, My Beneficiary, modeled on some of those adopt-a-child deals you can get in on. Suppose my guy is a retired fellow living in Omaha, Nebraska. Let's say his name is Earl Jones (that's a good name for a retired guy - Earl). Earl used to work in a farm equipment store, till he got sick of it and quit at age 62, which is pretty easy to do in Nebraska, what with the the houses costing a couple of hundred bucks now. Earl's drawing about $900 a month now, him and the little lady, who's also on the dole (but she's not my adoptee - some other team has that honor).

See the beauty of this? I'm not paying taxes into an amorphous, faceless bureaucracy. I'm supporting Earl Jones, who just wants to rest his old weary bones amid the corn fields of Nebraska, maybe pitch some horse shoes or go bowling on the weekend (or any day of the week, thanks to me and My Team). Now I have a mission, a purpose, for my work. It's to keep Earl in Geritol, Budweiser and Viagra. I think I could happily work for years more, knowing now that there is a Higher Calling behind that damn form SE. Earl Jones: My Cause. And then, of course, it's also good karma. One of these days I will myself be up for adoption, when we're probably down to two workers per freeloader.

So a big shout-out to Gens X & Y: I'm available. Adopt me now and avoid the Christmas rush.

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.