Never Again Is Now – Military Commissions Act

On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the internment of 120,000 Japanese civilians, 2/3 of whom were US citizens, in military camps across the western half of the country. Effectively stripping Japanese Americans of virtually all constitutional protections (including rights to property, trial by jury and habeas corpus), 9066 is now widely decried as one of the darkest moments in US history. In 1988, Congress passed Public Law 100-383, which apologized to Japanese internees, provided reparations and created a public education fund to inform the public about the internment of such individuals so as to prevent the recurrence of any similar event.

Congress should have enrolled in its own re-education program.

By passing the Military Commissions Act (a.k.a. the torture bill), Congress has granted the Bush administration extraordinary powers to detain, interrogate and prosecute alleged terrorists and their supporters. Anyone anywhere in the world at any time may be summarily classified an unlawful enemy combatant by the executive branch, seized and detained. Only aliens are subject to military trials (I've updated my original post here to more accurately describe persons subject to military commissions; see sec. 948a-c in text of legislation). As Bruce Ackerman points out in the LA Times, the definition of "unlawful enemy combatant" includes those who "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" (by say, writing a check to a Middle East charity) and may extend to US citizens. Thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, US citizens at least appear to retain habeas corpus rights, a foundation of Western jurisprudence. Foreign nationals do not; the Act explicitly denies them the writ of habeas corpus (the right to be charged and tried and the right to appeal any convictions in a court of law).