Inalienable No More

Don't look now but the principles that we all grew up believing were absolute no longer exist.  Every American child begins learning from an early age that our great nation was founded on the premise that a set of inalienable rights exists to which all are entitled.  Yesterday, the Senate voted to throw this premise out the window.

By a largely partisan vote, the Senate passed a measure denying enemy combatants access to US courts.  Thus nullifying one of the foundational values on which our nation was founded - the belief that we are all entitled to our day in court, to the protection of the law, to a trial by jury.  For those arguing that enemy combatants don't count because they are generally not Americans and are being held outside the contiguous US - your "case" is full of holes.

To the charge that foreign enemy combatants do not have a right to court proceedings and legal protection because they are not American - This is a false charge since our Declaration and Constitution do not espouse that "all Americans are created equal, that they are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights."  Rather in founding the land of the free, our forefathers claimed inalienable rights on behalf of all MEN.  Granted in those early days the word man was taken on a near literal basis - but even then though women were not allowed to vote they were guaranteed a trial.  And over the past 200 years it has become widely accepted that "men" refers to everybody - as in mankind as a whole.  Americans are not the chosen ones granted special rights by God that are not entitled to other nationalities.

On the charge that the American court system owes nothing to enemy combatants because they are most often arrested outside the US and are held outside our state boundaries - this claim is false based on pure absurdity.  Gitmo, for example, is considered US territory.  The US government arrested and is detaining these people.  If they aren't entitled to protection under our court system then what courts do have jurisdiction?  When other foreigners are arrested by US officials they are subject to US courts unless their native government intervenes and gets extradition.  Assuming no native government of an enemy combatant is going to beg for an alleged terrorist's return, then they fall squarely inside the US judicial fray.

Despite the holes in the argument, the disturbing point is that in the name of a war on terror the US is completely losing sight of the values and rights we are supposedly protecting.

-BG