[Member Editorial]
Adolf Hitler said; “The great strength of the Totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it, to imitate it.” Two US Senators have proposed; The Bill of Rights will apply to some and not others by the dictate of the President, giving him the powers of a military dictator. Justified by the intent of protecting the American people from ‘enemy combatants’, allegedly here in the homeland. I oppose every letter of the alphabet used to compose this provision embedded in S.1867, Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act.
The US Senate just passed S. 1867 NDAA by a vote of 93-7 which is the means to continue funding the Department of Defense budget. What is completely objectionable is what is embedded into it. What Senator’s Levin and McCain did was inject a provision granting unconstitutional authority to the President to detain any person suspected of being a “terrorist” without due process. Strained language by Senator Levin assures opponents to this provision that it will not apply to American citizens. This provision offends the Bill of Rights. The 5th Amendment: “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The US Constitution is clear that this protection extends to all persons. This offensive Levin-McCain provision empowers the military to imprison these designated persons indefinitely at prison camps like GITMO.
Whether or not the provision is diluted or reworded as recent reports suggest, their goal remains clear. Granting the Executive Branch a power the US constitution intentionally denied it. This would deny the individual the protection that comes with the writ of “Habeas Corpus” meaning “you may have the body’. This is a protection against unlawful imprisonment that orders the jailer to release the prisoner for examination of the facts that ordered their detention. If this becomes law it will suspend one of the most crucial underpinnings of our protection of freedoms. Additionally, this provision empowers the President to violate the 1878 POSSE COMITATUS law, prohibiting the use of the military as civilian law enforcement or compel civilian law enforcement to submit to military authority. The debate presented to the Senate in favor of this provision is borne out of fear of terrorist who may be operating on US Soil. They in affect argue that the US is in a state of martial law; suspending portions of the US Constitution would then apply giving the President in affect military dictator powers. I subscribe to the founding principle that when the government fears the people, there is liberty and when the people fear their government, there is tyranny.
The second half of the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution states; “No warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” Recall the Jose Padilla terrorist case that was allegedly affiliated with Al-Qaida and planned a terrorist attack on US Soil. The US Constitution provides the remedy for traitors, enemy combatants and saboteurs. It is called ‘due process.’ If US Intelligence identifies a ticking time-bomb scenario or terrorist cell, they are highly trained enough to pick up a phone, get a warrant and initiate an arrest. The responsibility for individual self-defense is covered by the Second Amendment. A well-armed, disciplined and trained public should not abandon their right to self-preservation, if they are in a public place and a Major Hassan, violence in the work place shooter attacks. There are an estimated 21 million licensed hunters in the US. The US has the largest armed civilian population on the planet. When planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese High command scrapped a land invasion of the continental US precisely because the civilian population was so well trained and armed.
Terrorism is a war tactic. It is a form of psychological warfare aimed at terrifying the civilian population to such a degree as to cause them to coerce their government to change a particular policy or collapse that administration. Drawing on my training as a counterterrorism professional, I can state the key component to preventing psychological attack from inducing fear is to counter it with fearlessness and self-confidence.
I prefer our phobic Senators wear ‘huggies’, if they are so terrified of imagined threats rather than trashing the Bill of Rights. If we trade our freedoms for the illusion of safety, we surrender both to a government of the fearful, by the fearful, for the fearful. Such a people will not long endure. If we imitate what we fear, out of fear, then we are ruled by our fear. Reject these embedded sections of the S. 1867 National Defense Authorization Act as fervently as I do because it does not protect our liberty, it threatens it.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Anthony Mele is a 2012 Candidate for Congress and was the 2010 GOP Nominee for Congressional District 17. He is a small business owner, a Tea Party Supporter and a former intelligence staff NCO for high level national security officials in the Pentagon
