Take a break from the paranoids for a moment and remember:
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. There is no virtue in protecting the civil rights of an enemy force who is trying to kill you. It's called self defense, and this country's survival is more important than the possible inconveniences to a few.
Every war has collateral damage, civilians and innocents suffer. That's life in a crappy world. Get used to it, because we are at war, and it's going to get worse before it gets better.
There's no use pretending it's still peacetime, with peacetime norms. The longer we do that, the greater the risk of catastrophic loss of life here at home.
Read the Constitution. The Congress has power to suspend Habeas Corpus in times of insurrection or invasion. That's why Hugo Black of the US Supreme Court reviewed and denied the appeal of the Japanese-Americans in WW II. He perceived, correctly, that there was a "clear and present danger" of insurrection and/or invasion. The internment of potential (and as it turned out, many actual) spies and saboteurs was justified by the greater good of protecting the Republic.
We were able to review and make reparations where called for, at our leisure after the war was won. Did it suck to be a loyal Japanese-American in those days? Yes. It also sucked to be in the Army and Marines in the South Pacific, eating dirt and dying on one godforsaken island after another. It also sucked not being able to buy butter and sugar for your kids at home, or having to work the night shift at a defense plant, all the while worrying whether your loved one was lying dead in some European mudhole.
It hasn't happened yet, but my guess is that before this is all over we all will be required to sacrifice, in various ways. If not by our weaselly politicians, then by the cruel master, Reality.
Says it all very well. BUMP!
Thanks, but I carry a copy of the constitution and bill of rights with me at all times. Gen. Franks said in the event of a nuclear attack on the U.S., the constitution would have to be replaced (not "suspended") by martial law. Rep. Henry Hyde, in an Oct. 3, 2003, speech, said:
"There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events and by time. Declaration of war is one of them. There are things no longer relevant to a modern society. Why declare war if you don't have to? We are saying to the President, use your judgment...So, to demand that we declare war is to strengthen something to death. You have got a hammerlock on this situation; and it is not called for, inappropriate, anachronistic. It isn't done anymore."
I still remember in '95 when Mel Watt introduced a bill whose text was lifted from one of the first 10 amendments, and that bill was resoundingly defeated by a know-nothing rump Congress that has long since abdicated to a "fearless" dictator who calls the shots.
You seem to believe that when this undeclared, border-less, endless war is "over", that we will magically return to some sylvan republic that only exists in the history books no longer taught in public schools.
Our "leaders" are very definitely making preparations for an authoritarian form of government in America. A friend in a neighboring state says you can drive past any of 6 "internment" camps FEMA is building to house "displaced persons" in the event of a nuclear attack. One of these camps boasts a crematorium that will handle up to 3,000 bodies. (Obviously in this brave new future world there will be no room left for Christian burial or any other quaint customs of a bygone civilization. That would be "too anachronistic...inappropriate".)
Our government apparently has good enough intelligence to think that a nuclear attack on this continent is imminent. If the history of the federal government for the last 60 years is any gauge, the expansion of bureaucracy and federalizing of every facet of life will not be rolled back once this war is over, which I doubt we will see in our lifetimes.
And that was poor salesmanship, mentioning the internment of Japanese-Americans. Even in the heat of hostilities after Pearl Harbor, their treatment was loving compared to what went on at Abu Ghraib. But then, with leadership like Roosevelt and MacArthur, our military reflected strict adherence to the Geneva Convention in WWII. Today, with leaders like GWB, Wolfowitz and Rice, the new face of the American military is cheesy videos of Lynndie England with (insert name here).