The past comes back....
I find political science to be an interesting arena of study, especially when dealing with legal aspects. Fischer writes about the trial of the hijackers in Berlin, and quotes Judge Stern from the bench in Berlin: " Without the Constitution, the Secretary of State would have the power to arrest any person without cause, to hold a person incommunicado, to deny an accused the benefit of counsel, to try a person summarily and to impose sentence- all as a part of the unreviewable exercise of foreign policy." (164)
Although it escapes me now, there is a Supreme Court case mentioned earlier in the semester that, in one of the opinions, states that the decision allows the president a vast power, something he will be able to pull out at anytime and use whenever he feels. (Korematsu perhaps?) I felt then that it could be and has been used by the administration as a political pressure tool to keep things in check, especially by asserting the executives emergency powers. Stern, in his opinion, echoes the same thing, but from a different time. History repeats itself.
For most of 2001, 2002, and 2003, Sterns warning was a daily reality in Guantanamo. This exercise of foreign policy met critical rebukes from the European Union and other foreign nations, and was questioned domestically. Until Abu Garhaib, this was the case. It seems like it takes a major scandal or political shakeup to have this administration effectively alter its policy on the detainee situation. The point man, Mr. Gonzales, is now himself on the hotseat, and the FBI has been busted for illegal spying. There are now hearings for gross violations of the Patriot Act, and soon, we may be seeing a shift back towards a level of normalcy in all of this political mess. The worst thing, however, is that we have failed to learn from the past, to paraphrase Schmidt, we are a political state of know-nothing pork barrel ignorance. We have failed in several areas, and we are still making our Cold War mistakes on foreign policy today. Maybe if we took our cold war era warnings more seriously, we could avoid our problems today get our nation and our policies back on track.
Although it escapes me now, there is a Supreme Court case mentioned earlier in the semester that, in one of the opinions, states that the decision allows the president a vast power, something he will be able to pull out at anytime and use whenever he feels. (Korematsu perhaps?) I felt then that it could be and has been used by the administration as a political pressure tool to keep things in check, especially by asserting the executives emergency powers. Stern, in his opinion, echoes the same thing, but from a different time. History repeats itself.
For most of 2001, 2002, and 2003, Sterns warning was a daily reality in Guantanamo. This exercise of foreign policy met critical rebukes from the European Union and other foreign nations, and was questioned domestically. Until Abu Garhaib, this was the case. It seems like it takes a major scandal or political shakeup to have this administration effectively alter its policy on the detainee situation. The point man, Mr. Gonzales, is now himself on the hotseat, and the FBI has been busted for illegal spying. There are now hearings for gross violations of the Patriot Act, and soon, we may be seeing a shift back towards a level of normalcy in all of this political mess. The worst thing, however, is that we have failed to learn from the past, to paraphrase Schmidt, we are a political state of know-nothing pork barrel ignorance. We have failed in several areas, and we are still making our Cold War mistakes on foreign policy today. Maybe if we took our cold war era warnings more seriously, we could avoid our problems today get our nation and our policies back on track.
posted by Ian S. Crawford at 16:36
1 Comments:
Ian,
Good job. I think it was Jackson in Korematsu, about the power lying around like a loaded gun.
2
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