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Overlooked in the heated arguments over President Bush's, and to an even greater larger extent, Vice-President Cheney's constant efforts to aggrandize the power of the Presidency is the justification for why these powers can and should be used, even against American citizens contrary to the normal reading of the Constitution. Central to Bush's argument, fervently promoted by the likes of Ashcroft, Gonzales, Miers, and the eminent (or notorious) Mr. Yoo, is that the United States is in a state of war. However, Bush is ridiculed for having "declared war on a (common) noun". He is further vilified for denying that "enemy combatants" are entitled to Prisoner of War protections of either civilians or military personnel. He is currently being assailed for no-warrant wiretaps on American citizens and permanent residents ("U.S. Persons" under the FISA law). The President's actions seem incoherent and baseless.
Nonetheless, there is a common thread linking all these actions together. I have finally grasped the true meaning of the War on Terror, for in Bush's mind, Terror is not an abstract concept, nor even a common noun.
It is a nation, and we have declared war upon it.
Central to the Executive Branch's legal arguments is that the President possesses plenary (unlimited) war-making ability when the US is under invasion by a hostile force. At the President's sole discretion, "U.S. Persons" can be unilaterally declared to no longer be "U.S. Persons," without notification or possibility for appeal or repeal. These former "U.S. Persons" are then declared to be enemy combatants: in other words, citizens and agents of the Nation of Terror. They are no longer to be regarded as of the United States, but as foreigners; consequently, wiretapping them for national security purposes requires no warrant. They have no more rights than if they had been already physically moved to Guantanamo Bay; after all, they are the enemy's soldiers.
Citizens of the Nation of Terror do not have the normal rights other human beings could rationally expect under American law. While the U.S. has signed numerous agreements with nations such as France, the U.K., Japan, Russia, China, etc., concerning the rights of Prisoners of War and civilians seized in the conduct of military operations, Terror is not a signatory to these conventions. Terror neither guarantees rights to non-citizens, or even to its own; therefore, the U.S. cannot be expected to have any legal obligations towards citizens of Terror. Consequently, they are at the pure mercy of the U.S. and are protected only insofar as the U.S.'s security needs do not exceed its principled morals.
Because we are at war with the Nation called Terror, those who have been deemed enemy combatants on U.S. soil are INVADERS. Since the U.S. homeland has been invaded, the full scale of the President's powers to secure the homeland can be unleashed without Congressional or judiciary approval. Since the continental U.S. is in a state of invasion, the U.S. is a war zone; while the Executive Branch chooses to cooperate with the normal functioning of courts for U.S. persons, it has no obligation or intention to waive its power to unilaterally wage war upon foreign enemies on domestic soil as the demands of war require.
In so doing, Bush has, at one stroke, solved the dilemma of the post-Cold War world: how does the U.S. gain freedom to act while it is expected to play by the rules of lesser nations? How does the U.S. do what a hyperpower's gotta do when there's all these regulations preventing it from acting freely? The natural solution, and the one I expected to see, is to simply treat national sovereignty as if it no longer exists. However, I admit to a failure of imagination. Rather than diminish the nationhood of other countries, the President of the United States has added to the family of nations by declaring the creation of a nation - Terror - which was not, nor recognized to have been, previously in existence as a nation state.
Careful readers will note that Terror does not have internationally recognized territory, nor a census of its inhabitants, nor especially clear and precise identification save for those who self-identify themselves as Terror-ists. People of Terror are mainly defined by being adherents to the belief of Terror. Consequently, the War on Terror is being chiefly fought on the battlefield of the mind. Consequently, territorial losses are not certain signs of victory against Terror. When Americans and citizens of other legitimate nations cease renouncing their previous citizenship and defecting to Terror, and when evil is driven from the minds of men, then the War on Terror shall be won.
Of the many uncertainties regarding these arguments, this much is certain: this President is determined to wage war upon the Nation called Terror until its final surrender. As to how we will recognize that surrender, we are compelled by the lack of Congressional disagreement to accept that, just as with locating the American citizens and residents who have defected to this foreign power, the President will know it when he sees it, and at any rate, no one else's opinion matters very much, because he is President and Commander-in-Chief until, well, the time at which he is not those things anymore.
(Not an editorial. Original rant for attribution solely to the nom de plume Kagemusha.)
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