Get Used to the Orange Jumpsuit

The date is Tuesday, December 27th, 2012. I just got back from seeing my family for the Christmas holiday. I’m sitting in the living room of my apartment, and I’m on my computer getting ready to write another critique of US foreign policy towards Al-Qaeda in Somalia. But just when I’m about to begin, there’s a knock on my door. I’m not accustomed to getting knocks on my door, as I live in an apartment complex and visitors are few and far between. In looking through the peephole, I realize there are two police officers waiting outside my door. When I ask what they want, they say they want me to come with them for some questioning. They’re not very specific about what they want to question me on, just that it’s in relation to some reports they’ve gotten about me engaging in some “suspicious activity.” I’m nervous about what this could mean, so in the interests of not getting into too much more trouble, I agree to go with them.

Once I get to the station, I’m immediately taken to a dark back room. I’ve personally never seen an interrogation room before except of what I see on TV and in movies, but for some reason, I know that something isn’t right. The officers who escorted me leave me alone in the room. Then, not five seconds after they close the door, another door opens on the other side of the room and two men in military uniforms come in, grab me and take me by force to a van in the back of the police station. They throw me into the back, tie my hands behind my back and put a black bag over my head.

The next time I see anything but darkness is about a day later. My eyes have trouble readjusting to the light, which is coming from incandescent bulbs in a ceiling light. The room I’m in has blank, concrete walls and has a mirror opposite me. I’m sitting in a hard, steel chair, my hands tied behind my back and I’m in an orange jumpsuit. Once my eyes fully readjust, I make out two figures standing in opposite corners of the room, both of them facing me. They both are glaring at me, as if waiting for my sight to fully recover so I can make them out as clearly as possible. The one from the left corner comes walking up towards me, with a menacing stare. I see now that he’s not American. He’s definitely of Arab descent, but I can’t quite make out from where exactly. And before I’m able to figure out where he’s from, the man punches me in the head…

—

Do you think this story is straight out of some Hollywood film plotline? Well, it very well maybe, but do you think this story can only happen in the world that is a storyteller’s imagination? If you thought yes, well think again.

As you may or may not have heard, the Congress recently passed, and President Obama recently signed, the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which makes the story above a frighteningly plausible one for each and every American citizen.

The NDAA includes provisions that allow for the indefinite detention of suspected terrorists or suspected supporters of terrorists/terrorism by the military with no due process. Previously, these provisions applied only to foreigners (which is bad enough), but now, the NDAA allows them to be exercised against American citizens, even though the 6th Amendment expressly forbids the imprisonment of US citizens without due process of law.

What’s more, the NDAA also affords the government the authority to practice rendition on American citizens. If you may not know already, rendition is a practice whereby the government sends suspected terrorists or “intelligence assets” to countries where more extreme methods of interrogation (i.e. torture) are allowed and practiced, in order to extract information. Previously, this practice applied only to foreigners, but thanks to the NDAA, American citizens can now be a part of the fun.

The contention amongst supporters of these provisions is that they only apply to those who are terrorists or who are supporting terrorists/terrorism. However, what opponents correctly point out is that the bill in no way defines what a “supporter” means, except to say that it is whatever the government defines as “support.” In other words, the definition rests entirely upon the predispositions and biases of those in power. So although President Obama may not wish to detain and interrogate an American citizen who simply writes critiques online about US foreign policy, a future President Gingrich might not be so forgiving.

I don’t think it needs to even be stated how dangerous these provisions are. At the organization I work for (Americans for Informed Democracy), we address global issues with a focus on how the US can become a more responsible and sustainable player in the global community of nations, so that we can build a more just, healthy, peaceful and sustainable world. In order to do this however, the US must not only change what it does in its relations with the rest of the world, it also needs to lead by example in the treatment of its own citizens. After all, if we are going to preach about the value of human and civil rights to countries like China and Iran, then we must be the example that everyone can and should follow. What the Congress has done, and now what President Obama has done as well, is a blatant violation of not only our Constitution, but common sense.

However, this move shouldn’t entirely come as a surprise. Over many decades, the US has continued down a path of greater concentrations of power, especially in the hands of the Executive, and especially in times of war (President Obama being no exception). The problems with this are almost too many to enumerate, so instead I’ll focus on one, which is continually used as a justification for why we need to cede more and more power to the Executive. It’s the classic “time of war” argument, where the Executive needs to have as much discretion as possible in a time of war, in order to win it. On the surface, this argument always makes sense because if you live with the fear that you’ll be killed by a plane flying into a building, then you want to give as much authority as possible to those who have the power to stop this from happening. However, if you dig a bit deeper, this rationale always fails for several reasons.

The first being that what almost always inevitably happens is that the powers that leaders think they need to “win the war” are almost always the powers that were needed to win the last war, but not the war they are fighting now. Adaptability in fighting a new threat does not seem to come quickly enough, and then what happens is you give up your rights when doing so did nothing to stop the threat, it just simply gave more power to an authority that will not give it up easily, or at least not without a fight. If you think I’m wrong about this, just remember this fact, the Constitution clearly states that only Congress has the authority to declare war. Yet, the last declared war was the Korean War. For more detailed information about this, refer to the War Powers Act during President Nixon’s time and then reflect on all of the examples since then of the exercise of Executive Power for the purposes of war (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, etc.).

The second reason the “time of war” argument fails is one I’ve already alluded to. The enemy we are fighting today is unlike any enemy we’ve had in our 200+ year history. In prior wars, we had a definable enemy. It was one that had a specific geographic region, with politically drawn boundaries and their own economic and political systems. And if they were to attack us, they did so with their own military weaponry. Terrorists have none of this. In 2001, Al-Qaeda may have been based largely in Afghanistan, but they trained their terrorist soldiers in Germany and Florida. And today, terrorist cells exist all across the globe, including most recently in Somalia and Yemen and probably many more places than we are currently aware of. Terrorist networks are a different animal entirely and therefore, the tools used to thwart the threats they pose should also be of a different tact, which leads me to my third and final argument.

The final reason why the “time of war” argument falls flat on its face is because what we are in right now is not a “time of war.” I say this because of two reasons, one is pragmatic and the other is more ideological. From a pragmatic standpoint, many things could be categorized as wars. In the 1980’s, it was the war on drugs. In the 1990’s, it was the war on crime. And today, there is the “war on terror” and we could even argue that there is a war on climate change as well. As a result of this, my question then becomes, when we begin to categorize everything as a war, can we validly call anything a “war” any longer if it has no distinction from anything else?

From an ideological standpoint, for me, war will always have a negative connotation because it’s associated with loss, even though you may “win” at the end of the day. Collateral damage is inevitable in some form or another, whether it be in lives or whether it be in civil rights. Too much is often given up, and little to nothing is gained in return. And as George Orwell so aptly argued in “1984,” war became not so much about defeating an enemy, but rather a justification for the greater concentration of power in the hands of the few at the expense of everyone else. The recent passage of the NDAA under the guise of us being at “war” is a perfect example of this. The truth is, we are not at war. Yes, we are being threatened by those who wish to do us harm, but the threat terrorists pose is not greater than the threat of worldwide famine as a result of global warming and climate change. We are at “war” only because those in power say we are.

So what would happen if you tore down this “time of war” justification? Well, I believe that people will begin to see new possibilities open up for them in addressing the real threats we face. For instance, they could see that focusing on providing a diversified education to everyone across the globe will help to counter real instances of religious extremism. They could see that by engaging in sustainable and responsible economic development, we could quell instances of poverty-induced violence. They could see that by directing more resources to eliminating nuclear weapons completely, we could preventing the truly doomsday scenario of a few terrorists acquiring a nuclear weapon and detonating it. The list goes on. However, what I believe most of all is that people will begin to doubt whether giving up, say, their right to due process, is really a good idea. After all, all of the actual solutions just mentioned don’t involve a single instance of you having to give up your rights to anyone.

However, until that happens on the scale that is required to produce change in this society, don’t say I didn’t warn you if you one day find yourself strapped to a chair wearing an orange jumpsuit.