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By introducing the concept of war into national law, the latest U.S. anti-terrorist law, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), produces a turning point in the legal and political organization of the Western world. ... It is the constituent act of a new form of state that establishes war as a political relation between constituted authorities and national populations.

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Anyone can be declared an "enemy combatant", even a US citizen. What this really means is identifying people who are, in the opinion of the Bush regime, "enemies of the government". Such people can be detained indefinitely, i.e., until the "War on Terror" is over, which is to say forever. The MCA allows the US President to "designate citizens and political opponents as enemies".

This state of war declared between the US government on the one hand, and whatever organizations and individuals it names on the other hand, redefines the concept of war. There is no longer any need to identify a threat. The US government says someone is a threat; therefore, they are a threat. Period. Further, the US regime denies the political nature of this legal atrocity and merges criminality with this new category of "enemy". The barbarians in Washington merge external sovereignty with internal sovereignty. It's worth noting, however, that this is not without precedent. The extra-territorial application of US law in its psychopathic blockade of Cuba, now into its fifth decade, has been going on for some time now.

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By its ability to designate any inhabitant of the planet an "enemy combatant" and then make that person into an "illegal combatant", i.e., into a criminal, the United States grants itself a police function that it can carry out worldwide.

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This also changes the relations between the US government and American citizens.

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By designating as enemies persons who have never left American soil and have not been to any battlefield, people who have not been involved in war or police actions, but who oppose the policies of the government from within the national territory, are deemed criminals.

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So, we have:

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One is an enemy combatant, not because one is suspected of having committed an act or of having had the intention of committing one, but only because one is named as such by the executive power. Here, the administration does not even have to justify its decision. It becomes the only possible reality.

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Furthermore, heresay "evidence" and evidence obtained from torture is acceptable. There is no right to a rapid trial. There is no right to choose legal council. The burden of proof is reversed and, despite the fact that the accused can be excluded from certain phases of a trial, he/she must prove his/her innocence.

Under the MCA, American agents that carry out torture and cruel treatment (before 2005) are declared immune from prosecution.

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As for the Military Commissions Act, the initial objective of the government to have the power to suppress habeas corpus for the whole population has not yet been attained. But having the ability to characterize any inhabitant of the planet as an enemy is a good beginning for the establishment of an imperial state that would no longer distinguish between internal and external. Every population would be entirely at the mercy of the executive power of the United States.

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Enemy Combatants, etc.

See also the piece by Michael E. Tigar with the title, A System of Wholesale Denial of Rights. Tigar provides some helpful information about US constitutional law and the history leading up to these legal atrocities of the Bush administration. It covers the criminalization of speech and associations, etc.

All of this points to the abandonment of the pretense of the state as neutral arbiter, But of course, if the state literally declares war on whatever citizens and non-citizens it chooses, then what would be the appropriate response by the citizenry?

To ask the question is to answer it.

Tigar points to the similarity between chattel slavery and the legal regimen of the "War on Terror". There is the famous Dred Scott case and others:

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The common thread that runs through Cherokee Nation, Dred Scott, and the enemy combatant characterization of which Paye writes is this complete exclusion of claims for justice from any possibility of discussion.

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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Orwell didn't write an anti-utopian novel. He wrote an instruction manual.

[ 02 October 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

The other author, Paye, is someone I don't know.
I think he tends to exaggerate the revolutionary nature of the change he is describing. For example, his central idea is that the concept of "war" has been introduced into domestic law, something he calls a virtual coup d'etat when he discusses the Hamdan decision.

Later in the article, though, we find:

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A quick reading might lead one to suppose that it is only foreigners who could be affected by this procedure, since the Combatant Status Review Tribunals concern only non-Americans. However, the text anticipates the possibility of including Americans in illegal enemy combatant designations.

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That's not how I read the Military Commissions Act. For those interested, while the definition of "Unlawful Enemy Combattant" is broad and could include American citizens, the actual jurisdiction of the Military Commissions is ONLY
for "Alien" enemy unlawful combattants".

See s. 948c of the Act.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/Military_Law/pdf/PL-109-366.pdf

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As in the past, Americans owe Jean-Claude Paye a debt of gratitude. From his position, as a sociologist in Brussels, he has proven that he can see what is happening in George Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s America, more clearly perhaps than many who live in the United States.

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Here's more from Michael Tigar: Lawyers, Jails, and the Law's Fake Bargains.

I may be mistaken, but I think Tigar's book is the same one I read many years ago that pushed me in a leftward direction. It is a great read for showing the connections between class interests and current law.

Tigar has had an interesting set of clients. Check out this partial list:

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MICHAEL E. TIGAR is Edwin A. Mooers Scholar and Professor of Law at Washington College of Law, American University. Until 1998, he held the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Law at the University of Texas School of Law. Mr. Tigar has argued appeals in almost every U.S. Court of Appeals and in the U.S. Supreme Court. His individual clients have included Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, the Seattle Seven, the Chicago Eight, Fernando Chavez, Rosalio Munoz, Major Debra Meeks, Allen Ginsberg, and Francisco Martinez. Tigar recently represented Terry Lynn Nichols in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

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