At last, principled opposition to Obama’s policies of indefinite imprisonment—oh, wait.

I feel about torture the way some right-wingers do about abortion. It’s not justified. It can never be justified (outside of fictional hypotheticals, which have no relation to what’s been done at Gitmo) and it breaks American law, despite all the tortured rationales John Yoo, David Addington and other Bush attorneys concocted.
I also believe that locking someone up indefinitely violates the law and it’s just plain wrong. I agree with the Founding Fathers that the right to a trial is one of the building blocks of a fair government and taking it away is a scary step in the other direction. As witness what’s happening to Bradley Manning, an American soldier whose been locked up for months even though he hasn’t been convicted of anything (the article reports the government is now piling on humiliation by forcing him to strip).
It was wrong under Bush and these polices are just as wrong under Obama, who just signed an executive order establishing an indefinite detention system for anyone we want to imprison but can’t convict (Glenn Greenwald discusses the wrongs of this here). By the time Obama leaves office, this will be the new normal, by bipartisan consensus, and that’s a very bad thing.
Congress shares part of the blame. Under W., Repubs backed his policies and Democrats (with a few exceptions such as Russ Feingold) were too spineless to oppose them, even after the 2006 election proved “soft on terror” accusations weren’t the kiss of death. Under Obama, Democrats fall into line and Repubs oppose any softening of our police.s.
So it ought to be good news Congress is coming out against Obama’s new executive order … except its a Republican push to put the decision on trying detainees in the hands of the military.
I’m not sure how this makes a difference (the military still answer to the commander in chief, as right-wingers are forever squawking) but it does show the right-wing’s continued resistance to either letting innocent people go free or even receive a trial (not that Obama’s much better).
And then we have Rep. Peter King, who’s decided to chair a committee investigating allegations American Muslims are traitors in our midst, while blithely defending the IRA—of which he’s a long-time supporter—as a legitimate freedom movement, not terrorist at all, no, of course not. And besides, they just attacked Britain, not America, and he’s an American, so there.
Great support for a long-time ally there, Mr. King. And if the British “dirty war” in Northern Ireland justifies the IRA, then what does invading a foreign country, occupying them for eight years and setting up a massive torture facility at Abu Ghraib justify? If the IRA was justified in blowing up bombs in London, why isn’t 9/11 a legitimate move in a dirty war (I don’t think it was, but it’s closer than terrorist-sympathizer King wants to admit).
And if we’re justified in taking out terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, does that mean the UK would be justified in using extraordinary rendition on King and other IRA supporters?
Bonus: A white supremacist ex-military man has been arrested in the attempted MLK Day bombing in Spokane. Anyone anticipate Rep. King holding hearings on the white supremacist threat to America?