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Enemy Combatants and Freedom of Speech

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Some Americans favor the federal government’s post-9/11 assumption of power to arrest Americans and treat them as “enemy combatants” in the “war on terrorism.” It doesn’t matter to them that the Pentagon now has the power to round up Americans, keep them in prison camps indefinitely, torture them, and deny them all the rights and guarantees enumerated in the Bill of Rights. The reason it doesn’t bother them is that they figure it would never happen to them, only to other people. That attitude brings to mind the famous poem by German Pastor Martin Niemoller that was addressed to German intellectuals who failed to oppose the Nazi extermination of “enemies of the state” by pursuing a strategy of targeting separate groups: "In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, ...

Hornberger’s Blog, December 2008

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Wednesday, December 31, 2008 Stop Foreign Aid to Israel (and Everywhere Else) by Jacob G. Hornberger I can already hear the pro-empire, pro-intervention crowd making their announcement after a terrorist attack in the United States by a victim of the Israeli bombing in Gaza: “The attack had nothing to do with anger and hatred arising from the unconditional financial and military aid that the U.S. government has furnished the Israeli regime. Instead, the attacker was motivated by hatred for America’s freedom and values.” Regardless of which side one comes down on in the current outbreak of never-ending hostilities between Israel and the Palestinians, there is one issue that should not be in dispute: The U.S. government should not be furnishing foreign aid to the Israeli government and, well, for that matter, to any other regime. Isn’t foreign aid just another form of socialistic welfare, just like the bailouts of U.S. automobile companies? Under what moral authority does the U.S. government, operating through the IRS, ...

Killing Enemies without Trial

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In an editorial published last Saturday, the Washington Post celebrated the killing of a man in Somalia who the Post said “deserved the label of ‘evildoer.’” The man was killed when a U.S. Navy ship fired Tomahawk missiles at a Somali home in which the man was apparently located. The Post said that the missile “killed a vicious militia leader and an al-Qaeda operative.” The Post did point out that the U.S. operation had a “distinct downside”: Some 24 other people were also killed in the attack. Notwithstanding that unfortunate side effect, the Post said that the operation was “a victory for the Bush administration’s counterterrorism operations in Africa.” I wish the Post had compared the U.S. operation against the terrorist in Somalia to a similar operation carried out against a communist in 1973 on the streets of ...

Hornberger’s Blog, December 2005

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Saturday, December 31, 2005 Our government is mired in such wrongful conduct as torture, denial of due process, denial of jury trials, spying on Americans, warrantless recording of citizens’ telephone calls, military interference with the criminal justice system, military denigration of the Constitution, brutal sanctions on overseas people, wars of aggression, military occupations, secret Soviet-era torture centers overseas, kidnapping of ...