John Roberts’ Role in the Guantanamo Hunger Strike      
by Mike Whitney
www.dissidentvoice.org
September 12, 2005



 

“People will definitely die…. Bobby Sands petitioned the British government to stop the illegitimate internment of Irishmen without trial…. Nobody should believe for one moment that my brothers here have less courage.”

-- Binyam Mohammed, British prisoner at Guantanamo Bay

When Senate hearings convene this week for Supreme Court candidate John Roberts, let’s hope that they focus on the hunger strike taking place at Guantanamo Bay. It was Robert’s ruling in Rumsfeld vs. Hamdan that hastened a massive 200-man hunger strike that is now in its second month and has hospitalized at least 15 inmates. The prisoners are demanding that they be given the opportunity to challenge the terms of their detention in a court of law, a principle that Roberts does not support. He ruled in the Hamdan case that the President was not constrained by international law and that “the Geneva Conventions do not create judicially enforceable rights.”

Roberts ignores the fact that the United States is a signatory of the Geneva Conventions and must comply with its provisions for the humane treatment of prisoners as well as offering prisoners the Convention’s protection “until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal.” Rumsfeld’s handpicked military courts do not meet these requirements, and have been rejected by prominent legal organizations and human rights groups alike.

Let’s be clear -- the 500 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay are innocent. That is not my contention, but the belief of everyone who still accepts the fundamental principle of American jurisprudence, that men are “innocent until proven guilty.” The inmates have been deprived of due process of law, so we must presume that they are innocent. The language invented at the Defense Department -- “terrorist”, “enemy combatant”, “insurgent” -- should not cloud our reasoning or undermine our commitment to fair play. The prisoners should be allowed to defend themselves according to internationally accepted standards of justice.

Roberts does not believe that captives in the war on terror have any rights whatsoever. His ruling in Rumsfeld vs. Hamdan confers absolute authority on the President to imprison suspects indefinitely without any legal process in place to challenge their imprisonment. But, if this is true, than why do we need courts or judges at all? Why not simply resolve these issues by executive fiat?

Roberts’ ruling has earned him an appointment to the Supreme Court; a souvenir for endorsing the supreme powers of the President. But, his ambition comes at a cost. 200 or more victims of his verdict are presently starving themselves to death demanding the right to have their cases heard in court. The scene at Guantanamo has been described as “dire” by defense attorneys for the detainees with gruesome descriptions of prisoners “vomiting blood or collapsing in their cells.” The Defense Department has tried to conceal the details of the hunger strike and has prevented the media and the Red Cross from visiting the prisoners.

Guantanamo needs to be opened up so that we can see the consequences of Roberts’ judicial philosophy. If Roberts is willing to rubberstamp a policy that promotes the cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners then the public should be aware of it.

Roberts has argued that, “The president’s authority under the laws of our nation to try enemy combatants is a vital part of the global war on terror.”

Fine.

Roberts should be given every opportunity to defend his theories on justice as long as the sick and emaciated victims of his philosophy are paraded through the Senate Rotunda for everyone to observe.

American justice is an oxymoron. Under Bush, there is neither justice nor a system; just the willful conduct of bullies who act according to the most cynical impulses.  Roberts is the embodiment of the present paradigm: a man whose adult life has been devoted to secret organizations, like the Federalist Society, whose sole purpose is the dismantling of legal protections and civil liberties for the common man. He is the poster boy of the new world order.

The Muslim prisoners who are resisting this regime of lawlessness -- some who have even ripped the feeding tubes from their arms -- are heroes in the truest sense of the word. They have put their own lives on the line for a just cause, demanding that they be treated with the same respect and dignity deserving of every man. Now, they face an agonizing death fighting for the very same principles that are written into the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.   

They’ve earned our admiration, and they have it.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state, and can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com.

Other Articles by Mike Whitney

* Jose Padilla and the Death of Personal Liberty
* Rodney King in New Orleans
* Rehnquist Paved the Way for the Imperial Presidency
* The New Orleans Looters Are the Bush Progeny
* The Devastating Impact of Hurricane George
* “Transformation”: How Rumsfeld Smashed the National Guard
* The Lords of War
* Robertson’s Fatwah: “A Whole Lotta Smitin’ Goin’ On”
* Turning Cindy Sheehan’s Victory Into Defeat 
* “My Son Died for Nothing”
* "Shoot to Kill": Tony Blair’s First Trophy
* Greenspan’s Role in the Housing Bubble
* Failing in Iraq
* Revving Up World War III
* Pretty Hot in Crawford, Pretty Hot in Hell
* Straight-Shootin’ George Galloway
* “Operation Community Shield”: Comrade Chertoff’s Preemptive Crackdown
* Kristallnacht: What Happens When the Public Says Nothing? 
* Burying Blair: Post-Mortem for the British PM
* “Withdrawal” from Iraq?: Forget About It
* The Globalization of State Terror
* Tom Friedman: Fabricating the Roots of Terror
* Doomsday: The Final Months of the “Housing Bubble”
* John Roberts and the National Security State
* Guantanamo: the Calculus of Human Misery
* Did Greenspan Know About the London Bombings Two Days Before?
* Another Casualty in Rumsfeld’s Information War
* Genesis of an American Gestapo
* Bush's Orgy of Carnage
* Goodbye to Sandra Day O’ Connor . . . and Good Riddance
* The Rumsfeld Solution: “Liberating Iraq, One Journalist at a Time”
* Show Your Independence on the 4th -- Burn a Flag
* "Up in Smoke": Bush Flops in Prime Time
* More Rumsfeld Lies About Insurgent Meetings
* Incinerating Iraqis: The Napalm Cover-Up
* Guantanamo: The New-World Icon
* The Bush Radio Address: More Delusional Blather While Iraq Bleeds
* The Friedman Solution: Reinstate the Draft
* Body Slamming the 4th Amendment
* Operation Desperation: Rumsfeld’s Baghdad Fiasco
* The EU Constitution: Don’t Believe the BS
* Protecting the Plutocrats
* What Was Laura Bush Doing at the Al Aqsa Mosque?
* Free Jose Padilla!
* Alberto Gonzales’ Kristallnacht: Purges for a Safer America
* Tom Friedman: The Imperial Chronicler
* Gods, Gays, and George Bernard Shaw
* A Tentative Strategy for Ending the War
* The Specter of Violence in America
* Free Speech in the Crosshairs
* Why America Needs to be Defeated in Iraq
* More Madness at the Bush News Conference
* Ratzinger’s Plan to Hide the Pedophiles
* Let’s Let Atheists Back into Politics
* Pope Ratzinger: More “Pie-in-the-Sky” for the Struggling Masses
* The Purveyors of Violence: The NY Times in Falluja
* Screw You, Paul Volker!
* Pope TV and the New World Media
* The Economic Tsunami: Sooner Than You Think
* Destroy Abu Ghraib!
* Terri Schiavo and the Battered Judiciary
* Railroading Moussaoui
* The Wolfowitz Appointment: A Red Flag for the Coming Wars
* “Economic Meltdown” -- Sorry, but We’re Toast
* John Bolton and the Road to Tehran
* Clearing the Way for the American Police State
* Challenging the Language of Violence
* Jose Padilla and the 10 Commandments
* Crushing the UN for a Stronger America
* Europe to Bush: “Hands Off Iran”?
* The Incredible Shrinking Dollar
* Assassinating Al-Hariri Fits Washington’s Plan
* Washington’s Plan to Foment Civil War in Iraq
* Condi’s Euro-Tour
* Folksy Tom Friedman and New Age Imperialism
* Government Without Consent
* The Desperate State of the Union
* Iraq’s Election Fiasco
* Boarding Up the “Window of Opportunity”
* KGB Chieftain Finds Home at Homeland Security
* Bush’s Grand Plan: Incite Civil War
* Pink Slips at CBS
 

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