In response to my most recent item on Guantánamo Edward Hasbrouck asks this reasonable question: “if courts in the USA say Guantanamo isn't under their jurisdiction, doesn't that mean they would have to recognize Cuban jurisdiction?”
The answer to this question is unusually clear: No.
The faculty is getting set to produce, G*d help us, a mission statement. The chance that this will be a pointless waste of time is high, much higher than a Retreat. But the downside is also bounded; the odds that anyone will get mad about this seem low. Unfortunately, we can't simply decide not to do it, as the central administration hath sent out a decree unto all parts of the University, yea even unto the most autonomous of Schools, that There Shall Be Mission Statements. And so there shall be.
So I thought I should try to make lemonade from this lemon. Why not use this as an excuse to introduce the faculty to the wonders of collaborative drafting software?
It could have been worse.
Which Dr. Seuss character are you?
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Neil Lewis of the New York Times writes an update on what's doing at Guantánamo, U.S. Erecting a Solid Prison at Guantánamo for Long Term. In the course of a perfectly solid piece of reporting, Mr. Lewis falls into the tense of Historical Inevitability,
The camp currently houses about 660 detainees in varying degrees of security. The new prison could be where prisoners sentenced by military tribunals would serve their terms. Although the rules for tribunals include the possibility of capital punishment, Colonel Hart said there were no plans to build an execution chamber. [Funny – the BBC reported that there were “plans” last June — in the sense of contingency plans, not in the sense of a firm decision.]
None of the detainees sentenced to prison terms or execution could be taken into the United States to serve their sentences because upon arrival, they would immediately gain new rights and avenues to challenge their detentions. Officials chose Guantánamo as a location where United States constitutional protections would not apply, and two federal courts have agreed that the naval base here is not legally part of the United States.
Got that? “None of the detainees sentenced to prison terms or execution could be taken into the United States to serve their sentences….” It's inevitable! It's a law of nature! What he means, of course, is 'Administration officials are afraid to bring any detainees to the US, even those convicted in the special military courts that the American Bar Association has condemned as too one-sided, because the Adminstration rightly fears the application of the Due Process clause of the Constitution.'
In fact there is nothing inevitable about Guantánamo. It's time to demand that the detainees be patriated—bring them to the US. Show the world we are not afraid of due process.
Please see my earlier item on Guantánamo
I'm behind — very behind — on my pile of NYRB's. In the Oct. 23 issue, already succeeded by another, there is an article by Arthur Schlesinger Jr called “Eyeless in Iraq”. In it he quotes from a letter written by Congressman Abraham Lincoln in 1848, during the US war with Mexico,
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure…. If to-day he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, “I see no probability of the British invading us” but he will say to you, “Be silent: I see it, if you don't.”
Gary Wills has a sharp and somber honesty that produces a sometimes contrarian clarity of vision and constantly acute prose. His Nixon Agonistes was one of the first serious political books I ever read as a child, and is still, I think, one of the best books on the man who later authored our 'long national nightmare'. His current article in the NYRB is about Jefferson — but unlike the celebratory stuff he's written on Jefferson in the past, this is about Jefferson's dark side. It's about the three-fifths clause, which Wills locates at the center of Jefferson's political strategy and career: lynchpin of the South's power, it was also the but-for cause of the supposed Great Democrat's election, and gave the Southern white establishment enough extra votes to distort national politics until the Civil War.
Wills has written a wonderful essay, again. But this time, instead of shaking my head in awed agreement, I find I have two reactions that he may not have intended.
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