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Although President Bush is rounding the final corner on his term, it seems we may be feeling the effects of his reign longer than we bargained for.
I’m talking, of course, about the Supreme Court. Other positions that are now held by loyal “Bushies” will be changed by the next president. The Justices on the Supreme Court, however, we are stuck with until each decides that it is time to move on.
Why does this matter? At the start of this month, the court convened and started down the list of the new docket. What is most interesting is not what they are talking about, but rather what they aren’t talking about. Instead of bringing several serious issues that reflect the current debates in the country, the Supreme Court has decided to turn away from those that might have negative effects for the GOP and/or the Bush Administration.
Khaled El-Masri, a German man of Lebanese decent, claims that he was captured, held in Afghanistan by the CIA and subsequently tortured. El-Masri claims that while he was traveling through Lebanon, he was detained at the border due to the fact that his name is identical in spelling to that of a terrorist involved in a Hamburg cell, who is still at large.
In March of 2004, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and CIA Director George Tenet learned of El-Masri’s wrongful imprisonment after he took part in a hunger strike. According to El-Masri, he was informed that if he kept quiet, he would be released. From there, he was dropped off in Albania without an apology or means by which to return to his wife and family. After being picked up by Albanian guards, he finally made it back home.
Why is this relevant? Because Khaled El-Masri’s lawsuit against the United States has been terminated by the Supreme Court. The Court has stated that the case would present a risk to US state secrets and national security.
Is that not, in itself, an admission of guilt? El-Masri claims that he was beaten, raped and tortured over a period of four months in an American prison in Afghanistan. Shouldn’t the U.S. government want to investigate that? Doesn’t the man deserve justice? And if what he says is a lie, why do they need to defend themselves?
This, of course, comes out just as news of the “secret torture memo” reaches the light of day from the man-sized safe that is the Bush Administration’s stockpile of secrets and lies. In a nutshell, not only does our government officially support torture, they don’t even try to make excuses for themselves.
Sure, it’s understandable to not wish to divulge state secrets, but the Bush Administration has over-exercised that right to the point of insanity. During the height of the Cold War – from 1953 to 1976 – the defense of “state secrets” was used only 6 times. Since 2001, the Bush Administration has used it 39 times, according to openthegovernment.org.
All the while, El-Masri is just another innocent bystander. Some would say that, while it is a shame that an innocent man should suffer, is it not better to defend America? To those individuals, I would simply ask this: What would you do if you were kidnapped from your friends and loved ones over spring break by a foreign government? If you were transported to a far-away country to be tortured, beaten, raped and left alone in a strange land? Would you just accept it – not seek justice, consider yourself a casualty in the war on terror?
Somehow, I don’t think you would and rightfully so. The point of the war on terror is to keep what happened to Khaled El-Masri from happening to all innocent people. After all, isn’t the exploitation of a person’s inalienable rights what we are fighting against?
Megan Neff is a second-year English and journalism double-major.
