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Obama's Hypocrisy on Murder
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If he really wants to lock up dangerous criminals, he should forget detaining terror suspects—and go after the hundreds of thousands of known murderers roaming America’s streets.
President Obama wants to make it legal to “detain indefinitely,” in the Orwellian language of our time, people whom the government believes it can’t convict of crimes in our federal courts, or even before the military tribunals that have been set up to make it easier to obtain convictions. He’s seeking this extraordinary power because some people are just too dangerous not to lock up forever, even though they haven’t been—and apparently can’t be—convicted of breaking the law. “Let me repeat,” Obama declared, “I am not going to release individuals who endanger the American people.”
Forget about people who want to kill Americans. Let’s talk about people who have actually killed Americans.
This would be an amazing statement under any circumstances, but it’s especially so now, when federal law has made it easy to sentence people to long prison terms for providing “material support” to anything the United States government declares to be a terrorist organization. It’s not as if you actually have to commit an act of terrorism to be sent away to prison by our regular courts: Attending a training camp or, as in the infamous Jose Padilla case, filling out an application to attend such a camp, provides the government with plenty of legal justification for bringing extremely serious criminal charges against accused terrorists, or terrorist wannabes. So does contributing money to organizations like Hezbollah.
Thus one obvious objection to Obama’s proposal is that it’s unnecessary. But his proposed legislation—which has much of Washington swooning over what’s considered a “moderate” alternative to Dick Cheney’s authoritarian torture fantasies—is far more objectionable as a matter of the most fundamental legal and political principles.
We’ve always understood that, when it comes to giving the state power to protect us, there’s an inevitable tradeoff between security and liberty. This tradeoff is all the more complicated because the more power we give the government to protect us, the more danger we run of making the government something we will end up needing to be protected from. That is why, until very recently, the idea that you can’t put people in prison just because you believe they’re dangerous was so obvious it didn’t need to be defended. It went without saying that to imprison someone at all, let alone indefinitely, you needed to convict them of a crime. Now, apparently, this most basic of American political principles is being tossed out the window in the name of keeping us “safe.”
Apologists for this grotesque spectacle claim that terrorism represents a different and special kind of threat, which requires giving the government extraordinarily broad powers. After all, they say, we’re talking about people who want to kill Americans!
Forget about people who want to kill Americans. Let’s talk about people who have actually killed Americans: 603,731 of us, to be exact. This represents the official number of murders committed in the United States over the past 30 years (the real number, given that every murder doesn’t produce a case file, is no doubt quite a bit higher). What powers have we been willing to give the government to keep us “safe” from actual, as opposed to potential, killers?
Consider that fully one-third of these murders have never even resulted in an arrest. Furthermore, the average time served for a murder conviction in the United States is about 12 years. All of this raises an awkward question for politicians who speak of not releasing people who endanger the American public: How many murderers are free in America today, as opposed to being kept in “preventative detention”?
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KateTheGreat
This article is just full of every freshman argument ever mustered in argumentation 101...also, I wouldn't mind in the least if our "home-grown" child-molesters, murderers, rapists, and gang-members ended up in some 3rd-world type prison...perhaps if jail were really, truly, terrible they'd offend less often...unless the purpose of prison here is rehabilitation? If so, who's paying? It takes an average of 2-3 years of intensive, inpatient, psychotherapy to truly change behavior *aka: around 2 million bucks...*
Also, I DO consider gang-activity to be terrorism...shoot them all and be done with it.
GM2009
Foam, knee-jerk, knee jerk, foam....more foam
whipmawhopma
"Also, I DO consider gang-activity to be terrorism...shoot them all and be done with it"
I'm thinking these people should be inducted into our own version of the French Foreign Legion. The killers the French send when they are serious and don't want to be bothered by bad press about casualities on their side.
allonfla
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Bulldoglover100
How very childish..and they pay you to write for a living? Great we have now found a job for everyone that Bush/Cheney put out of work! They can write for a living.
Kingyahoo
Professor Campos wrote an excellent piece. As a matter of fact, I attempted to raise the same question on a Canadian national newspaper's blog. Unfortunately, it was censured, hence not published. I added Americans kill each other more, besides murder, in road accidents than the bad guys do from outside. I have somehow always looked at my American neighbours as generous, caring, and a brave people, not to mention powerful. I attended two of your universities for graduate studies and I am very grateful and I have made life-long friends.
Sadly, I also know there are people like Rush Limbaugh, who apparently have over 20 million listeners. Holy cow! Perhaps bulldoglover 100 and progressive 2 are among them! Americans are being portrayed as sissies, afraid of their own shadow. How much of that portrayal is political milking?
There is a psychological element here. The American ego has been badly hurt, in fact shattered, by 9/11 because no nation has ever done this to them, not even Japan. Americans should also look at how many innocent people they have killed abroad.
The bombing of Pearl harbour was wartime activities, just like dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki and Hiroshima was. How does the USA get over this? Should they get over this as Negroes (African-Americans) are told to get over slavery? That is a question for Americans to ask and to answer. It may be painful to analyze, but nevertheless a thoughtful piece by Professor Campos. Thank you.
Curtastrophe
What is the point of this article? That we should lower the legal bar for how we handle criminals inside the U.S.? That we shouldn't? His tone is confused. I agree that this appears to be written by a college freshman.
All terrorists are criminals, but not all criminals are terrorists. Terrorists commit crime to support a political or ideological agenda. Criminals commit crimes for other reasons. The sooner we Americans get that straightened out in our national consciousness, the clearer almost every related argument or debate will become.
As was put so eloquently by, admittedly, a favorite TV show of mine, "America is an idea." We rely on adherence to our common values to even exist. When we take away someone's right to defend themselves from charges laid against them in court, we're rebuking almost 800 years of baseline political philosophy that is at the foundation of our "Idea". Torturing, holding indefinitely, even invading other nations pre-emptively to support our values, destroys them. Even to catch murderers. Let's start relying on our values to lead from the high ground, not the gutter.
dm10003
"FORMER killer"? i'd think ONCE a killer...
Progressive2
Was this supposed to scare me into believing the crap you write?
exploora
I think the author is right though.
In Canada, and UK, there are tons of stories of people, mostly young people getting a second chance, after killing once.
In my mind, if probabilities can be used to predict future behaviour, these people have a higher probability of killing again, when conditions are right, than people who have never killed.
Killing is a big deal. It is like a line people cross. Once it is crossed, I would think it would be hard to cross back again.
And the biggest attack on ordinary way have life we have felt, after 9/11, was Madoff, and the crash of the stock market, abuse of people financially, loss of homes and jobs etc.
A break down from within, Who cares how well written the scenes are described after they happen. The fact is they happened, often in silence.
And the hate, which George Orwell was describing allowed such scenes to happen.
exploora
It was just like the time the little girl in my town was killed, as we found out later, by the same boy who was babysitting her siblings as the authority were discovering her body. Of the angelic looking boy, who looked like he would harm no one, had abused before, but his file was closed.
The locals were advised to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary, anything suspicious, and meanwhile, it was the neighbour that had done. Not some stranger no one knew, but the kid next door who was babysitting the victims siblings. That is the kind of thing the author is talking about it.
It is just like our own local authorities blocking entrances to shop driveways, as they scream out about unemployment, they refuse to make a connection how their actions effect unemployment.
Just like SEC somehow missing Madoff, robbing Billions from the investor community, during a very strange fraud, what do you think is going to happen, a loss in investor confidence? Market failure? Well duh!
Plantagenet
Bashing Bush for Obama's proposal to detain people indefinitely without trial is stupid. When Obama trashes the constitution surely Obama should get full credit.
feralrom
Professor Campos makes two good arguments, but by conflating them, he weakens them both. One, regarding the folks in Guantanamo: Why are we abandoning our principles to lock up people that we cannot prove did anything to justify their detention? A good question. And two, regarding murderers both caught and uncaught in our domestic system: Why aren't we at least equally concerned with controlling these proven or proveable domestic murderers as we are concerned with controlling the willothewisp criminals in Guantanamo? A legitimate question, but not a very good argument if you are (as Professor Campos seems to be) concerned about the robustness of Obama's defense of American values.
The fact is, that we Americans, have happily abandoned our Bill of Rights whenever it suited us. Andrew Jackson famously said, "The Supreme Court has issued its ruling, now let them enforce it" as he ordered the army to remove Cherokee American citizens from their farms in Georgia and shipped them off to Oklahoma. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and 'detained' unconvicted southern sympathizers. Roosevelt 'detained' 110,000 unconvicted Japanese Americans.
Guantanamo is only the latest of our atrocities. BUT, there is a bright spot glowing at the center of this blot on our escutcheon. In two of the three historical examples above, the Supreme Court ruled that detention without proveable cause was unConstitutional.
In the current cases from Guantanamo, the court has yet to be heard from in a final way, but the cases that have been heard have held that the President can NOT declare an American citizen arrested within these United States an enemy combatant and thereby cut off court review and that the United States can NOT escape court review by conducting its illegalities offshore.
Eventually we will see the cases of the remaining Guantanamo prisoners. Perhaps some will be convicted, but those who are not convicted--even when reviewed by the likes of Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas--will be released.
whipmawhopma
Professor Campos doesn't make two good arguments. He is deliberately conflately them, so that the craziness of one makes the other crazy by association.
I am not defending the Bus-Obama doctrine on the matter of detaining terrorist threats nor am I attacking it. I simply find the professor's argument worthless.
donatello
KateTheGreat; Just suppose I claim you are a terrorist/child molestor and you get arrested for it. Okay, never happen, right? You hope.
boredwell
What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? This whole jurisIMpudence is straight out of Spielberg's THE MINORITY REPORT. Tom Cruise plays a cop who arrests people for merely thinking of a crime. They are, subsequently, put into a cryogenic capsule indefinitely for that "offense." That future is closer than we think.
pricklypear
Let us see. The terrorists attacked the Cole Navy Ship, killing our sailors. 3000 people died on 9/11. They destroyed the World Trade Center and did major damage to surrounding buildings. The hazardous material left behind has caused life threatening health problems for city workers and citizens of New York. They destroyed three airliners. Disrupted air travel for several months, caused billions in lost revenue for businesses here and overseas. Also 19 dead cowardly evil suicidal nuts who left nothing of themselves to lock up. They've attacked embassies overseas, night clubs, hotels, murdering men, women, children, the more heinous scene, the better. Should I go on?
pricklypear
Oh, I forgot to mention...damage to the pentagon. If the third plane had reached it's target it would have hit the White House or the Capital Building. These creeps are not your average murderers are they?
whipmawhopma
I find it somewhat difficult to understand the author's agenda, even though I made a valiant effort to discern it.
If I understand it correctly, he is using a false argument in favor of the Federal government taking care of the domestic 'terror' issue, meaning the large numbers of American (as well as legal and illegal aliens) murderers roaming the streets killing other Americans (as well as legal and illegal aliens), by pre-emptive incarceration, to contrast with what he views as the Bush - Obama false argument that we canshould hold suspected and actual foreign (and a few domestic) terrorists (the other killer of Americans, besides gluttony, slothfulness, drunkenness, bad driving, accidents in the home) in pre-emptive incarceration.
If one argument is ridiculous then the other argument is ridiculous as well, at least from what I imagine to be the author's perspective.
That or I have completely misread him, and his feelings on law and order surpass or equal that of Augusto Pinochet, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, most of the Arab dictatorships, and even Abraham Lincoln, who is Barack Obama's mentor from beyond the grave.
But whatever way he is arguing, consider this statement: "That is why, until very recently, the idea that you can't put people in prison just because you believe they're dangerous was so obvious it didn't need to be defended. It went without saying that to imprison someone at all, let alone indefinitely, you needed to convict them of a crime."
This is hilarious, and either reveals the author's ignorance of American history, or a willingness to be disingenuous about that history.
During the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln ordered the imprisonment of suspected Confederate sympathizers, without trial, and moreover managed to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, acting like any other dictator in history. Out of some necessity, it could be argued, but whatever. It happened.
I vaguely recall the American Congress passing the Espionage Act of 1917, at the urging of that great idealist and high-minded thinker Woodrow Wilson, who wanted to avoided any public dissent against his war effort against the future Axis Powers, considering it a real threat to America's being able to conduct the war successfully. The application of this law was extended to include any expression of political opinions, even without revealing any secrets, even by persons who had no connection with the enemy - as long as the expressing of such opinions was construed (by Woodrow and his lackeys) as helping the enemy.
I also recall, more concretely that during World War II, the American government forcibly relocated and interned some approximately 110,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese-Americans to housing facilities called War Relocation Camps, i.e. 'prisons'. Some 60 % to 70 % were American citizens. Of which 99% or so were innocent of any crime against the United States.
All that aside, I don't understand the validity of title of the article: "Obama's Hypocrisy on Murder". There is no hypocrisy on Obama's part, at least in this matter, campaign speeches aside. This piece reads like some expose in the National Inquirer. Shock title, blah-blah article.
Thank you.
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