For the past five years, the Bush Regime has held people in
secret prisons without warrants, charges, or access to an
attorney. Most detainees have been tortured and abused. Bush’s
real world victims suffer from more disorientation and
hopelessness than Kafka’s character, Josef K.
By Paul Craig Roberts
-- Information Clearing house
March 12, 2007 -- John
Derbyshire is the sole remaining adult writing for National Review. In
a recent issue he noted that the Aldous Huxley’s novel, Brave New World,
first published in 1932, now reads like contemporary news.
Huxley’s
fearsome predictions of a 26th century world have all come true six
centuries early -- in vitro fertilization, genetically modified crops,
stem-cell research, promiscuous recreational sex, the demise of
marriage and families, and the epidemic use of prescription and illegal
drugs to escape from anxiety, frustration and disappointment.
Alas, Franz Kafka’s novel, The Trial, published in 1925 and
George Orwell’s novel, 1984, published in 1949, also have been
turned into period pieces by the practices of the Bush Regime.
In Kafka’s novel, Josef K. is arrested for reasons never given,
tried for an unspecified crime, and executed.
The Trial is the model for the Bush Regime’s Military Tribunals,
which permit execution on the basis of hearsay, secret evidence
unknown to the defendant, or confession extracted by torture.
For the past five years, the Bush Regime has held people in
secret prisons without warrants, charges, or access to an
attorney. Most detainees have been tortured and abused. Bush’s
real world victims suffer from more disorientation and
hopelessness than Kafka’s character, Josef K.
In Orwell’s 1984, people are subjected to relentless spying. A
state or alleged state of war is used to maintain total control
over everyone. Lies have replaced truth, and the media serves as
propagandist for the Ministry of Truth. The meaning of words,
such as “freedom” has been perverted. The attitude of 1984’s all
powerful government is “you are with us or against us.”
In the United States, each member elected to the House and
Senate takes an oath to uphold the US Constitution, as does the
president and vice president. Yet the Bush Regime drafted and
Congress passed the Military Commissions Act, a constitutional
monstrosity that denies the protection of law to everyone
declared, without evidence, by the executive branch to be a
suspected terrorist or enemy combatant.
The Military Commissions Act became law in “the land of the
free” in 2006. The Act strips detainees of protections provided
by the Geneva Conventions. The Act declares that no person
“subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may
invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.”
The Act also denies detainees the protections of the US
Constitution and Bill of Rights: “No court, justice, or judge
shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a
writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of” a detainee. Some
language in the Act refers to detainees as “aliens,” but,
ominously, other language does not limit the Act’s applicability
to “aliens.”
In Orwell’s novel, Winston Smith commits a thought crime, is
arrested by the Thought Police, and imprisoned in the Ministry
of Love. Winston’s dearth of rights under Big Brother are
comparable to the absence of rights of detainees under the
Military Commissions Act.
This dangerous legislation is the product of the same regime
that resurrected the medieval practice of torture of prisoners
and that has consistently lied about the reasons for the wars it
has initiated.
Scholars, such as Philip Cooper of Portland State University,
warn that the Bush Regime is using presidential signing
statements to replace constitutional checks and balances with
elevated executive powers associated with the unitary executive
theory.
The unitary executive theory is a way to turn the US president
into Big Brother. Already Bush is replacing Congress as the
arbiter of law and the judiciary as the arbiter of rights. The
media enable his usurpation, and the people, distracted by war
and “terrorism,” have their various forms of soma.
Amazing but true -- three novels of the early 20th century
predicted present day America.
Paul Craig Roberts was
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan
administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street
Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National
Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
LINK: Information Clearing House