Necessary Roughness

I understand that there are certain unalienable rights granted to mankind by their Creator, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, and that a Government instituted by men derives its power to secure these rights for those governed with their consent.

Fine, but does a government secure “rights” for those it doesn’t govern? Am I entitled to socialized medicine even though I’m not a citizen of Canada? If my first language was Catalan, let’s say, should I expect that all signs in this country provide a Catalan translation, since it is an official language…of Andorra? If someone steals from me, do I have the right to demand the removal of his hand, as is the law in countries that have implemented Islamic legal tenets?

A federal judge seems to think that the rights enumerated by our law extend to those who do not give consent to be governed by our law. Judge Joyce Hens Green of the District of Columbia ruled that those captured in Afghanistan and other places, some of which are Al-Qaeda types, have Fifth Amendment protections under our law. These guys were not citizens, save for John Walker Lindh, who was tried in American criminal court, and for the most part they were members of the Taliban, actively fighting our military.

The rules for the treatment of citizen criminals, who initially implicitly agree to follow a government’s rules then break them and invoke consequences, are entirely different than prisoners of war who are detained to keep them from hurting our military. Prisoners of war according to the Geneva Conventions are intended to be returned to a country when that country agrees to stop fighting via surrender or treaty. These rules exist so that the winning country doesn’t have to kill everyone it comes into contact with during military operations. The nation of Afghanistan ratified (link dead) the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and in December, 2001, the Taliban surrendered to tribal elders.

Two problems, though: I can’t find on the International Red Cross site if a country’s ratification is still good when the government is seized (link dead) in a civil war. Secondly, when U.S. POWs are returned from wherever they are captured, they generally don’t fight the country that the U.S. government has agreed to end war with. Given that some of these captured were Al-Qaeda, these guys would go back to fighting us no matter what country they hailed from. I could see us holding them until we can turn them over to the new Afghan government which would detain them. At any rate, the Afghanis would be subject to the laws of Afghanistan, rather than American law.

This disrespect for our own law is unfortunately not limited to one judge. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Stephen G. Breyer admit that they used foreign law in several domestic cases. Our legislative branch may be inept at doing a lot of things, but making new laws is not one of them. If the use of foreign law is a good thing, what stops us from limb amputation?

It’s bad enough that we’re willing to ignore our immigration laws and give rights and privileges to those who broke the law. If a law is wrong to be enforced, get it off the books. Now to make matters worse, we have the judiciary extending the protections of our laws to those who seek to destroy our law. This seems arrogant at its mildest and treasonous at its harshest.