After reading and viewing Keith Olbermann's thought provoking commentary on President Bush's signing of the Military Commissions Act, dealing a death blow to Habeas corpus, I was taken back to a time in the 1970's of similar powers awarded to the then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She was in deep political doo-doo, and chose to invoke internal Emergency powers to imprison and terrorize political opponents.
Ruchira had this to say regarding her memories of the atmosphere in India in those times:
"The pervasive sense of fear had been palpable. Editors, journalists and intellectuals critical of Mrs. Gandhi and her son were thrown in jail. The 1977 election in which Indira Gandhi was unseated and the Janata Party (a coalition of opposition parties) put in power was an event whose equivalent I have never seen. The Indian voting public militated against Gandhi's authoritarianism and voted in politicians opposed to her, many of whom had been in jail. I was always pretty well informed about politics and current affairs. The 1975 Indian Emergency was the event that made me politically "active" for the first time."
A similar atmosphere is starting to creep over the US now, and history usually doesn't hesitate to repeat itself. The Bush administration has wasted no time letting ink dry on his signature before promptly doing this:
"Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba."
It is creeping over us and it is CREEPY. The mistake Indira Gandhi and her son made was that they tried it all at once by declaring a state of emergency. The shock value was too much and the populace rebelled.
Bush is doing it right. Slowly, surreptitously. That is the Stalinist creep up that Brian Leiter wrote about and I alluded to in my own post about the young man who spoke Tamil on his cell phone at the airport. The signs to watch out for are:
"It's the return of 'troikas' -- detentions without court warrants, interrogations without assistance of counsel, trials by puppet courts, all the while the currently unincarcerated crowd believes that this could only happen to criminals."
The omens are all there. The Tomorrowian cartoon you linked to in the comment to the "Irony" post, applies more accurately to this one.
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | October 20, 2006 at 03:56 PM
I don't know about you guys, but the next time I buy a Kafka novel, I intend to do so in person, paying with cash, at a store where there is no video surveillance. I'd hate to wind up as a Josef K. figure for purchasing what amounts to a Bush Administration instruction manual.
I'm kidding. Kind of. Maybe.
Posted by: Joe | October 20, 2006 at 08:38 PM
Joe, don't bother with bookstores yet. Try Project Gutenberg, still available free of cost on the internets.
Posted by: Sujatha | October 20, 2006 at 08:59 PM
That is such a cool website.
Of course, the problem with the internets is that you probably leave some sort of electronic record of where you've been. Which the government's undoubtedly got a secret department or two tracking.
Posted by: Joe | October 20, 2006 at 09:29 PM
Uncle Sam or Roz of Monsters Inc. "I'm always watching you..."
P.S. The further reading links listed at the bottom of this Wikipage make pretty interesting,if not chilling, reading.
Posted by: Sujatha | October 21, 2006 at 07:41 AM
That is such a good comparison. When I was in law school, habeus corpus was the kind of thing you covered in a day at the beginning of criminal or constitutional law - the kind of thing that is taken for granted, the kind of foundational principle that is untouchable... until now, I guess.
Posted by: Archana | October 21, 2006 at 09:52 AM