Military Detention Versus We the People | Truthout

Military Detention Versus We the People | Truthout

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The most glaring problem with the committee's legislation is its violation of our nation’s most fundamental values shared across our political spectrum.

First, the committee’s proposal accepts prosecutors as the arbiters of guilt. We have courts in America to check executive power. Impartial judges limit over whom the state may exercise its coercive power to deny freedom. We don’t trust prosecutors to make those decisions, because we presume innocence. Being considered "innocent until proven guilty" is a bedrock constitutional norm, a cornerstone in the edifice our Founders constructed to defend freedom from the potential tyranny that Levin & McCain casually invite.

On the one hand, racial and ethnic profiling in the wars on drugs, immigrants, and terror have already shredded the presumption of innocence. Millions of Americans routinely treated as presumptively guilty due to their race or ethnicity have been subjected to illegitimate prison sentences or deportation. But at least those cases involve a judicial process of some kind.

A separate fundamental principle restrains the military from operating domestically. Levin and McCain invite domestic military deployment.

Beyond its blatant violation of fundamental American principles, Levin and McCain also play loose with the system. Their bill passed the Armed Services Committee essentially in secret, without even a single hearing on their radical and seemingly Soviet-inspired proposal.

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