Law-Free Zones

Dahlia Lithwick on the broader implications of Jamie Leigh Jones: "If Jones’ allegations are true, the lesson is that this government's convenient little 'law free zones' at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and black sites around the world don't discriminate between 'us' and 'them.' If an innocent American finds herself in such a law-free zone, she’s as unlikely as any alleged terrorist to find her day in court."

And how could it not? Over time, the mechanisms of imperial governance abroad are bound to erode democracy at home. You see it from the top down in the ways in which prominent military commanders have been inserted into partisan politics, and you see it from the bottom-up in the erosion of the rule of law.

Comments

By "little law free zone" she means the entire nation of Iraq, right?

Posted by BruceR | December 11, 2007 2:54 PM

Hey, freedom is messy, remember?

Posted by DCBob | December 11, 2007 3:12 PM

Over time, the mechanisms of imperial governance abroad are bound to erode democracy at home

Yes, excellent point. This is a little more arresting than the creeping Patriot Act type of incursions is all.

Posted by The Modesto Kid | December 11, 2007 3:16 PM

To erode democracy at home? You mean I won't have the choice between Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani anymore? Oh, no, that would be a real tragedy.

Posted by abb1 | December 11, 2007 3:17 PM

I can think of another law-free zone: it's called hell, and it's a place where all Bush Administration enablers need to experience.

Posted by Billare | December 11, 2007 3:19 PM

Does imperial goverance in the periphery really necessarily erode freedoms at the center? Didn't British freedom or even French freedom for citizens at the center expand during the 19th and early 20th centuries while both those nations were engaged in a great deal of (often very nasty) imperial goverance?

Posted by Will | December 11, 2007 3:24 PM

I'll take that omelet now.

Posted by ed | December 11, 2007 3:54 PM

Re Will's comment "Does imperial goverance in the periphery really necessarily erode freedoms at the center? Didn't British freedom or even French freedom for citizens at the center expand during the 19th and early 20th centuries ...?"
----------
The USA was modeled on the Roman Republic , not on the constitutional monarchies of Europe. Google Nero, Caligula, and Domitian.
Or rent "Gladiator" from blockbuster if you don't like reading Tacitus.

Posted by Don Williams | December 11, 2007 4:02 PM

The problem is, these places aren't really 'law free zones'. These people are clearly subject to prosecution by the state dept. This little 'immunity' thing is mostly a smokescreen blown by these people and the bushies in the hopes everyone will pretend that nothing can be done.

Posted by soullite | December 11, 2007 4:19 PM

Didn't British freedom or even French freedom for citizens at the center expand during the 19th and early 20th centuries while both those nations were engaged in a great deal of (often very nasty) imperial goverance?

On the historical issue: one irony is that the wealth accrued by imperial exploits, at least in Britain, contributed to the clout of a new political class unrepresented or under-represented by existing structures.

The empowerment of Blackwater isn't going to do much for the people of North Carolina.

(It's also arguable that Saddam's regime had similar characteristics to British colonial enterprises, in terms of the Baathist bureaucracy, a ruling minority, divide-and-conquer etc.)

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | December 11, 2007 8:18 PM

"Does imperial goverance in the periphery really necessarily erode freedoms at the center?

Not always, for sure, but one can make the case that nasty little imperial or colonial innovations sometimes have an unpleasant way of coming home. For example, Germany's first genocide, including the use of concentration camps, was carried out in the then-colony of German South-West Africa between 1904-07. This was also the site where anthropologist Eugen Fischer developed his ideas about the degenerative results of racial mixing (which Hitler was to read about while in prison); Fischer went on to have great influence first as director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for
Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (Mengele's alma mater) and then within the ranks of the Third Reich. Also, as Benjamin Madley points out (along with that last detail), in his article From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe [pdf]:

"Indeed, the colonial Namibian experience affected large swaths of Wilhelmine, Weimar and Nazi society, glorifying conquest and colonization while breaking down moral and political barriers to genocide. Personal connections, literature, and public debates also communicated colonialist and genocidal ideas and methods from the colony to Germany. Hundreds of thousands of Germans knew or were related to the nearly 20,000 soldiers sent to the colony between 1904 and 1908. Literature also communicated colonial ideas to hundreds of thousands of other Germans. The Herero and Nama Uprisings and subsequent genocide also produced numerous Reichstag debates and newspaper editorials that reached millions more. Indeed German South West African colonialism, genocide and associated ideas were part of German domestic discourse from 1904 until the rise of the Nazis . . . In controlling and producing media, Nazis created a narrative in which these former colonies supported Eastern European colonialism as a nostalgic return, albeit geographically refocused, to a pre-Versailles normalcy in which Germans ruled over vast areas populated by sub-humans . . ."

It is interesting that here in the US the years following the atrocity-rich Phillipine-American War saw a resurgence of anxious racial nativism, including an outburst of anti-Asian sentiment and Yellow Peril-mongering on the West Coast and the increasing prominence of eugenics (interestingly, one early (and fairly idiosyncratic) example of 'The Great Teutonic/Anglo-Saxon Race is doomed to be submerged beneath teh inferior races!1!!!' alarmism, the remarkably dull-sounding 1905 The Effects of Tropical Light on White Men, was written by a US Army doctor just back from the Philippines, although it seems to have had little if any influence). But of course, there was so much else going on here, including numerous trends developing for years previously, that one wouldn't want to overemphasize this.

Honestly, it's sometimes hard to escape the impression that a significant chunk of the world simply began going insane starting somewhere around the turn of the last century, although of course it's rather more complicated than that. But anyeay, nothing like nowadays, not at all. And it's not like there are any dangerous ideas newly-injected into our current domestic discourse . . .

Posted by Dan S. | December 11, 2007 9:25 PM

from that wikipedia Philippine-American War link above:
"
General Otis sent the Brenner case to Washington writing: “After mature deliberation, I doubt the wisdom of court-martial in this case, as it would give the insurgent authorities a knowledge of what was taking place and they would assert positively that our troops had practiced inhumanities, whether the charge should be proven or not, as they would use it as an excuse to defend their own barbarities;” and Otis went on, justifying the war crimes, “and it is not thought that his charge is very grievous under the circumstances then existing, as it was very early in the war, and the patience of our men was under great strain.” Towards the end of 1899, General Otis attempted to repair his battered image. He began to work to win new friends among the journalists in Manila and bestowed favors on any journalist who gave him favorable press."

Posted by Dan S. | December 11, 2007 9:37 PM

Honestly, it's sometimes hard to escape the impression that a significant chunk of the world simply began going insane starting somewhere around the turn of the last century

An interesting tidbit I came across while researching a book that touches on the German wars in Africa. They did a medical survey of German tropps in Africa and determined that the incidence of VD reached 150% - the average soldier had more than one disease.

Posted by Swordsmith | December 12, 2007 1:34 AM

Not to defend Bush, torture (I'm only slightly less appalled than, say, Sullivan), or even "Enemy Combatant" status, but is closing Guantanamo and putting suspected Jihadis in regular prisons really a good idea?

Two potential problems off the top of my head.

1) They somehow turn the indigenous non-jihadi Muslim prison population into Jihadis (or, at least, teach muslim and non-muslim prisoners how to make bombs).

2) They get repeatedly gang-raped by violent convicts.

Regarding #2, I imagine I would personally feel less psychologically devastated from forced, long-term sleep deprivation (I'm actually insomniac, anyway) than I would from anal rape.

While the token (and true) response is that one independant goal for the State should be to remove rape from prison, I don't think anyone knows how to accomplish that (short of 100% solitary confinement, which the Supreme Court has ruled "cruel and unusual"), so it will persist until a solution has been found (if one ever is).

Therefore, putting Jihadis in normal prisons is just asking for another Abu Ghraib (remember, the guards in Iraq were civilian prison guards back in the states). Guantanamo is bad for our global image, but another, worse Abu Ghraib would be far more destructive for long-term US interests.

Posted by Shinyk | December 12, 2007 4:10 AM

This has always been my fear and concern. The Bushies have always cast their treatement of foreigners as separate and distinct from their treatment of citizens, but its not really convincing.

On the one hand you have Jose Padilla, and on the other you have simple human nature: alien or citizen, we're all just people right? So if its OK to do it to them, eventually it will be OK to do it to us, too. The whole Bush presidency has been about the defining down of governmental savagery vis a vis the governed. This seems like a next logical step.

Besides, from what I read on the web and in the papers, DC itself is something of a law free zone. Particularly 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Posted by Howard West | December 12, 2007 6:42 AM

Shinyk, I have a slight add to your concerns.

While in Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, actually while in "The Hole" there, I was celled next to a guy who used to be cellies with (or celled next to, I can't remember which, probably the latter since this guy was black) one of the guys involved in the original World Trade Center bombing. He was celled elsewhere in D cell house.

He used to send notes up to the guy in the cell next to mine, and that guy would pass them to me as interesting. They were rants about Islam, the US, Israel, etc. The stuff you would expect.

Presumably he was in "The Hole" either because he was rebellious or he was threatened by other inmates due to his situation.

If they put Guantanamo guys in Federal prison, they would likely be either put in solitary confinement in a special section of "The Hole" away from other inmates, or perhaps depending on their threat classification and language skills in general population.

Personally, I suspect they would simply be moved to another military prison facility in the continental US, such as Fort Leavenworth's military prison.

As an aside, the incidence of prison rape in Federal prison is in my view grossly overestimated by the public and the media.

As for radicalizing the non-Jihadist Muslims, I don't think that would be very hard, given that virtually all of them are US blacks and not very happy about the US government in the first place. Most of them are are not terribly "peaceful" Muslims to begin with, given their situation and origins.

As for creating a new "Abu Ghraib", let me assure you of something. The Federal Bureau of Prisons system IS Abu Ghraib - except they tend not to go overboard with stuff like "naked pyramids" and electrodes attached to your balls. Abu Ghraib was created, manned and organized by people who originally worked in the US state or Federal prison system. They were simply allowed to go beyond what they are perfectly capable of doing in the US.

If you're interested in avoiding any more Abu Ghraibs, I'd advise firing everybody in the US state and Federal prison systems and turning them out to be burger flippers at Burger King.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 12, 2007 6:56 AM

The USA was modeled on the Roman Republic , not on the constitutional monarchies of Europe. Google Nero, Caligula, and Domitian.

Google the difference between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, please.

Posted by rea | December 12, 2007 7:46 AM

Re rea's comment "Google the difference between the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, please."
------------
Google WHAT happened to the Roman REPUBLIC after its elites used the military to create a global empire, please. Or try reading Plutarch -- specifically, what happened to Tiberius and Caius Gracchus.

Citizen armies eventually get fed up sacrificing their lives to gain empires from which they get no reward -- from which , indeed, their families suffer. Due to the fall in real wages when the rich can import cheap foreign goods and foreign labor.

Circa 107 BC, the Consul Marius therefore changed Rome's army from a citizen army called up for national defense into a full-time mercenary corps with long term enlistments dependent upon the public treasury.

Tell me, what change was made to the US military in the 1970s? Show me where the common citizen has benefited from Bush's hideously costly and bloody aggression in the past 7 years.

When I said google Nero, Caligula, and Domitian, I was merely pointing to the END RESULT of this "Imperial Presidency" bullshit that the Republicans have been pushing.

Posted by Don Williams | December 12, 2007 9:26 AM

As for creating a new "Abu Ghraib", let me assure you of something. The Federal Bureau of Prisons system IS Abu Ghraib

That's what I was afraid of.

When I was bartending to get through undergrad, several of my regulars were career criminals. One guy used to highjack trucks, one guy was a pimp, etc. At the same time I was dating the daughter of a corrections officer (I met the guy once or twice). I remember thinking at the time that the only one of the three who obviously belonged in a cage was the CO (though I'm not defending highjacking or pimping).

Thanks for the first-hand perspective.

Posted by Shinyk | December 12, 2007 1:58 PM