Unlawful combatants

The International Herald Tribune recently featured this article quoting Martin Scheinin, the United Nations' expert on protecting human rights in the fight against terrorism, on the Military Commissions Act President Bush signed into law earlier this month: "One of the most serious aspects of this legislation is the power of the president to declare anyone, including U.S. citizens, without charge as an 'unlawful enemy combatant' - a term unknown in international humanitarian law."

Think about what this means if you haven't already. You could be arrested and detained indefinitely WITHOUT CHARGE for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Assuming that you were lucky enough to be tried rather than imprisoned for years and tortured for information, you would be subject to a military trial, not a civilian court of law, and would not have the right to see classified evidence that could exonerate you. And that's if you're a US citizen. If you're merely a legal permanent resident, you don't even have the right to challenge the legality of your detention.

Although we are fighting a "war on terror" with no foreseeable end, we have decided that the soldiers on the other side do not deserve to be treated like prisoners of war, subject to those pesky Geneva Conventions that preclude coercive interrogation. A case certainly could be (and has been) made that individuals failing to respect "the laws and customs of war," whatever those may be, are not subject to said Conventions. But without a fair trial, how can we even justly determine whether or not a particular person has failed to respect those laws and customs?

How does denying Constitutional rights to US citizens and legal residents protect our freedom? Clearly the terrorists are winning. What is terrorism, after all, but using illegal acts to intimidate other people into acting against their own best interests?