Better Never than Late

23 November 2005



US Finally Charges Padilla

Jose Padilla is probably something of a non-entity. Then again, so was Lee Harvey Oswald. Mr. Padilla is alleged to have plotted to attack the US with radiological weapons and to blow up apartment buildings using natural gas they use for heat. He should have been arrested, charged and tried. Instead, the Bush administration labeled him an “enemy combatant” and denied him access to the courts for three years – a lousy way to treat a US citizen, even a non-entity. Yesterday, he finally got an indictment and due process began.

The Bush administration has done many terrible things to the liberties fought for by generations of Americans. It is difficult to imagine what Thomas Jefferson would say if a federal employee demanded he remove his shoes before being allowed to travel. And Ben Franklin would most assuredly remind the 43rd president that those who sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. However, since the twin towers fell, it is difficult to imagine a worse chapter in human rights that Mr. Padilla’s case.

In an effort to prove themselves macho protectors of the Republic, the chicken hawks in the administration held Mr. Padilla as an “enemy combatant,” which by any rational definition would make him a prisoner of war. However, detaining a man at O’Hare airport as he prepared to board a plane isn’t really the act of taking a prisoner on a battlefield. Instead, it is a plain old fashioned, Joe-Friday Dragnet bust by a cop. But defendants in the legal system get lawyers while POWs get the Geneva Conventions. What the White House wanted was guys to pick on so the administration looked tough – Benito Mussolini’s crew did the same.

Of course, Mr. Padilla is not a very sympathetic character. He’s a former gang member who has two terms in prison on his rap sheet. He converted to Islam in 1998 or so, because communism was passé. He trained in Afghanistan as a jihadi, and in general, he’s a lost soul looking for a cause. Lenin would have called him a useful idiot.

So, why the sudden indictment and access to the US legal system with its remaining protections? The Supreme Court was going to rule shortly on the validity of his status as an enemy combatant. Were the White House to lose that case (which was not beyond the realm of possibility), Mr. Padilla might have been freed and the useful (but quite immoral and unconstitutional) status would be gone. Having indicted him, the administration hopes to render the case moot. And Guantanamo remains open for business.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
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