|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
POST CONSTITUTIONAL AMERICA |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sam Smith, The Progressive Review
(No verified email address) |
30 Aug 2001
|
|
THE LATEST INDICATION that America is, in important ways, no longer a functioning constitutional democracy, has been provided to us by the DC police department which, in a move as hysterical as it is unconstitutional, has declared that a 70-square block area of downtown Washington will be under de facto martial law during the meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. |
So routine has this sort of thing become that you don't even need a declaration from a mayor, governor, or president anymore. Any police chief will do. In this case, Chief Charles Ramsey's unilateral assumption of dictatorial powers over downtown Washington includes the building a nine foot wall, restricting the right of travel to those of whom the police approve, the removal of post office and newspaper boxes, and a ban on mail and express deliveries.
And for what reason? "Our motives are to ensure that business owners' business property and persons are protected," said MPD communications director Kevin Morison.
Until recently, it was a given in America that one did not suspend the Constitution just to protect plate glass windows. In fact, in every one of the anti-globalist demonstrations so far, it has been the police, rather than demonstrators, who have been the major cause of violence. This was true in Washington the last time when the police engaged in numerous illegal arrests, spying, and peremptory seizures but have yet to prosecute successfully any significant number of actual vandals. If things are truly as dangerous as Ramsey contends, then the court records thus irrefutably prove his incompetence. And there is no reason for citizens to suspend their rights just because their police chief doesn't know how to catch a rock thrower.
The only paper in the city to take this business seriously is the weekly, Common Denominator, which noted, "D.C. authorities have been criticized for their actions related to the protests, including the alleged 'herding' and subsequent arrest of more than 1,000 peaceful protesters in April 2000." For much of the rest of Washington's media, well, the Constitution is, like you know, just so retro.
For history's sake, however, it is worth noting that nowhere in the Constitution is the president - let alone a police chief - given the power to invoke martial law. Regardless of this, there is broad statutory power for presidential action to suppress an insurrection or rebellion. And during the Civil War, the Supreme Court did say that the president could invoke martial law in cases of an armed rebellion:
"Whether the President in fulfilling his duties, as Commander-in-chief, in suppressing an insurrection, has met with such armed hostile resistance, and a civil war of such alarming proportions as will compel him to accord to them the character of belligerents, is a question to be decided by him, and this Court must be governed by the decisions and acts of the political department of the government to which this power was entrusted. He must determine what degree of force the crisis demands."
Wrote constitutional scholar Clinton Rossiter:
"What the Supreme Court held was simply this: that the president of the United States has the constitutional power, under such circumstances as he shall deem imperative, to brand as belligerents the inhabitants of any area in general insurrection. In other words, he has an almost unrestrained power to act toward insurrectionary citizens as if they were enemies of the United States, and thus place them outside the protection of the constitution. This, it seems hardly necessary to state, is dictatorial power in the extreme. The Constitution can be suspended after all - by any President of the United States who ascertains and proclaims a widespread territorial revolt."
This is, remember, the Supreme Court - and not the Constitution speaking - and, of course, we have not seen a widespread territorial revolt since the 1860s. But these quotations illustrate the willingness of those in the American elite to move towards dictatorship whenever it seems desirable.
Writing a 1999 fictional memo to the president on the subject, Walter Olsen of the Gun Owners of America noted that:
"A military analyst of the 1920s, Major Cassius Dowell, addressed the nature of martial law in his work, 'Military Aid to the Civil Power.' First, he observes that the term is a misnomer - the true definition is where 'the State or National government, through its military forces, controls the civil population without authority of written law, as necessity may require.' Major Dowell states that martial law should be distinguished from circumstances where the military is employed under statute; for in the latter circumstances the military 'is not called out to supersede civil authority but to maintain or restore it.' He adds that martial law: 'is not part of the Constitution, but is rather a power to preserve the Constitution when constitutional methods prove inadequate to that end. It is the law of necessity. Manifestly it cannot be instituted at the caprice of an executive or a military commander. It cannot, strictly speaking, be created by declaration. As has been said by good authority, it proclaims itself. A declaration of martial law is an announcement of fact rather than the creation of that fact.'"
In a July 1983 series in the San Francisco Examiner, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Knut Royce reported that a presidential directive had been drafted by a few Carter administration personnel in 1979 to allow the military to take control of the government for 90 days in the event of an emergency. A caveat on page one of the directive said, "Keeping the government functioning after a nuclear war is a secret, costly project that detractors claim jeopardizes US traditions and saves a privileged few." In a 1981 NSC directive, Frank Carlucci wrote: "Normally a state of martial law will be proclaimed by the President. However, in the absence of such action by the President, a senior military commander may impose martial law in an area of his command where there had been a complete breakdown in the exercise of government functions by local civilian authorities."
The issue arose again during the Iran-Contra affair, but even in the wake of all the copy on that scandal, the public got little sense of how far some America's soldiers of fortune were willing to go to achieve their ends. When the Iran-Contra hearings came close to the matter, chair Senator Inouye backed swiftly away. Here is an excerpt from those hearings. Oliver North is at the witness table:
REP BROOKS: Colonel North, in your work at the NSC, were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?
ATTORNEY BRENDAN SULLIVAN: Mr. Chairman?
SEN INOUYE: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch on that.
REP BROOKS: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was the area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.
SEN INOUYE; May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.
With few exceptions, the media ignored what well could be the most startling revelation to have come out of the Iran/Contra affair, namely that high officials of the US government were planning a possible military/civilian coup. First among the exceptions was the Miami Herald, which on July 5, 1987, ran the story to which Jack Brooks referred. The article, by Alfonzo Chardy, revealed Oliver North's involvement in plans for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to take over federal, state and local functions during an ill-defined national emergency. According to Chardy, the plan called for 'suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law.' The proposal appears to have forgotten that Congress, legislatures and the judiciary even existed.
In a November 18, 1991 story, the New York Times elaborated: "Acting outside the Constitution in the early 1980s, a secret federal agency established a line of succession to the presidency to assure continued government in the event of a devastating nuclear attack, current and former United States officials said today. The program was called "Continuity of Government." In the words of a report by the Fund for Constitutional Government, "succession or succession-by-designation would be implemented by unknown and perhaps unelected persons who would pick three potential successor presidents in advance of an emergency. These potential successors to the Oval Office may not be elected, and they are not confirmed by Congress." According to CNN, the list eventually grew to 17 names and included Howard Baker, Richard Helms, Jeanne Kirkpatrick James Schlesinger, Richard Thornberg, Edwin Meese, Tip O'Neil, and Richard Cheney.
So Chief Ramsey has corrupt precedent if not the Constitution to back him up. And he operates in an atmosphere of public indifference to individual rights, constitutional protection, and democratic mandates of the sort that Judge Learned Hand was probably thinking about when he said, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there is no constitution, no law, no court that can save it."
http://prorev.com/mil.htm |
See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
|
|
