Go Team America

The American system has been stressed in the last six years. From outside attacks, inside hysteria, high-level obfuscation and bullying, and low-level panic, the country has never been so superficially perturbed and concurrently stable and calm. While it is fair to decry the perversions of American traditions (liberty, due process, openness, etc.), what we have seen in this administration ought to give heart to all those with an interest in the success of the American project.

For example, in the UK, the case of Lofti Raissi - an Algerian national detained at the request of the US on suspicion of involvement in training the September 11 pilots - resulted in his release from high security detention after five months, after the US authorities consistently failed to provide evidence to justify his extradition. This case, like other that have arisen elsewhere, highlights concerns as to how it would have unfolded had extradition been requested after the entry into force of the new US-UK extradition treaty removing the evidentiary requirement, and the potential impact on similar cases in the future. The prospect of Raissi having been extradited despite the lack of evidence against him, and ranking among the many detained without trial by the US, underscores the importance of safeguarding judicial protections at the extradition stage.

This is from page 135 of The War on Terror and the Framework of International Law by Helen Duffy. While the idea that other states have to fear extraditing people to our country for fear of unfair trials (rather than the traditional excuse of facing the death penalty) cannot be comforting to Americans, we should take heart that in spite of this, our system is holding together. Even if you think that our conduct of the WAR ON TERROR is against all the founding principals of our country, the country still stands and the system that allowed these changes to happen can just as easily swing the country back to strict respect for human dignity, rights and life. Unless you think that the extra-judicial treatment of detainees is itself the complete failure of the American experiment, we are still progressing and this is something to be weathered like the Teapot Dome Scandal or the Saturday Night Massacre.

Having our country's surface disrupted while the water below is calm is preferable to a system in which the army refuses the command of the President when it disagrees with his political choices or one in which the US Attorneys strike when their work is being manipulated. CIA agents were torturing suspects, refused to continue when it seemed that their action was against the law and then resumed the program under the aegis of enhanced interrogations when those were given a legal foundation in the Office of Legal Counsel. We still have a government of laws, not of men. This leads us to let our mistakes go longer than they would with a hero to correct them, but it also gives us protection from the worst of chaos. The only way for the great experiment to truly fail would be for the citizens to demand a government of men in lieu of the law. This is what the David Addington wing of the executive branch seems to desire but the 2006 elections and Bush's poll numbers say that the tide is sweeping back out.