Open Threads

Great piece by Conor Friedersdorf about the kind of legal work the McCarthyites at Keep America Safe are labeling treason:

Orin Kerr, a law professor who blogs at The Volokh Conspiracy, has published a devastating take-down of Mr. McCarthy’s argument. It is worth reading in full. I’ll excerpt just one sentence: “McCarthy strangely overlooks the basic fact that much of the litigation for the Guantanamo detainees concerns whether they are in fact the enemy.” Even as an abstract argument, Professor Kerr’s point is persuasive, as are all parts of his rebuttal. But the wrongheadedness of the Cheney/Kristol/Thiessen/McCarthy view can be fully appreciated only by looking at how it played out in a particular case.

Thus Mr. al-Rabiah. It isn’t just that he was an innocent man thrown into Gitmo, or that he was held even after a CIA analyst concluded that he was innocent, or that National Security Council Staffers were aware of his innocence and actively trying to bring about a review of his detention — Mr. al-Rabiah’s case is apt because after the CIA’s 2002 determination of his innocence, he spent another seven years wrongly imprisoned, regaining his freedom and seeing his children only after retaining the help of American attorneys.

Ms. Cheney, Mr. Kristol, Mr. Thiessen and Mr. McCarthy assert that American lawyers who represent Guantanamo Bay detainees are helping the enemy in a time of war. Here is a case, however, where the Guantanamo Bay detainee was innocent, languished for years in custody without a lawyer despite official knowledge of his innocence, and ultimately achieved his freedom with legal help. Ms. Cheney, Mr. Kristol, Mr. Thiessen and Mr. McCarthy have no answer for people like Mr. al Rabiah and his attorneys — their poorly reasoned McCarthyite rhetoric is bankrupt because they are unable or unwilling to acknowledge the distinction between being accused of being an enemy of America in war time, and actually being an enemy of America.

It is because of people like Ms. Cheney, Mr. Kristol, Mr. Thiessen and Mr. McCarthy — and very particularly because of David Addington and Dick Cheney — that innocent Mr. al-Rabiah lost eight years of freedom when he should have been released much sooner. It would be one thing if these folks were regretful about the imprisonment of innocents, apologetically explaining them away as an inevitable consequence of the fog of war. But they never express regret, even about particular past cases that we’re better able to judge now that the fog has cleared. Nor is the absence of regret a sign that they are ambivalent about releasing wrongly imprisoned innocents. In maligning Gitmo lawyers, they actively attack all the attorneys who successfully proved that detainees were wrongly held!

The simple answer is that Cheney, Kristol, Thiessen, McCarthy, and the Malkinite fringe are equal parts afraid and evil.

They Hate Us For Our… Freedom?Post + Comments (281)