Concerning Rights

The United States Constitution does not grant the citizens of the United States a single right. The Constitution grants nary a human soul a single right. To suggest that "granting" Constitutional rights to terrorists is absurd is, in and of itself, a prime example of absurdity. It is not for the Constitution, nor the government of the United States, nor the People of the United States to grant anyone their rights, for it is, by the very language of the Founders themselves, God who grants to us our rights, and no document or government has the power to take them away. Indeed, the Constitution does not grant rights; it merely protects them. Even if you will not accept the notion of rights as God given, you cannot escape the fact that the Constitution is worded specifically to prevent the government from abridging rights it acknowledges every human being already has.

Amendment I, U.S. Constitution: Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II, U.S. Constitution: ... [T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment IV, U.S. Constitution: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...

Amendment VI, U.S. Constitution: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed ... and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

In every case in which the Bill of Rights enumerates a right enjoyed by the People, it does not thereby grant that right, it merely prohibits Congress from passing laws to abridge it. Nowhere does it suggest that these are rights to be enjoyed only by U.S. citizens. Nowhere does it suggest that criminals who commit a certain magnitude of atrocious crime are not protected by these prohibitions. All human beings have these rights, and the Constitution prohibits the government from violating them.

Terrorists are no more than atrocious criminals. They attack illegitimate, soft targets in order to inculcate fear among the populace. They murder people and destroy property. Does the magnitude of or motive behind that attack affect the government's capacity to ignore the Constitution when it says, 'In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial...?' For example, was Timothy McVeigh locked away in a military base some hundreds of miles from U.S. soil? Was Timothy McVeigh tried by military tribunals for fear that the civilian courts could not give him an objective trial or that civilian judges and juries could not be trusted with classified information? Was Timothy McVeigh held for years without a trial? No. McVeigh committed the single most deadly act of terrorism on United States soil up until the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York, yet all of his rights as a human being were protected by the United States Constitution and respected by the United States government. If Timothy McVeigh had claimed religious motive for his attack on the federal building in Oklahoma City, would that have changed his conviction or the protection of his rights?

Why, then, should we ignore human rights violations being committed by our own government? Even if you support the War on Terror as I do, there is no reason to treat our prisoners of war as anything less than human beings. If we allow ourselves to think of them and to treat them as if they were less than human, then we have become just like them. Once they are no longer of intelligence value, if there is insufficient evidence to hold them accountable for what they did, then they should be released. If we retain them and charge them with a crime, we should then presume them innocent until proven guilty just as any we would any other criminal, because if we do not, then they cannot have a fair trial. If we cannot give them a fair trial, then how can we maintain our vicegrip hold on our moral high ground? If we cannot extract information from them without convincing them that they are about to die, how can we claim that we do not torture our prisoners?

Nothing is worth becoming that which we seek to destroy.