Don't You Know There's A War On?

Jeffrey Imm

I am sending U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy a framed copy of a photograph of the remains of the World Trade Center West building after the 9/11 attacks with a note "Don't You Know There's A War On?".

The Real Headline: "U.S. Supreme Court Doesn't Think We Are At War with Jihad"

On June 12, 2008, the majority on the Supreme Court ruled in "Boumediene v. Bush," that habeas corpus rights guaranteed to American citizens under the Constitution will be extended to foreign Jihadist enemy combatants currently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority of the Supreme Court stating that "[i]t is true that before today the Court has never held that noncitizens detained by our Government in territory over which another country maintains de jure sovereignty have any rights under our Constitution." (Justice Kennedy Majority Opinion, page 41). . Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the majority opinion of the Court, in which Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, with Justice Souter providing a concurring opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia both filed dissenting opinions; the other two dissenting judges were Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

In this decision, the Supreme Court majority tells the American people to ignore that, in no time in American history have habeas corpus rights been granted to any foreign combatants, to ignore that during WWII the Supreme Court ruled that unlawful combatant saboteurs could be denied habeas corpus, to ignore that during the Civil War that habeas corpus was suspended for American citizens, to ignore that the Supreme Court ruling seeks to give foreign enemy combatants more rights than illegal aliens. Supreme Court Justice Kennedy ignores the reality that the U.S. Constitution was for American citizens, not foreign enemy combatants during wartime, by arrogantly demanding that "[t]he laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times."(Justice Kennedy Majority Opinion, page 70).

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Perhaps Justice Kennedy might actually read the U.S. Constitution. It states that "We the People of the United States...secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." Where does that call for extending such rights of American citizens to enemy foreign combatants during war? Where does Article I, Section. 9. Clause 2 of the Constitution say enemy combatant Jihadists at Guantanamo Bay have a "Get Out of Jail Free" pass from the Constitutional clause that allows the government to suspend habeas corpus when "the public Safety may require it"?

The Supreme Court ruling will allow foreign enemy combatants the right to appeal their detention to U.S. civilian courts, and perhaps obtain their release back to attack America again. While the existing military trials are to continue, if such enemy combatants are convicted, analysts have stated that they will also be to appeal their convictions to civilian courts as well. Some 270 enemy combatants are currently held at Guantanamo Bay. As dissenting Justice Scalia stated in his dissenting opinion, "[a]t least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantanamo Bay have returned to the battlefield...These, mind you, were detainees whom the military had concluded were not enemy combatants." (Justice Scalia Dissenting Opinion, pp.3,4).

Supreme Court Justice Kennedy writes what may be the epithet for an America in mass denial as to the global threat of Jihad when he states regarding the enemy combatants: "none is a citizen of a nation now at war with the United States." Over seven years after the 9/11 attacks, how could there be any American citizen that completely uninformed about the world and the transnational Jihadist threat? Justice Kennedy also goes on to whine that the enemy combatants have been held in "the duration of a conflict that, if measured from September 11, 2001, to the present, is already among the longest wars in American history." (Justice Kennedy Majority Opinion, page 41). His written contradiction is staggering - on the one hand he claims that the enemy combatants are not a "citizen of a nation now at war" but on the other hand that the "conflict" under which they are being held is "among the longest wars in American history." Of course, Justice Kennedy has no idea who or what America is fighting. What is he doing holding a high office in the U.S. government, over 7 years after 9/11?


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