The following are excerpts from Richard Klingler’s testimony on June 9, 2009 before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution.
The debate over indefinite detention often wrongly focuses on Guantanamo Bay. No matter how Guantanamo detainees are handled, the Obama Administration will continue, directly or indirectly, to detain hundreds if not thousands of enemy combatants indefinitely in many places for many years to come.
The extent of the current Administration’s continued use of war powers against terrorist organizations is hard to overstate. The Obama Administration has pursued in nearly every aspect the prior Administration’s conduct of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and against terrorist networks globally. As a formal matter, this Administration has embraced nearly all the components of wartime and related Executive powers asserted by its predecessor and then subject to controversy.
The principal purpose of detention is to keep those who would harm U.S. citizens and troops from returning to the fight. In this sense, wartime detention of combatants is always “indefinite” or “prolonged” until conflict ceases. A nation at war does not know when the conflict will end or, at times, whether it will even prevail.
If standards for detention are increased, or if detention were abandoned or restricted, at least three consequences would follow:
First, detention would be outsourced. U.S. officials would rely on foreign allies to capture, interrogate and detain enemy combatants, and recent reporting shows that this is already occurring. Detainees are less likely to be captured, more likely to be released prematurely, and less likely to be treated well.
Second, mistaken release of detainees would occur more frequently. Even under the current standard, many detainees released by the U.S. have gone on to becomeal Qaeda and Taliban leaders, a suicide bomber, and combatants against our troops. This Administration’s Defense Department recently detailed the significant breadth of this problem. Even so, none of the detainees released from Guantanamo has attacked citizens in the United States — yet.
Third, detention would be sidestepped. Enemy combatants may be left in the field because criminal standards of proof have not been satisfied, placing our troops and citizens at risk. This was the principal flaw in ourpre-9/11 counterterrorism policy. Or, the military may choose instead to use the force of arms against the combatant when capture may prove pointless or risky.
Some suggest that we can avoid these tough choices by relying exclusively on criminal proceedings. But just because we can prosecute some terrorists in federal court does not mean that we can prosecute all who would attack our troops and citizens.
We should resist the return to pre-9/11 practice that exclusive reliance on criminal proceedings would reflect. We do not want to leave terrorists in the field, or send them there, simply because U.S. forces have not gathered evidence of past wrongdoing, admissible in court and provable “beyond a reasonable doubt.” We want them off the battlefield sooner, and to stay off longer. As the President says, we need “tools … to allow us to prevent attacks.”
The most important national security benefit of detaining enemy combatants is simple but essential: to ensure that those detained do not directly or indirectly attack our troops or citizens, here or abroad, or the troops and citizens of our allies. The continued availability of detention also ensures that our military and intelligence forces can and will continue to seek to detain additional combatants.
There is immense moral value in ensuring that enemy combatants, through continued detention, do not kill or injure our troops or citizens, or those of our allies. Perhaps our greatest moral obligation, apart from protecting the nation’s citizens, is to the troops we ask to defend us, and to their families. Ongoing detention in large measure seeks to, and succeeds in, satisfying that obligation.
3 responses so far
1 sinz54 // Jun 15, 2009 at 7:34 am
Lost in all these debates about treatment of detainees, is what the main goal was–and should still be.
The purpose of putting the detainees in detention was not to hold them for eventual punishment. It was just to take them out of circulation, so they couldn’t commit terrorist acts anymore. In that sense, what we were doing resembled a POW camp, except that the prisoners were not part of a recognized foreign army.
I once asked some liberals how they would feel if Osama bin Laden, once caught, got himself a smart lawyer who got him acquitted on grounds of tainted evidence. They said they would have no problem with that.
I said that in that case, the CIA should have Osama bin Laden assassinated the moment he walks outside that courtroom.
That, in a nutshell, is what separates the Left from the Right on matters of internal security: We right-wingers take it seriously. It’s a game we play to win.
2 jfrankparnell // Jun 15, 2009 at 5:44 pm
I’m kind of disappointed in this essay, not because of what it says but because of what it does not say. I believe it would be far more effective if it were to build upon the author’s previous essay and begin to redefine (actually, undefine) a few more of the outdated concepts the Left immaturely clings to. A real effort to make such whimsical ideas as “due process” and “evidence” less acceptable means greater acceptance for our ideas, and therefore greater safety for citizens, and our troops. Throw in a stiff-arm to the ludicrous idea of “blowback” (which is unmeasurable anyway) and there’s no reason we can’t, say, double the population of detainees who may commit future crimes. “Let a Thousand Gitmos Bloom!”
3 jfrankparnell // Jun 15, 2009 at 6:01 pm
Update: I’ve been advised that the phrase “Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom” referenced in my previous post was in fact not coined by Ronald Reagan (Peace Be Upon Him) as I had been led to believe, but by the noted Leftist Foreigner Mao Zedong. My apologies.
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