I wonder what it would be like to live in a country that abides by the rule of law. The Nation:

When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, [Col. Morris] Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes–the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department. “[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes’s] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.'”

It read the first portion of this article earlier today. Reading the paragraphs above made me disgusted by the state of the rule of law in America. It simply no longer exists and any evidence to the contrary is more likely an untouched vestige that clings to existence because no one in the Bush administration has gotten around to tearing it down than any signifier of our nation’s commitment to the principles that have defined our country for over 230 years.

Then I read the remainder of the article and realized how much worse what our government is doing in Guantanamo is, how far this goes beyond show trials reminiscent of what Stalin wanted to do in Nuremberg.

The terrible irony is that even if acquittals were possible, the government has declared that it can continue to detain anyone deemed an “enemy combatant” for the duration of hostilities–no matter the outcome of a trial. And most of the 275 men held at Guantánamo are classified as “enemy combatants” while the hostilities in the “war on terror” could be never-ending.

Says ACLU staff attorney Ben Wizner, “The trial doesn’t make a difference. They can hold you there forever until they decide to let you out.” The one person to be released from Guantánamo through the judicial process, Australian David Hicks, pleaded guilty. As Wizner wrote in the Los Angeles Times in April 2007, “In an ordinary justice system, the accused must be acquitted to be released. In Guantánamo, the accused must plead guilty to be released.”

This is solely about proving the Republican Party and the Bush administration right. Nothing that is done in the name of national security is about being right or diminishing future threats. Nothing that has the trappings of the rule of law exists with the autonomy necessary to validate the process as a symbol of our judiciousness. This presidency and the outlets it has provided for the anti-Constitution Republican Party to take hold are a blight on our country. I don’t even know how to adjudicate the chances for our country to survive as we know it when it has already been changed to such a profound degree.

Yesterday I had a conversation with two progressive activists. In talking with my work around stopping retroactive immunity, they remarked that it was great that I had such passion for this issue and had found outlets – through the Dodd campaign and CREDO Action – to work against warrantless wiretapping. While I agreed that I was very lucky to find platforms that give me opportunities to organize on an issue I care deeply about, how profoundly depressing is that I, as a millenial American activists, have to work full time to defend the Constitution? To stand up for the rule of law? To remind our elected officials that it is their duty to maintain a system of checks and balances established by our Founders? I think I’d be much happier living in a country where the pillars of civil justice were not being deliberately removed by the ruling party than working passionately to stop them from succeeding.