Chris Hedges: The Final Battle!

Over the past year I and other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg have pressed a lawsuit in the federal courts to nullify Section 1021(b)(2) of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This egregious section, which permits the government to use the military to detain US citizens, strip them of due process, and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers, could have been easily fixed by Congress. The Senate and House had the opportunity this month to include in the 2013 version of the NDAA an unequivocal statement that all US citizens would be exempt from 1021(b)(2), leaving the section to apply only to foreigners, but restoring due process for citizens was something the Republicans and the Democrats, along with the White House, refused to do. The fate of our most basic and important rights, ones enshrined in the Bill of Rights as well as the Fourth and Fifth amendments of the Constitution, will be decided in the next few months in the courts. If the courts fail us, a gulag state will be cemented into place. Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Mike Lee, R-Ariz., however, removed the amendment from the bill last week. "I was saddened and disappointed that we could not take a step forward to ensure at the very least, American citizens and legal residents could not be held in detention without charge or trial," Feinstein said in a statement issued by her office. "To me, that was a no-brainer." The House approved the $633 billion NDAA in the House, including Rep Morgan Griffith, R-Va., cited Congress' refusal to guarantee due process and trial by jury to all citizens as his reason for voting against the bill. He wrote in a statement after the vote that "American citizens may fear being arrested and indefinitely detained by the military without knowing what they have done wrong." The Feinstein Lee amendment was woefully adequate. It was probably proposed mainly for its public relations value, but nonetheless it resisted the concerted assault on our rights, and sought to calm nervous voters objecting to the destruction of the rule of law.