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All too often, the world is not what we think it is. Only recently, David Leonhardt of the New York Times reported that (and yes, be shocked!) never have more immigrants arrived in this country than in the first three years of the Biden administration. We're talking about an average of 2.4 million of them annually! And for all of Donald Trump's endless yakking on the subject, if Leonhardt is right, in his first chaotic administration he deported "only" (and that should definitely be in quotes) about 300,000 immigrants a year, which, as it turns out, was 100,000 less than Barack Obama deported annually.
My own grandfather arrived here in another era of immigrant waves back in the 1890s, a period that, as Leonhardt points out, also sparked a fierce backlash in the 1920s, leaving tight restrictions on immigrants that remained in place for decades. From its beginning (if you leave aside Native Americans), this country was, of course, always a land of immigrants. Today, however, those immigrants are about to face an America that might, not so very long ago, have been inconceivable. And I mean, of course, Donald Trump's version of this country, one that, as TomDispatch regular Karen Greenberg, author of Subtle Tools: The Dismantling of American Democracy from the War on Terror to Donald Trump, makes all too clear today, would have been largely unimaginable before the attacks of September 11, 2001.
For years, Greenberg has covered for TomDispatch the way, from the creation of that offshore prison of injustice at Guanta'namo Bay, Cuba, to targeted drone attacks globally, to the institutionalizing of torture, to new versions of mass surveillance, this country has used the 9/11 moment to transform our system of governing in deeply disturbing ways that put ever more singular power in the hands of the president. Now, we're preparing for a deeply disturbing figure to once again take over this deeply disturbed country of ours and potentially turn significant parts of it into -- thought about a certain way, at least -- an onshore set of Guanta'namos for immigrants. And that, sadly enough, will, as Greenberg points out in her usual vivid fashion today, just be part of the further 9/11-ing of the United States. Tom
Once Upon a Time, a Nation of Laws
From the Global War on Terror to Donald Trump's Second Term
Post-election America finds itself in a panic. Voices from across a wide political spectrum warn that the country stands on the precipice of a potentially unprecedented and chaotic disregard for the laws, norms, and policies upon which its stability and security have traditionally relied. Some fear that the "new" president, Donald Trump, is likely to declare a national emergency and invoke the Insurrection Act, unleashing the U.S. military for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and for "retribution against" the "enemy from within" as well as "radical left lunatics." As the New Republic's editor Michael Tomasky notes, writing about the nomination of Kash Patel for the post of director of the FBI, "We're entering a world where the rule of law is turned inside out."
The blame game for such doomsday fears ranges far and wide. Many pinpoint the Supreme Court's 2023 decision to grant immunity to presidents for their core official acts, essentially removing any restraints on Trump's agenda of retribution and revenge. Some, like Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal, see loopholes in the law as the basis for their concern about the future and are urging Congress to pass legislation that will place additional constraints on the deployment of the military on American soil. Others argue that the Constitution itself is the problem. In his new book, No Democracy Lasts Forever: How the Constitution Threatens the United States, Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky even suggests that it may be time for a new constitution.
But those involved in the fear and blame game might do well to take a step back and reflect for a moment on how we got here. Today's crisis has been evolving for so many years now. In fact, much (though admittedly, not all) of what we're witnessing today might simply be considered an escalation of the dire turn that this country took after the attacks of September 11, 2001, nearly a quarter of a century ago.
"Quaint" and "Obsolete"
It was January 2002 when White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales used the two words "quaint and obsolete," whose echoes remain eerily with us to this very day (and seemingly beyond). The occasion was a debate taking place at the highest levels of the administration of President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. By then, this country had invaded Afghanistan and authorized the opening of a new detention center at Guanta'namo Bay, Cuba, ominously offshore of American justice, for captives of what already was being called the Global War on Terror. Two weeks after the first prisoners arrived at that prison camp on January 11th, administration officials were already wondering which, if any, laws should apply when it came to the treatment of such prisoners.
Gonzales, who was to become the attorney general in Bush's second term, laid out the options for the president. At issue was whether the Geneva Conventions -- a set of treaties established in the wake of the atrocities of the Second World War -- applied to the United States in its treatment of any prisoners from its war on terror.
In a memo to President Bush, Gonzales noted that Department of Justice lawyers had already concluded, when it came to al-Qaeda and Taliban (Afghan insurgents in 2001, now in charge of the country) captives, the answer was no. Gonzales agreed, stating that "the war against terrorism is a new kind of war." The laws of war, he told the president, were "obsolete" in the current context and the laws and norms requiring humane treatment for enemy prisoners had been "render[ed] quaint," given this new kind of war. Accordingly, the Bush administration took the position that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the prisoners they had already captured. As a result, in the years to come, the indefinite and arbitrary detention of about 780 men would be institutionalized and disregard for the law would become a regular, if secret, part of the war on terror -- an approach that would lead to the practice of torture at what came to be known as CIA "black sites" globally.
Nor would that be the only situation in which old laws were deemed outdated on national security grounds.
The Wider Framework
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