Chris Hedges sues Barack Obama over legality of the NDAA

I wrote before that one of the consequences of the National Defense Authorization Act that was passed quickly and with little or no debate during the Christmas holiday season was the gutting of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that sought to prevent the use of the military in law enforcement activities within the country.

Now Chris Hedges, former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, has challenged in court the legality of the Authorization for Use of Military Force as embedded in the latest version of the NDAA. Hedges explains why he took that action, drawing upon his past experiences as a war correspondent in many countries in which the military was used against their own people in order to suppress dissent and challenges to the government.

I spent many years in countries where the military had the power to arrest and detain citizens without charge. I have been in some of these jails. I have friends and colleagues who have “disappeared” into military gulags. I know the consequences of granting sweeping and unrestricted policing power to the armed forces of any nation. And while my battle may be quixotic, it is one that has to be fought if we are to have any hope of pulling this country back from corporate fascism.
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Once a group is deemed to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or an element of the Uighur independence movement, the military can under this bill pick up a U.S. citizen who supported charities associated with the group or unwittingly sent money or medical supplies to front groups. We have already seen the persecution and closure of Islamic charity organizations in the United States that supported the Palestinians. Now the members of these organizations can be treated like card-carrying “terrorists” and sent to Guantanamo.

But I suspect the real purpose of this bill is to thwart internal, domestic movements that threaten the corporate state. [My emphasis-MS] The definition of a terrorist is already so amorphous under the Patriot Act that there are probably a few million Americans who qualify to be investigated if not locked up. Consider the arcane criteria that can make you a suspect in our new military-corporate state. The Department of Justice considers you worth investigating if you are missing a few fingers, if you have weatherproof ammunition, if you own guns or if you have hoarded more than seven days of food in your house. Adding a few of the obstructionist tactics of the Occupy movement to this list would be a seamless process. On the whim of the military, a suspected “terrorist” who also happens to be a U.S. citizen can suffer extraordinary rendition—being kidnapped and then left to rot in one of our black sites “until the end of hostilities.” Since this is an endless war that will be a very long stay.

While I doubt that Hedges will win his suit since the courts have given the government wide leeway to act under the bogus ‘war on terror’, it is a good article, worth reading in full.