Fascism is bipartisan in America

The fiscal year 2012 NDAA included provisions that appeared to both codify and expand a power the executive branch had previously claimed to possess — namely, the power to hold individuals, including U.S. citizens, in military detention indefinitely — based on the Authorization to Use Military Force passed by Congress three days after 9/11.

The New York Times warned that the bill could “give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial.” Not surprisingly, Obama’s decision generated enormous outcry across the political spectrum, from Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, on the right to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., on the left.

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In theory, the NDAA’s provisions only apply to someone involved with the 9/11 attacks or who “substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.”

But now, incredibly enough, a bipartisan group of six lawmakers, led by Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Tim Kaine, D-Va., is proposing a new AUMF that would greatly expand who the president can place in indefinite military detention, all in the name of restricting presidential power. If the Corker-Kaine bill becomes law as currently written, any president, including Donald Trump, could plausibly claim extraordinarily broad power to order the military to imprison any U.S. citizen, captured in America or not, and hold them without charges essentially forever.

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[T]hanks to a combination of sloppy drafting and clear reluctance to take the executive branch head-on, Corker and Kaine’s proposed AUMF could [hand] genuinely tyrannical powers over to the president. Christopher Anders of the ACLU characterizes the bill as “a legislative dumpster fire.”

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It was bad enough with the 2001 AUMF, when U.S. citizens could be imprisoned forever if they had some connection to 9/11. The NDAA made it worse by expanding this to any connection to Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and “associated forces.” But the Corker-Kaine AUMF would give the president the power to seize anyone on earth, including Americans, just by sending a piece of paper to Congress asserting that a person or organization is associated with an already-named terrorist group. And like the 2001 AUMF and the NDAA before it, the Corker-Kaine AUMF does not prohibit the executive branch from using the military to apprehend and detain Americans in the U.S. itself.

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Kaine’s office protests that the new AUMF would encourage congressional debate about the president’s detention authorities. But it’s difficult to imagine this happening in any significant way, given the fact that it’s taken Congress 17 years to get around even to considering the problems with the 2001 AUMF.

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Understanding the terrible potential consequences of this bill requires a close look at the relevant history and law.

  Jon Schwarz @ The Intercept

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