Retired general and former Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark has caused a stir with an interview with MSNBC in which he appeared to call for the establishment of World War II-style internment camps to be revived for “disloyal Americans.” Clark used the infamous American internment camps for Japanese, German, and Italian Americans as a model: “if someone supported Nazi Germany at the expense of the United States, we didn’t say that was freedom of speech, we put him in a camp, they were prisoners of war.”
Clark offered little insight into how he would designate certain people as disloyal for purposes of internment. He simply said “If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”
It is not clear how Clark rationalizes his recognition of a protected right with internment for exercise of that right. He seemed to go further in stating that “We have got to identify the people who are most likely to be radicalized. We’ve got to cut this off at the beginning. I do think on a national policy level we need to look at what self-radicalization means because we are at war with this group of terrorists.” He also seemed to encourage the same measures throughout the West: “not only the United States but our allied nations like Britain, Germany and France are going to have to look at their domestic law procedures.”
Clark’s chilling comments bring back painful memories of the internment camps and the shameful role of the Supreme Court in allowing such internment in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944). The Justices voted 6-3 to allow the internment of these citizens.
As always, in this concurrent, Justice Felix Frankfurter seemed eager to surrender authority of the judiciary:
According to my reading of Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34, it was an offense for Korematsu to be found in Military Area No. 1, the territory wherein he was previously living, except within the bounds of the established Assembly Center of that area. Even though the various orders issued by General DeWitt be deemed a comprehensive code of instructions, their tenor is clear, and not contradictory. They put upon Korematsu the obligation to leave Military Area No. 1, but only by the method prescribed in the instructions, i.e., by reporting to the Assembly Center . . .
The provisions of the Constitution which confer on the Congress and the President powers to enable this country to wage war are as much part of the Constitution as provisions looking to a nation at peace. . . . Therefore, the validity of action under the war power must be judged wholly in the context of war. That action is not to be stigmatized as lawless because like action in times of peace would be lawless. To talk about a military order that expresses an allowable judgment of war needs by those entrusted with the duty of conducting war as “an unconstitutional order” is to suffuse a part of the Constitution with an atmosphere of unconstitutionality. The respective spheres of action of military authorities and of judges are, of course, very different. . . . If a military order such as that under review does not transcend the means appropriate for conducting war, such action by the military is as constitutional as would be any authorized action by the Interstate Commerce Commission within the limits of the constitutional power to regulate commerce. And, being an exercise of the war power explicitly granted by the Constitution for safeguarding the national life by prosecuting war effectively, I find nothing in the Constitution which denies to Congress the power to enforce such a valid military order by making its violation an offense triable in the civil courts. . . . To find that the Constitution does not forbid the military measures now complained of does not carry with it approval of that which Congress and the Executive did. That is their business, not ours.
It was Justice Murphy who correctly called the camps as part of “the ugly abyss of racism,” and an example of “the abhorrent and despicable treatment of minority groups by the dictatorial tyrannies which this nation is now pledged to destroy.”
Clark seems to view this history as worth repeating even though we would be interning people for what he calls the exercise of their rights. The “disloyalty” shown in the exercise of free speech would presumably be the basis for internment since any actual disloyal acts would likely be crimes punishable in their own right. It is an unsettling recognition of how extremists like those in ISIS can radicalize those who fear or hate them. The sad truth is that our greatest wounds as a nation have been self-inflicted. It is the very danger described most famously by Justice Louis Brandeis in Olmstead:
Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.
So, when is Wesley checking himself in to the camp? It is unconstitutional to lock people up for pre-crime and for thought crime. Bettykath is correct that Gitmo is this very concept fully realized. So is Obama’s kill list.
We’ve come a long way baby in what this nation now accepts in the name of “terrorism”. One can observe the govt. whipping up fears of terrorism in the US With this fear, they are able to pass laws and perform heinous crimes with impunity. This must stop.
It is our duty as citizens to protect the rule of law even if we are scared to death. We need to protect everyone’s rights. That will require courage but we must sill do so.
Wesley took an oath to uphold the Constitution. Obviously, he doesn’t take his oath seriously at all. It would seem many of this nation’s “leadership” revile our Constitution and the rule of law. They want power and they are moving to grab more and more of it each day. The more citizens quake in fear, the less justice there will be.
Wesley Clark is 70 or 71, born in 1944. That is not old by today’s standards. Yet he harkins back to the days of 1944. Had he lived in Germany he would have ended up at Auschwitz–because he was a Jew. In America we rounded up the Japanese but not the Germans or even the German American Bund. America was harsh on those Japanese Americans. They were rounded up and imprisoned because of their ethnicity– not because of anything they thought, said or did.
Wesley may be right. We need to round up people of a certain totalitarian thought process and put them in camps. Wesley is a good candidate.
DBQ, It is the schizophrenic history of a flyboy. He uses FDR, the paradigm of liberals, combines it Wesley Clark, a former Dem presidential candidate, and then lays it on “conservatives.” Too much time @ high altitude.
That was clearly unConstitutional, yet most of our conservatives here still think that was right and needed.
What?! Are you a psychic? The Amazing Kreskin ….The Great Carnac or something? You can read our minds and know what we think.
Man….you should get into showbiz or start trading stocks with such fantastic mind bending powers.
http://chexydecimal.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Carnac-the-magnificent-johnny-carson.jpg
While I think the internment of the Japanese Americans was unnecessary and wrong, it clearly was not unConstitutional because of the clause allowing for the suspension of the writ of habus corpus in times of invasion or civil insurrection. This was clearly the case in WWII. The US also did the same to members of the German American Bund and other sympathetic groups, NOT just Japanese.
The Chatanooga case now appears to be more of a mental case looking for an excuse to commit a crime. So the proposed remedy would not help in that case at all.
The more disturbing cases are the ones which allowed for imprisonment for political views the government does not like. There were members of the SWP first who were imprisoned by FDR for their opposition to him and his policies. Then after the war it was expanded to members of the CPUSA for nothing more than promoting their politics. That was clearly unConstitutional, yet most of our conservatives here still think that was right and needed. The Smith Act prosecutions should get more mention than the internment because of the clear violation of the rule of law. This would also unmask the supporters of such things because to this day they still think that way and are unapologetic for throwing people in prison for their views.
“If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”
Disloyal? Define that term. I think it is a pretty broad brush to use to incarcerate people without any due process. What the heck….that stupid Constitution and Bill of Rights is so yesterday….right?
Does being a member of the Tea Party and critical of government as a whole constitute disloyal to the United States?
How about those who think that Global Warming is a steaming pile? Disloyal
Are you disloyal if you refuse to accept the Supreme Court’s decision on homosexual, and soon polygamous marriage?
Quakers? Jews? Muslims? Communists? Socialists? Amish? Republicans? Democrats?
It would depend on who is in charge at the moment as to who could be classified as disloyal. A VERY large brush indeed.
The people who support or don’t oppose these types of tyrannical behaviours never dream that it might be they themselves who can be slapped with that big dripping brush.
What the H#LL is wrong with this country. Trigger warnings. Intolerance. Hypersensitivity. Willingness to destroy other people for the temerity of having a contrary belief. Good is bad. Bad is good. The world is going crazy.
Wesley Clark has been a buffoon as long as I’ve known him. He does have an unfiltered Dem mindset. He just misread who Dems want interred. That would be “sexists, racists, homophobes, etc.”
Bettykath needs to visit some of her brothers in Guantanamo. That MIGHT help her see the stark difference.
Martin Niemöller: “First they came for the Socialists…”
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Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. He spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. Germany, 1937.
Martin Niemöller, a prominent Protestant pastor who opposed the Nazi regime. He spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps. Germany, 1937.
— Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz
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Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
The quotation stems from Niemöller’s lectures during the early postwar period. Different versions of the quotation exist. These can be attributed to the fact that Niemöller spoke extemporaneously and in a number of settings. Much controversy surrounds the content of the poem as it has been printed in varying forms, referring to diverse groups such as Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jews, Trade Unionists, or Communists depending upon the version. Nonetheless his point was that Germans—in particular, he believed, the leaders of the Protestant churches—had been complicit through their silence in the Nazi imprisonment, persecution, and murder of millions of people.
Only in 1963, in a West German television interview, did Niemöller acknowledge and make a statement of regret about his own antisemitism (see Gerlach, 2000, p. 47). Nonetheless, Martin Niemöller was one of the earliest Germans to talk publicly about broader complicity in the Holocaust and guilt for what had happened to the Jews. In his book Über die deutsche Schuld, Not und Hoffnung (published in English as Of Guilt and Hope)—which appeared in January 1946—Niemöller wrote: “Thus, whenever I chance to meet a Jew known to me before, then, as a Christian, I cannot but tell him: ‘Dear Friend, I stand in front of you, but we can not get together, for there is guilt between us. I have sinned and my people has sinned against thy people and against thyself.'”
To think that this man is a retired member of our armed services who ran for president chills the blood. What on earth is our military teaching our soldiers about this country and the rights of its citizens.
We won’t enact gun control but we are going to set up internment camps. OMG
There is already such a camp. It’s called Guantanamo. No charges required, no due process allowed.
“If these people are radicalized and they don’t support the United States and they are disloyal to the United States as a matter of principle, fine. It’s their right and it’s our right and obligation to segregate them from the normal community for the duration of the conflict.”
WTF?! Kind of scary when you think that these sort of “thoughts” bounce around in the head’s of Generals and Politicians. It’s never a good thing to wed the brass with the lawmaker, especially when they are devising ways to ‘make us better or safer’.
Article on The Intercept on Wesley Clark’s remarks
“Wesley Clark Calls for Internment Camps for “Radicalized” Americans””
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/20/chattanooga-wesley-clark-calls-internment-camps-disloyal-americans/
Leave while you still can.
First they came for the Gypsies and I did not say anything because I was not a Gypsy.
Then they came for the Democrats and I did not say anything because I was not a Democrat.
Then they came for the Jews and did not say anything because I was not Jewish.
Then they came for me and there was no one to say anything for me.
But wait Wesley. Clark was not your last name when you were born in Chicago. You had another name and it was Jewish. So when your pogrom is in place and they come for you I will not stand up for you because you have no notion of right, wrong, up, down, sideways or this or that. Go back to Russia and look up your roots. Look up the word Pogrom.
The rest of you readers can Google: Wesley Clark and look him up on wikipedia.
http://youtu.be/eaPwqokBn9M
Context is important, however his advocating for segregation in camps because of ideology is outrageous.
I believe his remarks were in the context of Islamic extremism in the wake of the shootings in Chattanooga, but that doesn’t make them any less disturbing. No? Why not include the context in which Clark made this comment in the article?
There are those who are put on Earth whose itshay don’t stink.
Some are in uniform, some are not, most were at some time.
Some won’t eat pork, some will, some sit high in a church, some high in a country club.
Most do not have noses and can not smell.
Most have brains which can not tell.
They can’t tell the difference between faith and reason.
They have no reason to see the truth and not truth to tell this sea
They have no reason to see the truth and not truth to tell this season.
The name might be Jeb boy or Wesley.
When the real truth be known their urdtays are nasty, they stink like a Hastert and they pray for rain when the Pope goes to Spain.
[music]
Oh, Oh, here he comes.
Look out boys he’ll eat you up..
He’s a man eater, a man eater.
Basis for confinement: Anything and Everything. Duration of the conflict: Forever.