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.
DBQ,
Again, there is a lot of propaganda surrounding what is happening and who is in gitmo. This has lead people of good will to think all sorts of things about detainees which aren’t true. I can only refer you to the complete documentation of what, who, when, where and now that is at the sites I listed.
US law applies in all cases to all people under US control. Citizenship does not matter to the requirements of the US “justice” system. You believe the govt. when it says there are only “bad” people in Gitmo, just as other people will believe the govt. when it says–“these are domestic camps for “bad” people”.
The truth is, in our supposed system of law you may not hold people, (citizens or non-citizens) for pre-crime or for thought crime. If someone is thought to have actually committed a crime they are to be arrested, put in jail, bail is given or not, and they are given a trial to determine their innocence. That is due process. Due process is what the people in Gitmo are owed by US law and that is what Wesley would like to deny American Citizens. These are exactly the same issue (except people in Gitmo are being and have been tortured). However, given that we have torture and murder taking place in Chicago’s Homan Square Prison, I do not doubt that murder and torture would be a fact in Wesley’s camps as well.
I don’t think this is Camp Isis however:
http://static.wixstatic.com/media/4984d9_6bce9f64672221afcf9581bf38473bf8.png_srb_p_241_153_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_png_srb
The ISIS training camps are much more fun, learning useful skills and camaraderie.
Wesley Kanne is his real name and if this were Germany in 1933 he would be due to arrive in Auschwitz within the next few years.
Consider the 1933 Parallels. In 1933 the Reichstag was torched and burned down. The President named von Hindenburg issued the Reichstag Fire Decree. That document is what Wesley Clark wants now. It would do away with all civil liberties. Kind of like the Patriot Act only stronger. The Patriot Act came after the terrorists from the CIA knocked down the Twin Towers. Goering admited after WWII that he was the one who set the Reichstag on fire. So we have our parallels and we have our modern day Goering. Or however ya spull it. Wesley Kanne does not want people from places like Belarus coming here as Muslims and posing as citizens but who want to tear down our wall. Mr. Gorbachov: Tear down this Wall ! Wesley: go back to Belarus.
I don’t get the big deal.
Camp can be a blast!
Canoeing, swimming, campfires, capture the flag, Spam dinners, and tons of crafts.
What’s to hate?
Justice Holmes
GITMO is not a POW camp. If it were the Geneva Convention would apply and the US says it doesn’t.
This is false. The Geneva convention applies only to combatants of governments which signed and abide by the terms.
Wesley Kanne is my name and I drove on the Danville train
‘Til Stoneman’s cavalry came and tore up the tracks again.
In the winter of ’65, we were hungry, just barely alive.
By May the 10th, Richmond had fell.
It’s a time I remember, oh so well.
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, “Na,na,na.na,
Na na na na na na na na na.”
Back with my wife in Tennessee, when one day she called to me,
“Virgil, quick, come see, there goes Robert E.Lee!”
Now I don’t mind I’m choppin’ wood, and I don’t care if the money’s no good.
You take what you need and leave the rest,
But they should never have taken the very best.
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing.
They went, “Na,na,na na
‘Na,na,na.na na na na na na..’
Like my father before me, I will work the land,
And like my brother before me, I took a rebel stand.
He was just eighteen, proud and brave,
but a Yankee laid him in his grave.
I swear by the blood below my feet
You can’t raise a Caine back up when he’s in defeat
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringing,
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing
They went, “Na, na, na na … ”
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the bells were ringing.
The night they drove old Dixie down
And all the people were singing.
They went, “Na, na, na na …”
Songwriters
ROBERTSON, ROBBIE
I’m OK as long as Clark and Spinelli don’t get together.
Clark’s father’s family was Jewish; his paternal great-grandfather immigrated to the United States from Belarus in response to the Pale of Settlement and anti-Semitic violence from Russian pogroms. Clark’s grandfather, Jacob Kanne, graduated from the Chicago-Kent College of Law and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve as an ensign during World War I, although he was never assigned to a combat mission. Kanne, living in Chicago, became involved with ward politics in the 1920s as a prosecutor and served in local offices. He served as a delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt as the party’s presidential candidate[11] (though his name does not appear on the published roll of convention delegates). His mother was of English ancestry and was a Methodist. [12]
Kanne came from the Kohen family line,[13] and Clark’s son has characterized Clark’s parents’ marriage, between his Methodist mother, Veneta (née Updegraff), and his Jewish father, Benjamin Jacob Kanne,[14] as “about as multicultural as you could’ve gotten in 1944”.[15]
Clark was born Wesley Kanne in Chicago on December 23, 1944. His father Benjamin died on December 6, 1948; his mother then moved the family to Little Rock, Arkansas. This move was made for a variety of reasons, including escaping the greater cost of living in a large city such as Chicago, the support Veneta’s family in Arkansas could provide, and her feeling of being an outsider to the remaining Kanne family as she did not share their religion.[16] Once in Little Rock, Veneta married Viktor Clark, whom she met while working as a secretary at a bank.[17] Viktor raised Wesley as his son, and officially adopted him on Wesley’s 16th birthday. Wesley’s name was changed to Wesley Kanne Clark. Viktor Clark’s name actually replaced that of Wesley’s biological father on his birth certificate, something Wesley would later say that he wished they had not done.[18] Veneta raised Wesley without telling him of his Jewish ancestry to protect him from the anti-Semitic activities of the Ku Klux Klan in the South.[19] Although his mother was Methodist, Clark chose a Baptist church after moving to Little Rock and continued attending it throughout his childhood.[20]
Sounds like Israel could use him to advocate for contstraining Palestinians.
Gitmo is a place where other human beings are being imprisoned and tortured without trial. Torture should speak for itself.
Jill
I do not support Gitmo as a concept or as moral actions and think it should be closed. The problem is that there ARE some very bad people there who will continue to try to harm us. Personally harm us. What to do with those? I suggest putting them in YOUR town then. Are you good with that?
However, I was trying to show you the difference between the idea that Clark is proposing which is incarcerating American Citizens for badthink/disloyalty to the all powerful Oz…I mean American Government……and incarcerating enemy combatants.
You can go on and on about Gitmo etc….. however you are comparing two completely different things.
Airdog,
Gitmo is not a POW camp and everything Justice Holmes said is correct. People got there exactly by being bystanders. You really need to read up on how many people were taken there because their neighbor got $5000.00 in bounty money. that’s just one example. You also need to read about child “soldier” Omar Kadar, a Canadian citizen. It is illegal in both US and International law to treat a child the way he was treated. This information is available to you at the sites I listed. The propaganda machine of this govt. is very strong and it has fooled you about what is going on there.
DBQ, Gitmo is a place where other human beings are being imprisoned and tortured without trial. Torture should speak for itself. It is abhorrent and it is never legal. Illegal imprisonment of any person is a crime under our Constitution. Many of the actions USGinc. takes off shore are now happening on shore at this time. It really is true that few people were willing to speak up when this govt. came for people they didn’t care about. They didn’t speak up when Obama killed American citizens, to include a 16 year old boy. Instead, they cheered him, reelected him and many still adore him.
Because American citizens have not cared about what this govt. has done to “the other”, we have basically told our govt.–“Bring it On”. We won’t do anything. Just scare us and make sure we think bad things only happen to someone else, we’ll tolerate it, we’ll even cheer it along. We have sent an extraordinary message to our own govt. That message is: “You may do anything, no matter the cost, no matter how heinous to keep us “safe”.
Cameron’s speech yesterday where he exhorted the people by saying: “You must learn to love Big Brother” is exactly what you wrote about Orwell!
This is a great idea — can we start with just putting a fence around Washington and locking the gate?
GITMO is not a POW camp. If it were the Geneva Convention would apply and the US says it doesn’t.
Gitmo is a POW camp, pure and simple. Maybe our government needs to acknowledge this simple fact. No one there got there by being bystanders. As for Gen Wesley Clark, he has a good military resume, how he has an odd way of thinking that bothers many of us. When he supported John Kerry for President I lost all respect for him, as he showed no respect for those men & women he commanded. Kerry was a patholgical liar in his “Winter Soldier” fandango, and still is IMO. Hint to Wesly: it is NOT all about you.
Jill
The proposal by Clark is for “disloyal Americans”. He is proposing incarcerating people who are AMERICAN CITIZENS for bad thinking. Being “disloyal” which is not defined. Not people who are actively attempting to maim and murder others but American citizens, for the ideas of being “disloyal”.
1984 was supposed to be a warning….not a manual.
If American Citizens can be shown to be committing crimes, participating in a conspiracy to commit crimes then that is a different thing and they should be prosecuted with all due process.. Having a difference of opinion or who do not agree with the government….does not constitute grounds being jailed for disloyalty. People who are here illegally should be deported. Period.
Gitmo (to my knowledge) does not contain American Citizens.
Clark didn’t mention anything about monitoring social media and purchasing guns.
Nick, apparently you do not know much about Guantanamo. There are people there who have been cleared for release by even this corrupt government. They are instead being held and tortured. So I guess the torture part is different.
I suggest you look into Seton Hall’s school of law. They have extensively documented the illegal detention of other human beings in Gitmo. You might also want to read Andy Worthington for information and check stories in The Guardian.
If you believe it is wrong to imprison people without trial, you should be protesting the detention of people in Gitmo. that you see nothing wrong with this when it happens in a facility which run by the US but is not on the US mainland, shows just how successful govt. propaganda has been on you and others like you.
Apparently women cannot tell the difference between Guantanamo and what this idiot Wesley Clark is proposing. But, I still support the 19th Amendment.
The totalitarian state will look and sound slightly different depending on which party is in charge, but that will be merely cosmetic.