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The Geography of the Military Commissions Act

Conventional wisdom has it that the Congress approved the draconian Military Commissions Act in order to counter terrorism. The idea is that members of Congress are hearing their constituents clamoring for more protection from terrorists because they feel vulnerable to attacks by Osama Bin Laden's hordes of terrorists who could be anywhere at any time, planning to attack anyone.

Of course, conventional wisdom has been wrong about plenty of things in recent years, for example. Conventional wisdom claimed back in 2002 that George W. Bush was a great leader. Conventional wisdom had it that Enron was a powerful company run by a group of geniuses who could teach us all a thing or two about success. Conventional wisdom insisted, in spite of a complete lack of evidence, that the Iraqi government had massive stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction that threatened the entire world.

So, it has occurred to me that conventional wisdom about the motivation behind the Military Commissions Act may be wrong. In the case of the Military Commissions Act, it's very important to understand the true nature of the law's motivation. After all, the law gives George W. Bush the powers of a dictator. The following is just some of what the Military Commissions Act does:

• Revokes habeas corpus
• Ends enforcement of the Geneva Conventions
• Legalizes torture
• Gives the President the power to imprison anyone he wants, without need for explanation, once the President declares the imprisoned person to be an "enemy"
• Ends the right to a speedy trial, allowing imprisonment without criminal charges for long periods of time - potentially for a lifetime
• Sets up show trials that allow conviction to happen before an investigation into the alleged criminal activity has even begun
• Allows the government to use secret evidence to convict defendants, which not even the defendants' lawyers can see.
• Legalizes the use of testimony that was obtained through torture or other means of coercion - much as occurred at the Salem Witch Trials to force people to testify that their neighbors were witches
• Keeps the processes of trials, the results of the trials, and even the existence of the trials, secret from the American public.
• Ends the enforcement of the 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination
• Allows defendants and their lawyers to be prevented from cross examining witnesses, while placing no such restriction on the prosecution
• Gives anyone suspected of war crimes, including President Bush himself, immunity from prosecution

Anyone who has any understanding of American law and history can see that these are revolutionary changes that undo the legal foundations of democracy in America as they have existed for hundreds of years. If we're going to give up the freedoms that have distinguished our nation from so much of the world for so long, we ought to understand the real reasons that we're doing so.

In order to investigate the true motivation behind the Military Commissions Act, I made the map you see below. It's a map of the United States of America, but not as you're used to seeing it. In addition to the borders that separate state from state, this map shows the borders that separate congressional district from congressional district. In the case of this map, the colors do not represent whether the representative from the district is a Democrat or a Republican. Instead, the map shows how each representative voted. In the districts colored red, the representative voted for the Military Commissions Act. In the blue districts, the representative voted against the Military Commissions Act. In districts marked black, either the representative did not bother to vote, or the seat in the House of Representatives is vacant, as is the case in Tom DeLay's district.

One of the things that stands out to me about this picture is that there's a strong urban - suburban - rural split. Most congressional districts that have are dominated by urban populations have representatives who opposed the Military Commissions Act. Representatives from suburban and rural districts, on the other hand, were more likely to support the Military Commissions Act.

If fear of terrorist attack were the real motivator for the Military Commissions Act, the opposite would be true. After all, it's the cities that are the most likely targets of terrorist attacks. If Osama Bin Laden and his Al Quaida followers are really planning another attack on American soil, they're likely to target cities like New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle, not Wyoming, Alaska, or New York State's Adirondack Mountains. Yet, the representatives who come from Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami, Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Las Vegas don't support the Military Commissions Act. They oppose it. The representatives who support the Military Commissions Act tend to come from places that almost surely will never suffer a terrorist attack: Places like New Hampshire, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Utah.

This map tells me that it's the Americans who have the most reason to worry about a terrorist attack who are most likely to oppose the Military Commissions Act, and the people who have the least reason to worry about a terrorist attack who are the most likely to support the Military Commissions Act. Clearly, the Military Commissions Act is not motivated by a genuine concern of a terrorist attack.

What really motivates support for the Military Commissions Act, then? The true motivation seems to stem from some ideological divide that existed before September 2001's terrorist attacks.

What is that ideological split? To understand that, it's best to look at the content of the Military Commissions Act itself. In the blue districts, people seem to place the highest value on freedom and adherence to the Constitution. In the red districts, on the other hand, people favor a vision of the United States in which the government has more power than the individual, and freedom can be sacrificed for the sake of security.

The blue district ideology is an ideology of liberal enlightenment, the same ideology that influenced the early political philosophy of the United States of America. The red district ideology has always been with us too. It's the ideology of nationalism. It was nationalism that drove Manifest Destiny, the grab for territory west to the Pacific. It was nationalism that fueled the Civil War. It was nationalism that motivated McCarthyism, and the abuses of power under Richard Nixon.

Nationalism values the territory of the Homeland and the power of the government more than the rights of the people who live in the nation. It is a totalitarian ideology that claims that people have the duty to obey the government and conform to cultural purity.

The nationalist movement in America that motivates the Military Commissions Act is seen in popular mottos like United We Stand, Support Our Troops, and the Orwellian slogan Freedom Isn't Free. This same nationalism fuels the campaign to make English the only official language recognized by the US government. It is no mistake that the same people who claim that there is a crisis of immigration spoiling the cultural heritage of our nation also support the Military Commissions Act, which takes away the legal rights of foreigners living in the United States.

Put the pieces together, and you get a disturbing picture of the true motivation behind the Military Commissions Act. The red district ideology bears a striking resemblance to the ideology that fueled the Nazi rise to power in Germany.

Watch out, blue district America, because the ideology of liberty is losing ground fast. It may not be long before we're wiped off the map.

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