If you've followed the government's claims in the Yaser Esam Hamdi case, you would think the guy was some unstoppable, lethal killing machine, the Taliban's own Hannibal Lecter -- a man so evil, he requires permanent warehousing down a bottomless hole. So the Bush administration's decision to release Hamdi is stunning, given that only months ago he was so dangerous that the government insisted in front of the U.S. Supreme Court and the world that he could reasonably be locked up for all time, without a trial or criminal charges. At oral argument before that court, Deputy Solicitor General Paul D. Clement insisted that "[n]o principle of the law or logic requires the United States to release an individual from detention so that he can rejoin the battle," especially, while we "still have 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan." Hamdi's case, decided by the Supreme Court earlier this year, was supposed to represent a high-water mark for American freedoms during wartime. He had fought for and won his day in court, an opportunity to question his captors, and a chance at national vindication at the end of it all. Hamdi's name stood for the proposition that the Bush administration couldn't run roughshod over the courts and the law in its pursuit of the war on terror. It now stands for precisely the opposite: With a yawn and a shrug, the administration sidestepped the courts and the judicial process once again, abandoning this criminal prosecution altogether and erasing the episode from our national memory. Hamdi has been stripped of his citizenship and his freedom to travel, and sent packing to his family. The rights and processes guaranteed him by the Supreme Court have been yanked away one last time, by an executive branch that held him for years for no reason and smugly claims now that it was finished with him anyhow. Nevermind - Hamdi wasn't so bad after all. By Dahlia Lithwick |
