Martial Law?

The war in Iraq will not trigger the WWIII, since the latter is already in process. It is absolutely different from all the previous wars the mankind has ever waged, therefore it was not identified as a war. And it started long before Mr. Bush having settled in the White House.
Some information on the character of the warfare used in this war you may get if you follow the link
The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation[/b][/color][/size].

Wow great information in that link steissd.

I posted this link in my attempt to persuade the people that the current events are a part of a larger pattern, and this pattern is of the World War. Terrorists and rogue regimes' agents attempt to abuse the advantages of the liberal democracies, making these their weak points. Maybe, the information appearing in this article (and the other articles on the Web site where this article appears) will help the people to understand better the meaning and significance of the measures that President Bush's administration attempts to undertake in the field of homeland security without accusing the administartion in trying to undermine the civil liberties.

Yes, it did start long before Bush made it into the White House.

Article 1, Section 9 states, "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Habeas corpus is a concept of law, in which a person may not be held by the government without a valid reason for being held. A writ of habeas corpus can be issued by a court upon a government agency (such as a police force or the military). Such a writ compels the agency to produce the individual to the court, and to convince the court that the person is being reasonably held. The suspension of habeas corpus allows an agency to hold a person without a charge. Suspension of habeas corpus is often equated with martial law.

Because of this connection of the two concepts, it is often argued that only Congress can declare martial law, because Congress alone is granted the power to suspend the writ. The President, however, is commander-in-chief of the military, and it has been argued that the President can take it upon himself to declare martial law. In these times, Congress may decide not to act, effectively accepting martial law by failing to stop it; Congress may agree to the declaration, putting the official stamp of approval on the declaration; or it can reject the President's imposition of martial law, which could set up a power struggle between the Congress and the Executive that only the Judiciary would be able to resolve.

In the United States, there is precedence for martial law. Several times in the course of our history, martial law of varying degrees has been declared. The most obvious and often-cited example was when President Lincoln declared martial law during the Civil War. This instance provides us with most of the rules for martial law that we would use today, should the need arise.

Stessid our constitution was designed to protect us from our own government not other governments. All aspects of our constitution must be upheld at all times, including times of war or the war will be lost. The Bill of Rights is what keeps us free. If we are to remain free in our own country I think we are willing to risk some incidents as opposed to the alternative.

The Bill of Rights

There was a short running thread about the link, steissd posed, created by Phoenix two weeks ago:

The Changing Face of War- The Fourth Generation

Actually I really doubt, if there is any change of creating a 'martial law'.

This comment refers more to the UK:
"In the English legal system, the term 'martial law' is of dubious significance; in the words of the English jurist Sir Frederick Pollock, "so-called ?'martial law,' as distinct from military law, is an unlucky name for the justification by the common law of acts done by necessity for the defence of the Commonwealth when there is war within the realm."

Such "acts done by necessity" are limited only by international law and the conventions of civilized warfare. Further, the regular civil courts do not review the decisions of tribunals set up by the military authorities, and very little authority exists on the question of remedies against abuse of powers by the military. In Great Britain and many other jurisdictions, such questions are of little significance in view of the modern practice of taking emergency or special powers by statute."

By the way, the U.S. Administration has already successfully implied some of the fourth generation warfare in course of the Cold War, and this helped them to win this war.
SDI declared by President Reagan in '80s was impossible for implementation from the very beginning, and President knew about it. But he managed to convince the Soviet leadership that the implementation of the space-based anti-missile defense system was in progress. The Soviet leadership did not discover the bluff, and it invested enormous sums of money in attempts to close the gap in defense potential levels. For the Soviet Union this was a total financial loss: all the defense industries belonged to the state, so their activities brought no revenues to the state budget, on the contrary, they depleted it. In the USA, the arms race had some positive by-products: new jobs, new dual technologies, increase in corporate revenues (hence, in taxes paid to the federal budget). The USSR was unable to withstand these expenses, and its leadership was necessitated to start reforms that brought to disappearance of the USSR from the political map and to the end of the Cold War.
President's bluff was aimed at the main feature of the Communist system: state ownership on all the industrial enterprises; it was an advantage in the period of the WWII, enabling the USSR to increase output of defense industries thousand percent by usage of non-economical methods. In period of peace it destroyed the system. Mr. Reagan managed to manipulate the Soviet leadership in the way that it started conducting policies openly detrimental to the very core of the Communist political system.
But on the present stage, terrorists and rogue regimes make a serious attempt to manipulate the public opinion in the Western countries in order to promote their own agenda that is detrimental to the very core of the liberal democracies, that weakens abilities of the First World countries to defend themselves. The enemy abuses such liberal values as respect to human rights, concern in humanitarian aspects of politics, etc. Islamic world has already urged the Western world to commit an action that was harmful to it. I mean, the military intervention against Yugoslavia. As a result, the terrorist entity was formed in Europe, and its leaders try to destabilize situation in the neighboring countries. Milosevic was a tyrant, but he was not dangerous for the countries beyond the borders of historic Yugoslavia. Independent Kosovo is a first beachhead of the forthcoming Islamic offensive against Europe, and it was given to the Islamic forces by Europeans and Americans after their being skillfully manipulated...

I do not say, Mr. Hinteler, that I found the link myself. I also was guided to it by Phoenix, but I think that as many people as possible should read the article the link points to: its content makes many things that cause discussions sound reasonable.

I don't think that martial law will be declared: the administration will simply keep on asserting new powers until there will be a functional equivalent. By the way, the Supreme Court has already limited habeas corpus.

How nelsonn can you give us a cite?

I think the example of 'Camp X-Ray' is handy. If activity is undertaken in a jurisdiction that is outside of that controlled by the Congress, then that can't possibly conflict with it. Now I am not saying that the US Govt is planning to round up dissenting citizens and ship them out to Cuba. I mean this as a hypothetical.

steissd - have just read the article on "Fourth Generation" warfare and although interesting, the good men of the Marines have simply made a believable case that in the future (the treatise was written in 1989) terrorism would be the new form of warfare. Terrorism has always been a form of warfare - always. And the only defense against terrorism is heightened security - paranoia, even. But the notion that terrorists will benefit from the citizenry wanting peace is hogwash. Any patriotic American would be willing to fight terrorism, but it is not necessary, in the name of security against terrorists, to abrogate the citizens' freedom. It is then that the government becomes in league with the terrorists. Besides, nobody I know is protesting the "fourth generation"war against terrorism. In fact, everybody I know is behind the pursual of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and whatever is left of Al Quaeda. What the anti-war citizens of the United States are protesting is the proximity of a pure "Third Generation" war with Iraq, to be fought in the air and on the ground by conventional (although technologically advanced) weaponry, bringing with it the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, lots of our own military, and God knows what kind of terrorist attacks against our own "homeland" in the event of said war. Although it is irrefutable that Saddam Hussein is a mad, irrational dictator, does he really have a stockpile of nuclear and chemical weapons that no amount of inspections can uncover? And does he really intend to use them in a pre-emptive strike against the United States or our interests? Prove that to me - along with the promise that when the war is over we will see to it that Iraq becomes a stable, democratic country which can only help bring peace to the entire region, and I'll be the first one on board the war wagon.

After eight years of urban legends peddling during the Clinton Administration, I suppose we should listen to right-wingers since they are the experts on urban legends, but here is urban legend c. 2003 - hardly martial law, but not unexpected under this administration.

The Center for Public Integrity - Justice Dept. Drafts Sweeping Expansion of Anti-Terrorism Act

FULL ARTICLE

The Center for Public Integrity - Home Page

PBS Moyers NOW Show item

Moyers NOW Transcript

Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003 Draft in PDF


(WASHINGTON, Feb. 7, 2003) -- The Bush Administration is preparing a bold, comprehensive sequel to the USA Patriot Act passed in the wake of September 11, 2001, which will give the government broad, sweeping new powers to increase domestic intelligence-gathering, surveillance and law enforcement prerogatives, and simultaneously decrease judicial review and public access to information.

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained a draft, dated January 9, 2003, of this previously undisclosed legislation. The bill, drafted by the staff of Attorney General John Ashcroft and entitled the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, has not been officially released by the Department of Justice, although rumors of its development have circulated around the Capitol for the last few months under the name of "the Patriot Act II" in legislative parlance.

Senior members of the Senate Judiciary Committee minority staff have inquired about Patriot II for months and have been told as recently as this week that there is no such legislation being planned.

Dr. David Cole, Georgetown University Law professor and author of Terrorism and the Constitution, reviewed the draft legislation at the request of the Center, and said that the legislation "raises a lot of serious concerns. It's troubling that they have gotten this far along and they've been telling people there is nothing in the works." This proposed law, he added, "would radically expand law enforcement and intelligence gathering authorities, reduce or eliminate judicial oversight over surveillance, authorize secret arrests, create a DNA database based on unchecked executive ?'suspicion,' create new death penalties, and even seek to take American citizenship away from persons who belong to or support disfavored political groups."

Cole found it disturbing that there have been no consultations with Congress on the draft legislation. "It raises a lot of serious concerns and is troubling as a generic matter that they have gotten this far along and tell people that there is nothing in the works. What that suggests is that they're waiting for a propitious time to introduce it, which might well be when a war is begun. At that time there would be less opportunity for discussion and they'll have a much stronger hand in saying that they need these right away."

Joanne:

Consider "combatants". Consider death penalty appeals.

What is wrong with death penalty to the terrorists? The latter do not value high lives of their victims; why do we need value their lives higher than they value ours? They consider reluctance of the Western countries (including Israel, where no terrorrist, even caught in flagrante was ever executed) to use death penalty against them as a sign of cowardice. Let us prove them that we are not scared to hang them up.

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. --Gandhi

And a policy of raid and reprisal has hardly made Israel secure, now has it?

Well, it did improve the situation.
First, if at the beginning of 2002 we had suicide bombers' attacks several times a week, now the frequency decreased to one in several months.
And firm stance of the government that decided not to surrender to the terror and not to leave murder of Israeli citizens without consequences to the enemy caused certain changes in approach of some of the Palestinian leaders, making their standpoint more realistic. This made it possible to attempt negotiations with moderate Palestinian leaders that are taking place just in the current time: contacts of PM Sharon and Abu Ala (Link: Sharon Talks With Abu Ala) are no more clandestine, and the leaders mentioned discuss there armistice and resumption of political negotiations in framework of the President Bush's plan.

...until the next car bomb goes off. Or until the next bulldozer plows down a house.

Yep. It's a real paradise.