Case of Cuba detainees goes to heart of American values

The Supreme Court's ruling Thursday regarding the president's power to unilaterally oversee the detention and punishment of people swept up in the war against terrorism was a reasonable reading of the law and a proper interpretation of the principles by which a free nation must govern itself.
The court declared 5-3 that the proposed military tribunals for 10 foreign terror suspects violate U.S. military law and the Geneva conventions.
The ruling raises major questions about the legal status of the approximately 450 men held for years at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The day of reckoning was predictable.
Competing claims
The Bush administration attempted to have it both ways. It denied that the enemy combatants were prisoners of war, because if they were, they would have been subject to the Geneva Conventions. On the other hand, the administration claimed that the prisoners were enemy combatants in a war of terror, and therefore subject to trials conducted by the American military similar to those used during World War II.
Such sleight of hand was too much for a narrow majority of the justices.
The administration was obviously trying to evade both international and U.S. law in its handling of the prisoners from the earliest stages of the war on terror. They were brought to Guantanamo Bay, where they were under the exclusive control of the United States, yet not on U.S. territory because the base is on Cuban land leased in the pre-Castro era. It was clever, but transparent.
For years now, the administration's unstated attitude has been it is better to hold 100 innocent men than to let one guilty one go. That is a cowardly and unprincipled stand that would have clearly been seen as un-American not many years ago.
It is also counterproductive, in that it damages the U.S. image abroad. Developed democracies are horrified by its implications. Developing democracies are unable to reconcile the reality of detention without due process with lofty pronouncements about freedom and the rule of law. Despotic enemies simply point to it as an illustration of U.S. hypocrisy.
And counterproductive in that for every innocent man held for years with charges or an attempt to defend himself, a dozen relatives develop into America haters at best and terrorists at worst.
What to do with these detainees is a thorny problem. But that's the nature of the war we find ourselves in.
Challenges ahead
The ruling raises major questions about the legal status of the approximately 450 men still being held at the U.S. military prison in Cuba and exactly how, when and where the administration might pursue the charges against them.
One response would be to seek congressional authorization for military tribunals, but that will have to be done in a way that provides due process of law and in a way that doesn't send a message to the world that the administration is trying to circumvent the Supreme Court.
One critic of the court referred to the decision as a product of judicial activism. It was just the opposite. The majority of the justices found no law giving President Bush the authority he claimed.
If there are any activists in evidence, they would be among dissenting justices, who were willing to validate powers that the president took to himself.
It is a case that demonstrates how meaningless the terms strict constructionist and activist judges can be. It is frankly a bit scary that the most conservative judges on the court could not see how giving virtually unbridled power to the president runs counter to the constitutional republic established by the Founding Fathers.
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a strongly worded dissent in which he said the decision would "sorely hamper the president's ability to confront and defeat a new and deadly enemy."
If new laws are needed to confront such an enemy, then new laws should be written and passed. The last thing conservatives should want to see is a president getting new power by judicial fiat.