Robert Haddick has a commentary in today’s Wall Street Journal about our Supreme Court’s review of cases involving detainees that is worth reading:
Will the U.S. Supreme Court now see itself responsible for supervising Iraq’s judicial system? These crimes occurred in Iraq, and the Iraqi court system is adjudicating these cases. By running the prisons, presumably for a transitional period only, the U.S. military is acting as an agent of the Iraqi justice system, and is no way a principal in these cases. One can only imagine the howls of protest from editorial writers if the U.S. military or the Bush administration’s justice department blatantly interfered with another country’s internal judicial proceedings. Why should the standard be different for the Supreme Court?
If the Supreme Court grants all of these habeas corpus claims, it will do so with the belief that it is extending its supposedly civilizing influence to parts of the globe it feels would benefit from that authority. Yet, its actions would have the opposite effect. In the future, no U.S. president would ever contemplate bringing war prisoners to the United States, to Guantanamo Bay or any other place that the U.S. court system might see fit to get its hands on.
In fact, the U.S. military could find it preferable, at least less legally bothersome, to “subcontract” such things as prisoner-holding and interrogations to allied countries, or, where none are available, friendly tribes and militias. And if this doesn’t reduce the legal nightmare caused by capturing detainees, the U.S. and its tribal allies might just be inclined not to take any prisoners. Why use rifles and pistols to raid a suspected terror safe-house when a laser-guided bomb will do? Such a practice would reduce the amount of intelligence U.S. military units might have otherwise received from live detainees. Or maybe not, if some judges feel especially inclined to micromanage the war effort.