Obama Can Now Detain People Indefinitely

The Obama administration recently won the legal right to indefinitely imprison people without charges. In the eyes of many people, Obama has now successfully rewritten the US Constitution.

On June 9, a three judge panel in the Washington DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the government, stating that detainees taken from outside of Afghanistan and relocated to Bagram (in Afghanistan) have no right to contest their imprisonment in US Federal Court due to the fact that Afghanistan is a war zone (unlike Guantanamo). Long story short, non-citizens captured by the US have no right to appeal if they are held in a war zone, even if they were arrested and transported into a war-zone.

The Obama White House lawyers argued that prisoners in Afghanistan have no right to habeas corpus, regardless of where they were captured, simply because the US authorities sent them to Afghanistan.

The Bush administration also argued the same thing regarding Bagram. Obama, just like Bush, also wants to detain people in order to prevent hypothetical future "crimes." Oddly enough, Barack Obama has criticized similar Bush policies regarding detention as "neither effective nor sustainable." In order to make his own policy of prolonged detention "effective and sustainable," Obama aims to set up a new "legal regime" outside of the current court and military commission system.

Right-wing judge John Bates, who was appointed by Bush, surprisingly disagreed with the ruling because even he knows that the President should not have the right to detain people anywhere.

There has been speculation that Obama could possibly have the US-Mexico border labeled as a war zone in order to detain immigrants indefinitely.

We communists, socialists, and anarchists knew from the very beginning that Barack Obama would bring only half-hearted, and arguably worthless, "change." Despite those pseudo-Marxists who wanted to give the Democrats another chance, the majority of communist groups knew he was just another criminal. If you want real change, join us!