Sometimes despair looks tempting

[pecunium]

Many years ago I read a book, by (IIRC) Edward Everett Hale: Man Without a Country, in which a man convicted of treason was denied the right to enter the US, and not allowed to go anyplace else.

It had a certain sense of justice, though one felt more sorry for him than revulsed (or at least I did, at the age of 10-11).

Right now the Federal Gov't is imposing this sentence, sort of, on a pair of citizens. Think Tom Hanks in "The Terminal."

The story goes like this, they were in Pakistan, and when they started to come home, they were told (because they had one relative convicted of supporting terrorism, despite a few questions about the strength of the case LA Times Magazine) the FBI wanted to talk to them.

So they did. The FBI decided they needed to talk to the younger one again, and insisted on a pollygraph. He declined the latter, and said he was willing to do the former, but only if he had a lawyer present.

So the Gov't put them on the no-fly list and forbade them re-entry to the country they live, unless they agree to forgo their constitutional rights.

Which puts them in a strange place. They are now, "stateless persons", and so living in the state of limbo.

They have not been charged with a crime, but they are being punished for insisting on their rights. At the very least they are out the cost of plane tickets back to Pakistan. Give it time and they will be out of jobs, (the younger one is only 18, so he may be losing his place at university), house; home if they have a mortgage, and deprived of contact with family.

Guilt, and summary reaction, becuase someone believes they might know something. Given the track record of the DoJ under this administration, I am less than sanguine about the truth of that. Even if I were more willing to accept their claims of the men knowing somthing than I am, there's no way the treatment they are being given is acceptable.

If they are thought to have committed a crime, then they need to be charged. If they aren't charged, there's no reason to punish them. What, one wonders, is the benefit of stripping someone, in practical terms, of citizenship, because they won't talk without a lawyer?

When will they decide it's me, or thee, instead of "them,"?

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I think the original book is about an Australian. I remember he ended up with a thick folder full of letters from the states of countries giving him permission to enter.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Nope, the title character (one might say protagonist) was American:

Philip Nolan was as fine a young officer as there was in the “Legion of the West,” as the Western division of our army was then called. When Aaron Burr made his first dashing expedition down to New Orleans in 1805, at Fort Massac, or somewhere above on the river, he met, as the Devil would have it, this gay, dashing, bright young fellow; at some dinner-party, I think. Burr marked him, talked to him, walked with him, took him a day or two’s voyage in his flat-boat, and, in short, fascinated him. For the next year, barrack-life was very tame to poor Nolan...

He, on his part, had grown up in the West of those days, in the midst of “Spanish plot,” “Orleans plot,” and all the rest. He had been educated on a plantation where the finest company was a Spanish officer or a French merchant from Orleans. His education, such as it was, had been perfected in commercial expeditions to Vera Cruz, and I think he told me his father once hired an Englishman to be a private tutor for a winter on the plantation. He had spent half his youth with an older brother, hunting horses in Texas; and, in a word, to him “United States” was scarcely a reality. Yet he had been fed by “United States” for all the years since he had been in the army. He had sworn on his faith as a Christian to be true to “United States.” It was “United States” which gave him the uniform he wore, and the sword by his side. Nay, my poor Nolan, it was only because “United States” had picked you out first as one of her own confidential men of honor that “A. Burr” cared for you a straw more than for the flat-boat men who sailed his ark for him. I do not excuse Nolan; I only explain to the reader why he damned his country, and wished he might never hear her name again.

The Man without a Country; Edward Everett Hale, 1917.

TK

[fjm.livejournal.com]

Then this is not the one I'm thinking of. My chap was twentieth century. I passed the book on ages ago so can't check.

[juliansinger.livejournal.com]

I really loved that story when I was a kid. (14 or something.) I mean, it was a touch too melodramatic for me, but it really touches something deep inside a lot of people.

And... as to the point of the post, yes. Charged with a specific crime, not detained indefinitely. Can't say it strongly enough.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

I've never liked that story -there's a quirk to my nature that doesn't completely trust large groups- and frankly I sided with the main character. Up until the sort of "deathbed conversion".

[waterlilly.livejournal.com]

The part that worries me the most is that I don't believe these people are being kept out because they "know something." I think they're being punished because they insisted on their rights. I mean, where would this administration be if everyone did that?

The reason this administration scares me so much is that people are being treated like this. In my America, it's a great country because we even give our criminals rights, and if they have rights those of us who are innocent have them too. When we start taking basic Constitutional rights away from people becuase they're suspected of being under suspicion (I really think this case is that attenuated), no one is safe. We all might "know something." If the administration can punish people who insist on their rights, anyone who has rights is an enemy of the state.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I don't agree with the Official Proclamation that The Terrorists are attacking us because they're jealous & envious of our American Freedoms. People do a lot of horrible things (some of them ultimately indirectly self-destructive) out of jealousy and envy, but deliberately and directly killing themselves is simply not among these.

If, however, a major goal of some particular subset of the fanatical ideologues who utilize "Terrorism" (either as a technique or as an excuse) is the demolition of our traditional American Freedom and Rights, they appear to have been significantly successful.

Assuming the accuracy of the news accounts, these two people are American Citizens, one by naturalization and one by birth, and have not been accused of, or charged with, any crime or complicity in any crime. If they can be prohibited from re-entering their country -- and it certainly is theirs as much as it is mine -- unless they waive some of their rights as American Citizens, then those rights, and American citizenship, become nearly meaningless for all of us. And it's _our_ government, in its official capacity, that is demolishing our traditional freedoms.

So far, there seems to be enough chance that the Courts will find the Government at fault and require that the victims be allowed back into their country (preferably with an apology and restitution for any monetary or other losses they may have suffered) that I'm not giving in to Despair. (Not that I expect ever to do so -- this is something too important to admit defeat even though everything appears hopeless.)

Disgust -- now _that_ I feel, in abundance, just as I do when Government Officials at High Levels, with the tacit support of those even Higher, say (in effect) "It's perfectly permissible for us to torture anyone we want to, as long as we don't come right out and call it "torture", even though that's what practically everyone would consider it to be".