This story on Sami Omar al-Hussayen is worth the pain of (free) registration at WashingtonPost.com. Here are a couple of excerpts:
Defense attorney David Nevin portrayed his client as a well-liked leader of the university’s Muslim Student Association who had been quick to publicly condemn the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hussayen, the father of three young boys, is not an angry Muslim who hates the West, he said. On the contrary, Nevin added, he comes from a well-to-do family that has traveled the world. “He doesn’t hate the United States. He doesn’t hate Western values. That’s not who he is,” Nevin said.
Hussayen, 34, a doctoral candidate in a computer science program sponsored by the National Security Agency, is accused of creating more than a dozen jihadist Web sites and of moderating a global e-mail group that in February 2003 posted an “urgent appeal” for Muslims in the U.S. military to supply information about American forces and facilities in the Middle East that could be selected as targets for acts of terrorism.
Displaying a chart that showed the links among more than a dozen Web sites, [federal prosecutor] Lindquist told the jury that Hussayen managed “an Internet network — a platform,” and that “the content of this platform was extreme jihad — terrorism.”
…
The Saudi Embassy has pressed for Hussayen’s release and is paying for his top-flight legal defense team, which includes Joshua Dratel, who represented Wadih Hage, a former aide to Osama bin Laden.
The case is interesting because Mr. Hussayen’s main defense is based on the First Amendment though he is not a U.S. citizen. If the U.S. government doesn’t like someone residing in a foreign country it is free to shoot a missile at the guy’s car and summarily kill him. If, on the other hand, an enemy manages to score himself a student or tourist visa and arrives on our shores we can’t touch him because he is now entitled to a variety of protections under the Constitution that were designed for (presumably loyal) citizens. In a global economy where location isn’t supposed to matter one’s rights under the U.S. Constitution depend exquisitely on location. If you’re one meter outside the border you can be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged or tried. If you’re one meter inside the border you have all the rights of someone born in the U.S.
Continuing the theme of techie terrorists named “Sami”, Sami Al-Arian, the computer engineering professor from University of South Florida, attempted a First Amendment defense as well [Mr. Al-Arian, a Kuwaiti national whose application for U.S. citizenship was turned down based on his fraudulent registration to vote in the early 1990s, is a great example of the American Dream because the taxpayers of Florida are still paying his salary while he sits in federal prison awaiting his trail in January.]
The Ancient Greeks took the rules of hospitality, xenia, very seriously. Certainly running off with your host’s wife was out of the question and thus the abduction of Helen was a sufficiently serious breach to warrant the Trojan War. Most of our recent troubles with terrorism stem from Arab guests in or immigrants to the United States. So far the government’s response seems to be an attempt to reduce the number of guests and/or screen them more thoroughly for existing connections to terrorist organizations. In the long run, however, this seems doomed to fail. You can’t expect someone to abandon his beliefs simply because he is visiting the United States or has immigrated here, even if one of those beliefs is hatred of American society. My prediction: within the next five years there will be calls to restrict constitutional rights to citizens. It will be noted that in 1787 everyone in the U.S. was either a citizen, the property of a citizen (slaves), or expected to become a citizen. It will be argued that times have changed. Thanks to commercial airlines millions of people land on our soil every year with no intention of joining the society. Thus a distinction should be made between U.S. citizens and guests. The counterargument will be that the rights of the Constitution are universal and should not only be extended to guests on our shores but also to human beings anywhere on the planet. We shouldn’t be supporting dictators in poor countries if they won’t guarantee U.S.-style rights to all of their citizens and certainly we should not be engaging in extrajudicial assassination of our enemies.
[A more concise restatement of the above is “Guantanamo Bay might be just the beginning.”]
yep i agree
I further think that citizenship should be restricted to landowners.
If the U.S. government doesn’t like someone residing in a foreign country it is free to shoot a missile at the guy’s car and summarily kill him.
I beg to differ. No government is “free” to shoot missiles at foreign nationals.
If, on the other hand, an enemy manages to score himself a student or tourist visa and
The problem with that is that you always reap what sow. If you start treating foreigners you don’t like like dirt, and especialy locking them up without fair trail, is that US citizens can expect the same treatment elsewhere. Not good for people, nor the open international market policy the US preaches.
While I see this particular case is a very grey area, I think the best way to convince other goverments that your way of treating citizens is the right way, is to set an example by treating foreigners accused of crimes in your country the same as you would your own.
Oops. I posted my comment before I read the last paragraph in the post. We should believe that certin “inalienable rights” belong to all people, not just citizens; the biggest “free speech zone” should be between the borders of Mexico and Canada, and if our actions overseas to establish democracy or whatever Bush thinks he’s doing in Iraq are to mean anything, they have to mean something here, first.
Not only should we withold the protections of the constitution to visa-holders, we should not require them to pay US taxes nor constrain them with US laws.
First, as an internet publisher you should have a little more understanding of where this person is coming from. He created open forums — that does not mean he should be responsible for all speach that occurs on those forums.
And if you are talking about restricting rights for foreigners… well, what are you talking about? That, as a foreigner, he wouldn’t be allowed a jury of his peers? That he wouldn’t be allowed to confront his accuser? Habeus corpus? That he may be compelled to testify against himself?
Right now there’s no line between universal rights and citizen rights, and it scares the shit out of me to think about making any sort of line like that. The entire justice system — from the vague defenses like the the first amendment, to the very specific rights like right to counsil — are all based on a set of rights that is fairly uniform. At least now you can’t pick off rights piecemeal (unless you are willing to attack the entire constitution, which is what seems to be happening).
We should not restict the rights of 300,000,000 citizens for the sake of 19 visitors. With respect to visitors’ rights, I believe that legal aliens should have most of our own rights (save voting and owning real property) as long as they are on our soil.
Due process, freedom of speech, etc. are rights we support world-wide and should not only extend to our own citizens, both because we believe in those rights and because the Golden Rule is always a factor in international politics.
We shouldn’t lock up a non-citizen up for expressing those rights, but we certainly should always have the option to deport them.
In this particular case, I think it comes down to whether this guy is a “common carrier.” If so, he should be let go or deported. If not (i.e., if he was selectively in favor of anti-American forums or participated in them) and the content of those forums merit it, he should be sent to prison for inciting or treason (after a real trial).
Save…owning real property? What do you think the trillions of in foreign investment dollars owned by non-visa-holding foreigners come to do? See the sights?
Where is any human rights discussion on these issues? I would like to take up the almost footnoted mention of them at the end of the article.
Human rights are based on our identity with each other. The most extensive such identification possible is an identification with all humanity and each human being. That identification is rooted in the ideals of Enlightenment humanism, ideals articulated by Locke and Rousseau and Kant, and brought to bear on historical events in the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of Man–all familiar, if disputed, territory. However miserably partisans of these principles failed to fulfill them in practice, the principles themselves are unambiguous, and they all depend on that fundamental identification of each of us with all of us, with the sheer human being abstracted in the ideal from concrete contexts of history and tradition. You don’t have to believe in an abstract ideal the way you believe in the chair under your butt in order to believe in that ideal. Ideals are real in a different way from the way chairs are real, and furthermore, in the case of Enlightenment ideals, they are universally real. That is, every human being, consulting what early moderns liked to call “natural reason,” would come up with something like those ideals, given the opportunity. “Natural reason” just means what an unbiased person would hold to be the case, where “unbiased” means free of historical conditions and local attachments.
So if US law does not apply to visitors, which would? If it would be the law of their country of residence I’d be quite up for that – I’d much rather be tried under Spanish than US law.
It seems to me that war is basically non-judicial as far as rights are concerned. There isn’t much due process involved in shooting an enemy combatant. But the elusive nature of terrorism makes it tough to identify the combatants.
When the first suitcase nuke or dirty bomb pops off in a major US city, I predict the niceties of due process will fall away dramatically, especially for non-citizens. When thngs get bad enough, even a single e-mail saying “let’s attack America” will fetch expulsion or prison.
War is quite a different animal than an ideal criminal justice system.
Since you’ve also been talking a lot recently about how immigrants want to come to the U.S and work and so on and so on and how good a thing that is I can only suppose that this a particularly clever incentive you’ve come up with for increasing the occurence of said good thing.
in short, your proposal is full of bugs and logical shortcomings, it is the Web Services of political thought.
the law is our home and our home is our history
by “binjamin ben- haim”
Uhm its interesting that there is this continues concept of being the worlds rolemodel. Yes there are a lot of people who have gotten this image of the USA being heaven. However the fact that the entire world hasnt applied yet for green cards is not because they feel they would have a chance its more that alot of people are perfectly happy living differently.
Dealing on foreign affairs is a tricky business. It is not acceptable to blindly enforce your values on a different country. At the same time we should obviously not forget what makes us human: sympathy for the fate of others. However while we try to help others we must do so with respect to the countries culture and way of life.
An example: As someone having lived in what we call social capitalism I have a hard time understanding the “american way of life” where I have seen relatives collect money amongst eachother for days before my cousine was able to go to the dentist. From my perception and values this is unacceptable .. in my country .. however I dont feel its my place to force the USA to change their social system. If they ever ask me I will give them my opinion obviously.
So what the USA needs to understand is that its not their place to implant their way of place onto the world. If asked they can lend advice.
So what should they do when they see masakers? What should they do if they see things which contradict their perception of what is right?
To me there are two levels:
1) your neighbours
2) for away places
Usually you can understand the values of your neighbour and can then come up with actions which are inline with the values from your neighbour.
For for away places it is really hard to judge when you are forcing your values on to them and when you are really helping them get rid of some form of opression.
I guess when in doubt the international community is a good entitiy to consult. Over all allowing choice to leave a system seems to be something I can generally see as good.
But today its not as clear cut anymore. Its not about some foreign country doing something among it eachother but about them preparing over there to blow up the states. Well actually if you look at the last century the USA has had a policy of messing in the afairs of foreign countries all the time to prevent them from “turning Kansas into a war zone”.
But maybe the world wasn’t trying to prepare for a war against the USA all this time? Maybe the fact that in order to prevent war in Kansas the USA has done horrible crimes across the world that neither fits the US concept of what is right, nor what anyone else but dictators feel is right.
Ok so now large parts of the world are mightily miffed at the USA for doing these horrible horrible crimes, while at the same time claiming the white vest for themselves all this time. This has played into the hands of evil people (or maybe it has breed evil people?) who now also do horrible horrible crimes.
The amazing thing is that the solution the USA is offering is doing exactly what they did in the last century. Fight wars on freign soil. Force their values onto foreign countries. Commit horrible crimes that fit into nobodies values but those of dictators.
There is no quick solution to this problem. There is a long term solution though .. its called “humility”.