Alright y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio.
I'm Scott Horton and our next guest on the show today is Gayle Corey Tunzing from India Country Today Media Network, and that's the website too, indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com.
Welcome to the show Gayle, how are you?
I'm well, thank you.
Well I'm very happy that you joined us here this afternoon.
Very interesting article you have here.
It's called Andrew Jackson's Actions Model Anti-Speech Perpetual War Legislation.
And you're referring to a case down at Guantanamo Bay that's very important.
We've actually spoken on the show with one of the lawyers that you talk about in your article here, Todd Pierce, before.
And this is the Guantanamo case that really goes right to the heart of freedom of speech and the First Amendment to the Constitution.
So it's a multi-faceted article and obviously a very important subject for us.
I guess I'd like to ask you first to, well I guess start with Al-Bahlul and the current case and then maybe we can go back and talk about Andrew Jackson and the Seminole War and how it all fits together here.
Yes, well Ali Al-Bahlul was one of two Guantanamo prisoners who was convicted of providing material aid or aiding terrorism.
And he was captured in Afghanistan in 2004 and he was convicted in 2008 and sentenced to life in prison for providing material support for terrorism to Al-Qaeda.
Now his defense attorneys, Todd Pierce and Sam Morrison among others, mounted of all things a First Amendment appeal.
And the reason they did this is that the prosecution could not actually connect Al-Bahlul to any act of terrorism.
And so what they convicted him on was the production of a video called State of the Ummah that was posted, and still is actually, posted on YouTube and all over the internet.
And the video puts together various clips that are widely available on the internet.
And it's the usual kind of speeches by Osama Bin Laden and explosions and pictures of American bombs in the Middle East and so on.
But the defense attorneys said this was a First Amendment right.
So they based their appeal on his First Amendment right of free speech to put together this video.
Bahlul admittedly was a member of Al-Qaeda.
He was Osama Bin Laden's secretary.
He said he had sworn an oath of loyalty to Osama Bin Laden and he wanted to kill Americans.
And so he's sort of an unlikely sounding candidate for a free speech appeal.
But that's what the prosecutors did.
And the appeal ruling has not come down yet.
Well, it sounds like the perfect case.
I mean, this is how free speech is won.
Is somebody saying something horrible, like, you know, force march all the Indians or all the blacks or all the Jews somewhere or something like that.
It's usually a Jewish New York lawyer from the ACLU comes to defend the neo-Nazis right to march and to speak, because after all, the Bill of Rights is the Bill of Rights.
If it doesn't protect the Nazis, it doesn't protect anybody.
If it doesn't protect the right of a propagandist to make a video in Afghanistan, someone who could come under the control of the American government, then it doesn't protect your right or my right to make a video either.
Exactly.
So, well, the interesting thing was that, I guess, last winter, the Military Commissions Court asked the lawyers to come up with a precedent in legal military history.
They wanted evidence that would demonstrate that providing material support to an enemy or terrorism had been previously treated by the United States as a war crime.
And so the prosecution came up with an example going back to 1817 or 1818, in which Andrew Jackson, then a general, had invaded Florida, which was then under the control of Spain.
And it's a very bizarre thing.
He was actually chasing down so-called escaped slaves to bring them back to their so-called owners.
And what he did was he swept up these two British guys, who were living among the Seminole Indians at the time, and accused them of providing material aid to the Seminoles and inciting them to war, held what would be called today a kangaroo court, and had them summarily executed.
And this was the single historical example to support their theory that al-Bahlul had provided material aid to the enemy.
Well, on its face, that's a ridiculous claim if the person admits to being the enemy, if you follow.
I mean, al-Bahlul readily admitted to being a member of Al-Qaeda.
So the question was whether you can accuse someone of providing material aid to the enemy or terrorism if they're not a citizen of your country.
I guess an analogy would be the United States made noises about extraditing Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks fellow, to America and charging him with treason.
But that raises the question, don't you have to be a citizen of a country to be charged with treason?
And so it's an analogy here with the two British guys that were executed.
What brought us to the story was this allegation, this analogy between the Seminole Indians and Al-Qaeda, and comparing al-Bahlul to these two British fellows who were executed.
The Seminole Indians were protecting their land.
I mean, they did resist Andrew Jackson's invasion into their territory, but they had treaty rights over that territory.
And it was an illegal invasion on Andrew Jackson's part.
Of course, he did go on to become president, but what he did was a huge scandal in Washington at the time.
And one war historian accused him of actually committing murder against these two British guys that he had killed.
Well now, there's a lot there.
It seems to me like what we have here in this case of al-Bahlul is they got this guy, this Al-Qaeda guy, and they got nothing on him.
So what ends up happening is they just decide that they want to keep him.
And so they're even willing to trample on our First Amendment.
They're willing to stretch these ridiculous theories about what amounts to a war crime and set these horrible legal precedents just in order that they don't have to let this guy go.
Right.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's an outcome-based operation going on here.
Right.
Well, at the same time, the other thread in this story is this National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012.
This is a bill in the House that was sponsored by Congressman Howard McKeon, a Republican legislator from California.
And it's reauthorizing an earlier National Defense Act that was passed, I think, in 2003 or 2002, you know, when Bush got permission to go after al-Qaeda.
But in the original act, the language was specific to al-Qaeda.
In this new act, the language is so vague, it gives the president sole authority to wage war against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
All right.
Well, I'm sorry.
We've got to take this break.
But I think I see the road you're going down with these different precedents being put together here.
That's a very important piece of legislation that you're talking about.
The article is Andrew Jackson's Actions Model Anti-Speech Perpetual War Legislation.
We'll be right back.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio.
I'm Scott Horton.
I'm looking at Indian Country Today Media Network.com.
Indian Country Today Media Network.com.
Andrew Jackson's Actions Model Anti-Speech Perpetual War Legislation.
The author is Gail Corrie Tunzing.
And right when we were rudely interrupted by the break there, I'm going to read you the article.
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The sole authority to wage war against Al-Qaeda, the Taliban.
But then it also includes associated forces.
And it doesn't define who or what associated forces are.
It gives the President the authority to lock up anyone found, quote, substantially supporting those forces.
And he can do so without charges or without a trial and for an unspecified amount of time.
You know, it's interesting, too, that since the beginning of the Bush, pardon me, I get them confused.
They're all the same to me, these people.
Since the beginning of the Obama administration, the whole game has been he doesn't want to arrest people and have these embarrassing and ridiculous kangaroo trials.
He wants to just use robots and blow them all up.
So, you know, target people for assassination, send in the JSOC guys to shoot somebody in the head, that kind of thing.
You know, are we to believe that any doctrine about his expanded power to capture people is anything but, you know, if it doesn't stay between the lines or kill them, if he feels like it.
Well, I mean, the proof is in the pudding, right?
I mean, clubbed to death by seals, Osama bin Laden was, as RAF News guy said, was clubbed to death by seals.
I mean, that was, I understand it's against the law to do political assassinations, and yet that's what happened.
Well, you know, I'd make an exception for that one guy if it was about that one guy.
I mean, think of all the other people that have been killed.
Yeah, I think it's a slippery slope to make exceptions, even for, you know, even for Osama bin Laden.
I just, I don't think, you know, there were other options.
And that speaks to your, you know, your observation about what President Obama's doing.
I mean, he says on one hand he wants to have trials, and on the other hand, he sends in drones and seals to execute people.
So, I think that's not a good path for this country, to be honest.
And now, you know, one of the things that you bring up in your piece here, Gayle, is that, you know, this ought to be, at least, reason for indigenous populations or really any non-state armed group anywhere in the world to fear here.
I mean, this is basically saying that Andrew Jackson's lawlessness unleashed against the Seminoles is the standard for, you know, American law.
Never mind anything since then, never mind Nuremberg or anything silly like that.
Andrew Jackson is our touchstone on this.
Yes, and what's so odd about it, too, is that the prosecution actually backtracked from its position and said that by providing this example of Andrew Jackson, they were not providing an example of moral right, but only a legal precedent.
And they said that the morality or propriety of Jackson's military operation in Florida is irrelevant.
They even went so far as to say that his campaign into northern Florida and his treatment of the Seminoles during that campaign were repugnant.
And it's just an astonishing claim that the relevance of Jackson's killing of these two guys was grounded on his treatment of those acts as violations of the law of war.
And so they said also that the true facts concerning Jackson's campaign in northern Florida could be just set aside because they were only putting it forward as a legal basis for the government's assertion of military jurisdiction over material support charges.
In other words, their claim for prosecuting this fellow, Al-Bakhloul, rests basically on the naked exercise of power rather than any morality.
And you have to remember that Jackson was going into Florida to capture escaped slaves and bring them back to their alleged owners.
So, like, he was doing a – he was basically on a property rights campaign there.
Well, one of his own anyway, yeah.
Yeah, it's really an astonishing story.
I like that kind of tidbit there, I guess, that anecdote in the case that the prosecution actually says every other part of what Andrew Jackson did here was absolutely reprehensible except the part where he made up this bogus legal theory that he could use to lynch these two men to death.
Right, right.
That's actually their legal position.
That is their legal position, that they're not considering the morality, just the legality.
And my question about that is can you base a legal principle on something that's immoral?
And legal experts that I've consulted on that say no.
That's no basis for a legal principle or a legal doctrine.
Did any of the experts that you talked to tell you whether any court has ever upheld this or – I guess not.
They had to go all the way back to Andrew Jackson did it and not a court case that even ratified.
They got nothing but this is basically the subtext here, right?
Right, and that goes back also to the question – the position of the defense lawyers who also researched history.
And they found that in every case of aiding the enemy, the person had at least some kind of status or loyalty to the state either as a resident or as a citizen.
In other words, you can't make that charge against someone who isn't a citizen because someone who is a citizen of another country may not consider the United States enemies as their enemies.
It's a very layered story and there's so many aspects to it.
Well, yeah, and on the other hand, Michelle Bachmann said the other day that, oh, well, no terrorist should ever get our citizens' bill of rights and have it apply to them or whatever.
But – and of course Ron Paul called her out in that Iowa debate immediately and said you got the entire law of America on its head, lady.
The bill of rights doesn't say citizens in there.
And how do you know if somebody's a terrorist unless a jury came back and said that, yeah, in fact they are?
You just – just because the president says somebody's a terrorist is – it's crazy and he just cut it right at the root.
And I would remind people because I don't think most people really understand that.
The word citizen isn't in the bill of rights.
It's anyone who's under the jurisdiction of the government.
These are restrictions on the power of the government, not grants of privileges to us from them.
That's exactly right.
Supposedly, anyway.
Yes, and it's a good thing that you point that out.
But then the other significant thing is that because the government or the president can define terrorist as whatever he wants, that leaves everybody open to prosecution.
As we've seen.
Here's a guy put together a video, a YouTube, basically, and gave him life in prison for it.
All right.
Well, thank you very much for your time.
I highly recommend this article to everybody.
It's by Gail Corey Tunzing at IndianCountryTodayMediaNetwork.com.
Thanks.
Thanks for having me.
