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Roberts and the GWOT

July 20th, 2005 at 10:09 am by Preston Taylor Holmes

There are still plenty of questions floating around about President Junior’s SCOTUS nominee, but this Henry Mark Holzer column at FrontPage Mag about Roberts’ recent opinion in a GWOT-related case may be good news for those of us who are actually interested in winning the war and untying the hands of our military.

The media coverage of President Bush’s nomination of John G. Roberts, Jr., to the O’Connor seat on the Supreme Court of the United States has understandably focused on his legal background and conservative credentials. Because the court on which he now sits—the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit—has twelve justices who sit in random panels of three, and because Judge Roberts has been a member of that court for only two years, critics of his nomination such as Kennedy, Leahy, Durbin and Schumer will have a limited number of cases on the basis of which to attack him.

That won’t stop Schumer’s judicial wrecking crew. They’ll find a new Anita Hill – just give them a few weeks.

Holzer’s column centers around the case of Osama bin Laden’s driver, terrorist Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who drove OBL around in his golf cart for two months following 9/11/01. Hamdan was later captured and turned over to the U.S. military and put in a chicken coop at Gitmo, where he no doubt reveled in the same luxuries the current inmates enjoy. He was set to be tried in a Military Tribunal, which, in my opinion, was still too good for him.


Like many ACLU-educated enemies-of-the-state, Hamdan was well schooled in how to abuse the U.S. judicial system and soon had a lawyer who, on Hamdan’s behalf, “filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia—even though at that time there was no federal statute or Supreme Court decision that allowed Hamdan, an ‘enemy combatant,’ to do so.”

Shortly thereafter, a new SCOTUS decision came down – with Sandra Dee O’Connor swinging back to the left to the delight and applause of the Old Media.

Just two months later, the Supreme Court of the United States in the cases of Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and Rasul v. Bush ruled that “enemy combatants� were entitled not only to file petitions for habeas corpus (anywhere in the United States), but were also entitled to due process of law. Sandra Day O’Connor was the fifth, swing vote that allowed the Court’s four liberals—Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer—to so handcuff our country’s defense against terrorists.

While Hamdan’s habeas corpus petition was pending, he was formally charged with conspiracy to attack civilians, murder, destruction of property and terrorism. In addition to charging that Hamdan was bin Laden’s driver, it was alleged that the defendant served as bin Laden’s bodyguard, delivered weapons to al Qaeda members, and trained at an al Qaeda camp.

As a result of the Hamdi decision, Hamdi went before a Combatant Status Review Tribunal, which found that he was indeed an enemy combatant “either a member of or affiliated with Al Qaeda.� Consequently, his continued detention was required.

This was only temporary good news, because U.S. District Judge James Robertson was waiting in the wings to do the left proud with a decision that would further protect Hamdan, because we wouldn’t want to violate the civil rights of a terrorist, now would we?

Essentially, Robertson ruled that bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist driver might be covered by the 1949 Geneva Convention as a prisoner of war, and until a competent tribunal found otherwise Hamdan (and, by implication, anyone like Hamdan) could not be tried by a military commission. To enforce his ruling, Robertson enjoined the Defense Department from conducting any further proceedings against Hamdan.

“Friends of the court� supporting the terrorist included dozens of law professors, “305 United Kingdom and European Parliamentarians,� “Military Attorneys Detailed to Represent Ali Hamza Amhad Sulayman Al Bahlui,� “Military Law Practitioners and Academicians,� “National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers,� “Human Rights First,� “General Merrill A. McPeak,� “People for the American Way,� “The World Organization for Human Rights USA,� “Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights�—and, worst of all, the prestigious “Association of the Bar of the City of New York.�

Just take a gander at the who’s-who of pants-shitting leftist organizations who joined Robertson in his defense of Hamdan. A proud collection of patriots to be sure. Now where does Roberts come in? He was one of the members of the Court of Appeals panel that thankfully reversed Robertson’s ruling.

Despite this array of “friends,� the Court of Appeals panel—one of whom was John G. Roberts, Jr., President Bush’s nominee to the Supreme Court—reversed Judge Robertson, rejecting his conclusion that Hamdan was covered by the Geneva Convention, which could be enforced in a United States federal court. Robertson had conveniently ignored the Supreme Court precedent of Johnson v. Eisentrager (which the current liberal Court majority massaged, in order to reach its conclusion in Rasul), which held that the Geneva Convention, a compact between governments, was not judicially enforceable in a private lawsuit. Period!

So, at least on the surface, the addition of Roberts to SCOTUS means that we are potentially trading a pro-terrorist, anti-military swing vote for what is hopefully an anti-terrorist, pro-military constructionist vote on matters relating to the GWOT. This would be a nice change indeed. Now go read the whole thing, as they say.


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2 Responses to “Roberts and the GWOT”

  1. Van Helsing Says:
    July 20th, 2005 at 5:00 pm

    Roberts’ stand on War on Terror issues is critical. That’s a major reason Gonzales wasn’t nominated; he would have to recuse himself on anti-terror policies, since he helped devise them.

  2. Leo Says:
    July 21st, 2005 at 2:39 pm

    John Bob is another Souter. He’ll end up performing abortions in the supremist court.

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