Controversial to a fault, this bill was near unanimously approved by the US Senate, but what is the National Defense Authorization Act really all about? On the face of it, it is designed as a law to combat, prevent and discourage domestic terrorism by granting US special forces the authority to detain, interrogate, assassinate or incarcerate American citizens and legal alien residents without charges, prosecution or conviction, effectively circumventing the sixth amendment of the US constitution – the right to due process and a fair trial.
What it Really Does
Put in a nutshell, it gives the military power to declare any American an enemy combatant, even while in US soil. Those who are deemed to be a national security threat for America can be placed under immediate military custody without a trial or charges. Critics of the new bill call it a “throw them into jail free card”, civil rights advocates call it the end of the Bill of Rights, conservatives see it as the ultimate example of government overreach and foreign news outlets call it the beginning of an American authoritarian police state.
The truth, however, is that it only expands slightly on the powers the military already had under the Patriot Act. Many of the senators that voted for this bill have pointed out that this is nothing new in the post-9/11 America. In fact, many arrests of suspected domestic terrorists have already been made in this way in US soil, while others have had surveillance equipment monitoring their every move.
What Americans Can Expect of NDAA
Will the American public see a sudden influx of military personnel in full special forces operation gear down the street, or military gear and equipment enthusiasts should worry about being taken by a soldier wearing night vision goggles? Not likely.
As mentioned previously, this bill does very little beyond what the Patriot Act already allowed. While some may worry about special forces swooping down in tactical gear to cart every Occupy protester to Guantanamo, the chances of that actually happening are low to nil.
The Bottom Line
While the law does have definitive constitutional problems and the criticisms to it are very valid points indeed, the reality is that the nightmare scenarios of an American dictatorship are heavily exaggerated.
The second amendment, the right to bear arms, is there for that very reason. Many Americans own weapons of all kinds, from knives and swords to firearms and explosives – a luxury the citizens of true autocratic regimes do not have. That alone is reason enough to doubt the US government would risk a civil war against a well-armed public. Of course, there is also the precedent of the Patriot Act itself – another bill that people swore would lead America down the road to a dictatorship and, as we can see today, it didn’t.