Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

The recently passed Defense Authorization Bill contained language that will continue allowing our country to grab anyone they want from anywhere in the world and keep them in prison without charges for as long as they want. It also will allow indefinite detention of US citizens. Everyone is concerned with the detention of US citizens, but I feel that the indefinite detention of anyone in the world is much more serious. It attacks the  very principles our country was founded on. Although President Obama made a "Signing Statement" that the US detention part would not be enforced during his administration, it  said nothing about non-US citizens, and nothing will prevent future Presidents from following this law as written, especially if the Republican right wing extremists gain power.
    I copy below a slightly revised article from "Nation of Change" that expresses my sentiments well:

The irony of it all is way more telling than the State of the Union ad­dress that we will hear in a few weeks. A con­sti­tu­tional lawyer who was freely elected pres­i­dent signs into law an act that be­trays the very prin­ci­ples that the na­tion he rep­re­sents was founded on. While the more cau­tious of us might shy away from the word fas­cism to de­scribe a na­tion’s mil­i­tary hav­ing the right to de­tain cit­i­zens with­out trial, it is cer­tainly not hy­per­bole. There has al­ready been an on­slaught of crit­i­cism re­gard­ing the con­tro­ver­sial Na­tional De­fense Au­tho­riza­tion Act that Con­gress leg­is­lated and Pres­i­dent Obama signed into law.
   His­tor­i­cally, the NDAA was a spend­ing bill that set the an­nual bud­get for the US mil­i­tary. Re­cently, the guar­an­teed pas­sage of the NDAA has been used by leg­is­la­tors—in spite of ve­he­ment rhetor­i­cal op­po­si­tion by pro­gres­sive and GOP leg­is­la­tors, the bill still passed, un­sur­pris­ingly, with over­whelm­ing sup­port (86-13 with one ab­stain­ing in the Sen­ate; 322-96 with eleven ab­stain­ing in the House)—to craft the poli­cies and pol­i­tics of the war on ter­ror.
   The same day Pres­i­dent Obama signed the NDAA, ac­tivists with Wit­ness Against Tor­ture (WAT) began prepar­ing for a Jan­u­ary 3, 2012 trial to de­fend them­selves against charges stem­ming from a June 2011 protest when they in­ter­rupted House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tive de­lib­er­a­tions on a De­fense Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Bill—a pre­cur­sor to the final NDAA. The rea­son for WAT’s protest was not the pro­vi­sion that al­lows the pres­i­dent to in­def­i­nitely de­tain any­one, any­where, which was not in­cluded in the early drafts of the 2012 mil­i­tary spend­ing bill. Rather WAT was protest­ing the pro­vi­sions in the bill—which did make it into the NDAA—that es­tab­lish the prison in Guan­tanamo Bay as a per­ma­nent fix­ture in U.S. for­eign pol­icy and se­ri­ously ques­tion Amer­ica’s com­mit­ment to human and civil rights. Jour­nal­ist Andy Wor­thing­ton de­scribes the pro­vi­sions that make it near im­pos­si­ble to trans­fer de­tainees for trial in civil­ian courts or re­lease them to for­eign countries.
   The Guardian wrote that, re­gard­ing the NDAA’s po­ten­tial treat­ment of U.S. cit­i­zens as “enemy com­bat­ants,” with­out rights to coun­sel or trial, in the war on ter­ror is sim­ply the re­al­iza­tion of a mis­guided, im­moral, and in­ef­fec­tive do­mes­tic and for­eign re­sponse to ter­ror­ism. The chick­ens are com­ing home to roost. The Amer­i­can legacy of the 2000s is one of tor­ture, il­le­gal do­mes­tic spy­ing, the flout­ing of in­ter­na­tional law, and un­con­scionable de­ten­tion prac­tices. Mean­while, non­vi­o­lent al­ter­na­tives for ef­fec­tively deal­ing with ter­ror­ists—such as a long-stalled po­ten­tial re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­ter for Guan­tanamo de­tainees or peer-group cen­ters that chal­lenge and shift the nar­ra­tives of Is­lamist ter­ror­ism (such as Abdul Haqq Baker and the STREET cen­ter that WNV fa­vorite Tina Rosen­ re­ported —are not given much of­fi­cial con­sid­er­a­tion.
   In­stead, the net of re­pres­sion con­tin­ues to grow as it ex­tends across the planet and all its peo­ples. The U.S. and its peo­ple have not been trou­bled much by the men, women, and even chil­dren who lan­guish in its mil­i­tary pris­ons—se­cret or oth­er­wise—in Cuba and count­less other global lo­ca­tions. As Wit­ness Against Tor­ture ac­tivists, whom I am join­ing, begin an 11-day Fast for Jus­tice on be­half of all those in­def­i­nitely de­tained, will or­di­nary Amer­i­cans rec­og­nize the global as­sault on free­dom that the Bush and Obama ad­min­is­tra­tions have waged for over a decade?
As Gitmo proves, the pol­icy and prac­tice of in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion is not new.It’s only the lat­est in a long, ugly suc­ces­sion of un­just de­ten­tions rang­ing from Japan­ese in­tern­ment camps to slave plan­ta­tions and Abu Ghraib. Even if Amer­i­cans are aghast at the NDAA’s con­tents that quite clearly con­tra­dict the con­sti­tu­tional right of habeas cor­pus we hold so dear, it is fool­ish to think this is just a naïve lapse of judg­ment by the keep­ers of our best in­ter­ests. The cat was let out of the bag a long time ago. Re­call the fa­mous words of Mar­tin Niemöller , the anti-Nazi pas­tor and paci­fist:


First they came for the com­mu­nists,and I didn’t speak out be­cause I wasn’t a com­mu­nist. Then they came for the trade union­ists,and I didn’t speak out be­cause I wasn’t a trade union­ist.
Then they came for the Jews,and I didn’t speak out be­cause I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.


We have failed to speak out for pris­on­ers de­tained the world over. Pres­i­dent Obama en­ters the final year of his first term, and his land­mark ex­ec­u­tive order to close Guan­tanamo has been re­duced to lit­tle more than a prank played on hope­ful sup­port­ers. 171 men re­main im­pris­oned — more than 60 of whom were cleared for re­lease years ago by Pres­i­dent Bush. It is not too late to speak out for them—or our­selves, for that mat­ter—but the sun is set­ting and the dark night of in­def­i­nite de­ten­tion threat­ens to rise on friend and foe alike.