Let’s begin by giving credit where it is due: Despite a rocky start, President Bush has responded well to the terrorist attacks on 9-11. True, the Administration has taken the “Osama ate my homework” approach to everything from budget deficits to the economic downturn, using the attacks to dodge responsibility for irresponsible tax cuts, invasion of the social security “lockbox,” and other economic miscues. But military and diplomatic efforts have, on the whole, been measured and effective.
Let’s begin by giving credit where it is due: Despite a rocky start, President Bush has responded well to the terrorist attacks on 9-11. True, the Administration has taken the “Osama ate my homework” approach to everything from budget deficits to the economic downturn, using the attacks to dodge responsibility for irresponsible tax cuts, invasion of the social security “lockbox,” and other economic miscues. But military and diplomatic efforts have, on the whole, been measured and effective.
That is emphatically not the case with domestic performance.
The USA Patriot Act, passed immediately after the attacks, is 342 pages handing vast new powers over to government. A very few examples:
· Any group of two or more people that has used force, or threatened to, can be designated “terrorist.”
· The Attorney General can lock up aliens on mere suspicion, without any hearing and without any obligation to justify the action to a court.
· The Attorney General can wiretap without probable cause and without disclosure.
· Evidence in immigration proceedings can be kept secret, so aliens can be detained on the basis of evidence they cannot rebut because they don’t know what it is.
While these are unprecedented powers, they pale beside the military tribunals proposed by Bush. While tribunals have been used overseas, during wartime, they have never before been used to try U.S. residents. The new tribunals could try any non-citizen charged with “international terrorism”—a term to be defined by John Ashcroft, who has said “terrorists who commit war crimes against the United States…are not entitled to the protections of the U.S. Constitution.” Okay—but how will we know if the accused is a “terrorist” unless he gets a fair trial? And tribunals have none of the elements Americans believe are fair. There is no right to a public trial, no right to a jury, no right to confront the evidence against you, no right to appeal to another court. The military acts as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner. Death can be imposed on a two-thirds vote. And it can all be done in secret.
Indeed, secrecy has been the hallmark of domestic law enforcement since 9-11. Approximately 1200 people are currently being detained by the Justice Department on various charges; Ashcroft says that ten to fifteen of those detainees “may” be linked to Al-Qaeda. What about the other eleven hundred plus? The Justice Department won’t even release their names, let alone the reasons they are being held.
When members of the media challenged these mass, secret incarcerations, Ashcroft said “trust me.”
When law professors and civil libertarians protested that the Patriot Act was so vague it would allow the Attorney General to designate virtually any group he didn’t like as “terrorist,” Ashcroft questioned their patriotism and asked “real Americans” to trust him.
When Senators Leahy and Hatch challenged the Administration’s end run around Congress to accomplish its unprecedented power grab, the answer they got from George W. Bush and John Ashbrook was “trust us.”
Sorry. I don’t.