Dispatch from Anthrakistan

By Martin A. Lee, AlterNet. Posted November 27, 2001.

IT'S A HELLUVA war our government has gotten us into. It could go on for years, we're told. There's no end in sight.

I'm not talking about the war against terrorist networks in Afghanistan and beyond. I'm referring to another troubling conflict: the crusade against civil liberties on the domestic front, the jihad against dissent that's taking shape in Anthrakistan, our anxious homeland.

This nervous nation used to be called the United States of America (a.k.a. America the Beautiful). That was before the World Trade Center towers came crashing down and "everything changed" on Sept. 11. We actually had a Constitution with 10 original amendments, which were meant to protect our freedom in times of war, as well as in times of peace.

Anthrax isn't contagious, but the spores of fear are everywhere. Inflamed by calamity and dread, our patriotic paranoia is running rampant. We're all on edge about what al-Qaeda might do next. A commercial jet crashes in Queens, and we immediately get the willies: was it a terrorist attack too? We don't know where or when, but another Sept. 11 seems inevitable.

Desperate to stop terrorists from striking again, the Central Intelligence Agency has pulled out all the stops -- even hiring psychics to join the manhunt for Osama bin Laden. Now that Kabul has fallen, CIA strategists are eager to dust off the 87-year-old Afghan king, Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile for the past three decades, and install him as the figurehead chief of a post-Taliban government.

Ah, the wish for kings ... I feel it stirring among us, a deep-rooted authoritarian impulse that throbs during times of crisis, the age-old hankering for an almighty power to issue decrees and set matters straight. Personally, I think George W. Bush would make a good monarch. After all, he has always been a titular kind of guy, a front man for oil and ordnance. So let's proclaim him King George. It's a fitting appellation for a sovereign who rules by capricious whim and exercises power without judicial scrutiny or statutory authorization. That's how things work these days in Anthrakistan.

Lord John Ashcroft, leading emissary of the royal court, tightened his Richelieu-like grip on the homeland last month when King George affixed his seal of approval to the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001, which gives the government sweeping new powers to conduct secret searches without a warrant, tap telephones and computers, and detain suspects indefinitely in the name of fighting terrorism.

The USA Police State Act of 2001 would have been a more appropriate title for the bill that zoomed through Congress "without deliberation or debate," as Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) noted. Feingold, the only senator who opposed the draconian legislation, accused the Justice Department of exploiting "the emergency situation to get some things they've wanted for a long time."

"It's overkill," says David Sobel, general counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "The new legislation gives federal authorities too much power. The potential for abuse is enormous."

Another new rule imposed by Lord Ashcroft allows the government to eavesdrop on conversations and intercept correspondence between prison inmates and their lawyers -- in effect nullifying the Sixth Amendment right to effective counsel. And last week King George signed a decree that the government can try people accused of terrorism behind closed doors in a special military tribunal, rather than in a civilian court.

Meanwhile, the government still holds more than a thousand "aliens" who were rounded up and taken into custody after Sept. 11. Under the new regime, a foreigner visiting Disneyland can be arrested, jailed without a hearing, and incarcerated in perpetuity without ever being charged for a crime. Some detainees later cleared of any link to terrorism have been held in harsh conditions for prolonged periods and denied a chance to notify relatives of their whereabouts.

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