A No-Questions-Asked War

During his much-acclaimed state of the union speech, George W. Bush did his usual we're-fighting-for-freedom-and-liberty-for-everyone schtick. (Yeah, tell that to dissidents harassed or imprisoned in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Uzbekistan -- all vital partners in the war-on-terrorism coalition.) But the boy-president-turned-man-president went much further, proclaiming "America will always stand firm for the non-negotiable demands of human dignity: the rule of law, limits on the power of the state, respect for women, private property, free speech, equal justice and religious tolerance."

Now you'd have to be blind to not see where I am heading. Let's concede that's one helluva standard for conduct at home and abroad. Alas, it's been routinely ignored by this administration, as it has pursued the war overseas and within America's borders.

Limits on the power of the state? In the aftermath of September 11 -- before the fires were out at the World Trade Towers -- Bush rushed to assume more power for the government. At his insistence, Congress, with only modest discussion and debate, passed the sweeping USA Patriot Act, which included wide-ranging provisions that granted the feds more ability to spy on people. With his executive order permitting the establishment of military tribunals that could try (and then execute) non-citizens suspected of terrorism, Bush assumed powers that conservative columnist William Safire characterized as dictatorial.

Free speech? Bush's attorney general, John Ashcroft, accused civil libertarian critics of the White House of treason.

Equal justice? Many of Bush's anti-terrorism measures, enacted either through legislation or executive order, distinguished between citizens and non-citizens and yanked due-process rights from the latter.

As Bush went on about these "non-negotiable demands," I thought of Jean Tony Antoine Oulai, a 34-year-old citizen of the Ivory Coast. He is one of the 1200 or so individuals arrested during Ashcroft's post-9/11 dragnet. On September 14, he tried to board a plane in Jacksonville, Florida, hoping to return home to Los Angeles. Airline officials conducted a random search of his checked luggage -- a suitcase and two small boxes his cousin had been storing for him in Orlando. The airline employees found in the boxes a stun gun, flight manuals, and material supposedly in Arabic. The FBI and INS were called in, and Oulai was taken to a local county jail, where, he claims, he was denied access to a phone.

Over the next four months, Oulai was shuffled from one prison to another -- from Florida to upstate New York to Alexandria, Virginia. He maintains that on one occasion he was soundly beaten and that at one jail he was held in a cell kept dark nineteen hours a day. He was asked by his captors if he is a Muslim; he is a Catholic. His lawyer notes that at one point the feds would not tell him where Oulai was. His ordeal was masterfully detailed by Washington Post reporter Amy Goldstein in a page-one article published several days before Bush's speech.

Oulai, who emigrated to the United States in 1988 and who had recently been trying to establish an organization to promote aid to West Africa, denies he had anything to do with the terrorist attacks. He says the flight manuals were from the days he attended flight school in Florida. (There is evidence showing he did take classes at a Florida flight school.) He asserts he had no Arabic material in his possession, and he and his family members say he does not know Arabic. He concedes he bought the stun gun a few years ago and had kept it in the packing box he checked at the airport. Oulai, according to federal regulations, should have told the airline his checked box contained a stun gun -- which he did not. But that sort of violation is normally cause for a fine, not imprisonment. He also has admitted to a technical visa violation and in November agreed to accept deportation. But then the FBI charged him with being a material witness in a criminal proceeding and he was held further. As Goldstein noted, in the FBI affidavit used to justify his on-going detention Oulai was described as Arabic. Yet he is clearly a black African.