The Other War: A Three Year Assault on Civil Liberties

The Other War: Three Years Later

The hottest topics in the current presidential campaign are the Iraq war and the “war” on “terrorism”. Any politician who speaks out against the war on terrorism and how it is a war on citizens and civil rights, will risk being called a terrorist or a traitor. Senator Russell Feingold, the only Senator to vote against the un-Patriotic Patriot act and one of the few who voting against the Iraq war, is fighting for his political life in Wisconsin.

The word “terrorism” is defined differently in hundreds of fed laws and regulations, depending on their contexts. The most expansive use of the term, for instance, is reserved for immigrants and resident aliens – those having green cards and student visas, for instance.

Terrorism is whatever the government wants it to be. It is a moving and mornping construct. It can justify the closing of streets at home, and the waging of war abroad. It encompasses peacefully demonstrating against George Bush at home, and speaking negatively against him abroad (I am referring to restrictions on Arab news media who are trying to report on Iraq). It is the excuse for declaring a war on civil liberties. 

By war on civil liberties, I am referring to the erosion of the freedoms embodied in the first ten amendments to the Constitution - known    collectively as the Bill of Rights. Bush said that “they” “hate” ‘us” for our freedoms. Well “they” have much less to “hate” three years after Sep 11. Bush talks of spreading "liberty” abroad like butter or jelly. Well, we are scraping away “liberty” at home. It is something we are told we must do, in order to “preserve” freedom.

A radio interviewer made an interesting suggestion to me recently – should we call the Bill of Rights the Bill of Restrictions? I like that idea. Restrictions on government power. We could reframe them as not freedom of speech but freedom from government intrusion into speech, assembly. Not freedom to have an attorney represent us, but freedom from government eavesdropping on us and our attorneys and on limiting our right to counsel, as it has done in the case of hundreds of immigrants, hundreds of "enemy combatants," material witnesses, and Americans Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla.

We are supposed to have freedom from being arrested without probable cause or not being held to account for a crime unless indicted by a grand jury. We are supposed to be free from government denying us access to the witnesses against us. Evidence is supposed to be presented in open court and subject to cross examination and the scrutiny of the light of day. We are supposed to be free from inquisition by secret evidence. We are supposed to be free from bond being denied us while we await trial and free from cruel and unusual punishment. And by we, I mean not just American citizens, but aliens lawfully in this country. These guarantees have been violated thousands of times since September 11.

Hundreds and hundreds of peaceful demonstrators at the Republican National Convention were arrested and held for as long as three days before a judge dismissed the charges against them. They had committed no crime and further, were held long outside the time allowed by law. Mayor Bloomberg, taking a page from George Bush’s playbook, would do it all again, he said, proud that the liberties of Americans were sacrificed in the name of George Bush.

In my book I follow some of the more egregious examples of the government's violation of its compact with we, the governed, embodied not just in the Bill of Rights but also in in federal laws and rules of procedure.