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I am obliged to "truthout.com", for again performing an
important public service by posting the article below by William
Safire. Safire is not someone noted for radical views. Indeed, any
conservative president who can not make a friend of Wm. Safire is,
indeed, in deep trouble. And when a Republic president moves Safire,
the noted political linguist, to adopt a rhetoric that one might have
thought would come from a Green Party reprsentative then we know that
the government is slowly, but surely unifying the people -- against the
administration.
Brother Eh-nom-a-louse.
November 15, 2001
Seizing Dictatorial Power
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
WASHINGTON -- Misadvised by a frustrated and
panic-stricken attorney general, a president of
the United States has just assumed what amounts to
dictatorial power to jail or execute aliens.
Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for
rough justice, we are letting George W.
Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule
of law with military kangaroo courts.
In his infamous emergency order, Bush admits to
dismissing "the principles of law and the
rules of evidence" that undergird America's system of
justice. He seizes the power to circumvent
the courts and set up his own drumhead tribunals - panels
of officers who will sit in judgment of
non-citizens who the president need only claim "reason to
believe" are members of terrorist
organizations.
Not content with his previous decision to permit
police to eavesdrop on a suspect's
conversations with an attorney, Bush now strips the alien
accused of even the limited rights
afforded by a court-martial.
His kangaroo court can conceal evidence by citing
national security, make up its own rules,
find a defendant guilty even if a third of the officers
disagree, and execute the alien with no
review by any civilian court.
No longer does the judicial branch and an independent
jury stand between the government
and the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances
central to our legal system, non-citizens
face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor,
judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an
Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style
abomination "a full and fair trial."
On what legal meat does this our Caesar feed? One
precedent the White House cites is a
military court after Lincoln's assassination. (During the
Civil War, Lincoln suspended habeas
corpus; does our war on terror require illegal
imprisonment next?) Another is a military court's
hanging, approved by the Supreme Court, of German
saboteurs landed by submarine in World
War II.
Proponents of Bush's kangaroo court say: Don't you
soft-on-terror, due-process types know
there's a war on? Have you forgotten our 5,000 civilian
dead? In an emergency like this, aren't
extraordinary security measures needed to save citizens'
lives? If we step on a few toes, we can
apologize to the civil libertarians later.
Those are the arguments of the phony-tough. At a time
when even liberals are debating the
ethics of torture of suspects - weighing the distaste for
barbarism against the need to save
innocent lives - it's time for conservative iconoclasts
and card-carrying hard-liners to stand up for
American values.
To meet a terrorist emergency, of course some rules
should be stretched and new laws
passed. An ethnic dragnet rounding up visa-skippers or
questioning foreign students, if
short-term, is borderline tolerable. Congress's new law
permitting warranted roving wiretaps is
understandable.
But let's get to the target that this blunderbuss
order is intended to hit. Here's the big worry in
Washington now: What do we do if Osama bin Laden gives
himself up? A proper trial like that
Israel afforded Adolf Eichmann, it is feared, would give
the terrorist a global propaganda
platform. Worse, it would be likely to result in
widespread hostage-taking by his followers to
protect him from the punishment he deserves.
The solution is not to corrupt our judicial tradition
by making bin Laden the star of a new Star
Chamber. The solution is to turn his cave into his crypt.
When fleeing Taliban reveal his
whereabouts, our bombers should promptly bid him farewell
with 15,000-pound daisy-cutters and
5,000-pound rock-penetrators.
But what if he broadcasts his intent to surrender, and
walks toward us under a white flag? It is
not in our tradition to shoot prisoners. Rather,
President Bush should now set forth a policy of
"universal surrender": all of Al Qaeda or none. Selective
surrender of one or a dozen leaders -
which would leave cells in Afghanistan and elsewhere free
to fight on - is unacceptable. We
should continue our bombardment of bin Laden's hideouts
until he agrees to identify and
surrender his entire terrorist force.
If he does, our criminal courts can handle them
expeditiously. If, as more likely, the primary
terrorist prefers what he thinks of as martyrdom, that
suicidal choice would be his - and
Americans would have no need of kangaroo courts to betray
our principles of justice.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed without profit to those
who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and
educational purposes.)
© : t r u t h o u t 2001
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--
If we knew where knowledge goes when it evaporates, perhaps we might
learn to recover what we have lost and to reconstitute it as distilled
wisdom.
"How long will you judge unjustly, and show partiality toward the
wicked? Do justice to the poor and fatherless, deal righteously with
the afflicted and destitute. Rescue the poor and needy; save them from
the hand of the wicked." (A Psalm of Asaph, The Psalm for the Third
Day.)
How can we be sure that the unexamined life is not worth living?
Michael W. Posluns,
The Still Waters Group,
First Nations Relations & Public Policy
Daytime: 416 995-8613
Evening: 416 656-8613
Fax: 416 656-2715
36 Lauder Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario,
M6H 3E3
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