Revolutionary Worker #1131, December 16, 2001, posted at http://rwor.org
"At war, the President needs to have the capacity to protect the national security interests and the safety of the American people."
George W. Bush, defending
military tribunals, December 5, 2001
"Many of the steps we have now been forced to take will become permanent in American life. I think of it as the new normalcy."
Vice President Dick Cheney,
October 25, 2001
"To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends."
Attorney General Ashcroft, Senate Judiciary
Committee hearings, December 2001
Consider this: The federal police contact an immigrant and say, If you do not inform on the views and activities of people in your mosque, we can consider you non-cooperative and suspect. We have the power to arrest you, take you to prison, hold you for months without charges, interrogate you without a lawyer, take you to a military court for trial in secret, and, if we choose, even execute you without ever informing anyone, including your family or the press.
Can any decent person tolerate this?
Consider this: Based on the opinion of George W. Bush, any person who is not a citizen of the U.S. could be brought to trial before a military tribunal, held in secrecy on a U.S. military base. The accused would have no right to choose their own lawyers, no right to see evidence or witnesses offered against them, no right to publicly protest their treatment, no right to appeal their punishment. There would be no civilian jury, and a simple majority of the military officers hearing the case would be enough to send someone to their death.
This system of military tribunals for non-citizens, inside and outside the U.S., accused of "terror"-related crimes has been created in the U.S. by Presidential decree. The fine details are now being written by the Strangelove-ian Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon team.
How can people accept that with the stroke of a pen, 20 million immigrants in the U.S. are denied their Constitutional rights? Who can accept the right of the U.S. government to snatch, try and execute anyone around the world at will?
Consider this: A future Supreme Court decision overturns Roe v. Wade, and underground networks help progressive medical professionals travel the country providing abortions. Will it be good or bad that Attorney General Ashcroft can now track the movement of women's doctors at airports. Or that the now-federal airport guards can paw through bags looking for suspicious medical instruments? Would it be good or bad that the Justice Department will know every time a teenage woman flies alone from her home town to some state where abortion is available, and can monitor by video who meets her at the airport?
Consider this: Though it is increasingly clear that the anthrax came from someone with access to U.S. military anthrax, there are no FBI dragnets against rightwing networks in the military for clues on the anthrax murders. Why? Is it because the political climate around "terrorism" is being manipulated to serve larger ruling class agendas--both internationally and domestically--and raids on military rightists don't fit that scenario? And, if such investigations were pursued, how high would they go?
Consider this: What is the meaning of elections in a society where the so-called representatives of the people in Congress learn about major changes in the legal system on TV? What does it mean when a President from a stolen election gets a blank check from Congress for an open-ended war that could last for 20 years?
Remembering the consolidation of Nazism in Germany, Pastor Martin Niemoeller wrote: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
rwor.org
Write: Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 773-227-4066 Fax: 773-227-4497
(The RW Online does not currently communicate via email.)