Rights and Freedoms
I just heard on the news tonight that Tom Ridge, our shadowy director of homeland insecurity, has asked that Congress review the Posse Comitatus Law, which forbids the military from serving as police.
I have not done more than mutter when our public servants imprisoned an unknown number of people for no known crime and kept them incommunicado, because that was when we were still afraid after 9/11.
I have not protested as much as I should when the monstrous PATRIOT act was passed, giving government authorities unprecedented powers to search anybody in the country, and basic civil liberties were removed or suspended.
I was deeply angered by the administration's insistence on having the power to try foreign nationals before military tribunals instead of through our justice system. But when I heard about using the military as police, I am more frightened than ever.
"Trust us!" the government says. "We are good men and true, and we have your protection at heart." I could trust that better were the administration's words backed up by actions. Just to note a few things they're hoping we'll forget:
What happened to Bin Laden? Wasn't he the man we were determined to get...and now, the administration says he was never the goal? What about Bush's promise to never, ever use martial law against American citizens, but that guy from Chicago who was arrested for thinking about making a dirty bomb (and that we have no evidence that he could even do such a thing) is being retained as a prisoner of war even though he's an American citizen?
How about super bad guy John Walker Lindh, who got a plea bargain and the commentators are now arguing the government never had enough evidence to convict him anyway? What about our wholesale disregard for human rights of foreigners? Our military's inability to admit mistakes in bombing civilians in Afghanistan? I don't even have to get into the lies we're being fed on the business scandals enveloping the White House.
Tom Ridge says it's highly unlikely we'd use military people for police. I'm sorry; I can't trust him. This administration has a very poor history on how it deals with power. In virtually every circumstance, their enhanced power has been used, and it's been used without check, without oversight, and from the perspective of this citizen, without thought.
And what about the tendency of the administration to threaten us with hints of terrorist activity every time there's a good chance of bad press? So far, we've seen one lone gunman in the ten months since 9/11.
We are increasing the power of one of the least trustworthy administrations since Warren G. Harding. I don't want to seem paranoid, but an administration whose legitimacy rests on a stolen election, where the military supports them out of proportion to the support from the civilian population, and whose popularity may fall dramatically because of economic scandal....
Am I the only citizen who fears that our current administration may use their new powers for a coup d'etat?
We already have disappearances, arbitrary and indefinite detentions, and denying individuals access to their lawyers.
Mr. Ridge: NO!!! To further entanglements of the military into civilian affairs. NO!!! To giving the executive branch more power to make determinations of law without oversight. I do not want to take one more step into banana republic-dom.
Robert Dushay, PhD
American Citizen
"First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was neither, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me."
-- Martin Niemoeller
(1892-1984)
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