Freedom Might Be Lost in the Words
It seems to me that the causes of liberty and freedom outweigh security. It seems to me that for the entire life of our nation our soldiers have fought believing it was freedom that they were fighting for, sacrificing their most basic security, their lives. Shadow governments comprised only of Executive agents and the suspension of habeas corpus for citizens seems so reminiscent of the “evil” in the evil empires we pitted our freedoms against.
It seems to me that the Executive branch of our government is subverting the constitution and is presenting a greater threat to freedom and liberty than our Islamic friends and enemies. Here’s a little quote that seems to fit… “The office of Homeland Security was founded by Tom Ridge, one of George Bush’s lieutenants, in April 2002. As a nucleus he used the FBI and CIA, but he extended it greatly, removed from it all legal and constitutional restraints, and gave the organization its name. Its new purpose was to persecute all political opponents of the Bush regime (including dissenting Americans), not only defensively, in cases of oppositional acts, but also preventively, in cases of suspected or potential opposition. In this role, the Homeland Security was to collaborate with the FBI, or now the Security Service, an organization of the Executive government; the FBI did the intelligence work that served as the basis for Homeland Security operations. Suspects were arrested and usually placed in secret federal prisons. It was at the Homeland Security's discretion whether or not the arrested were brought to trial and whether or not they were released if acquitted.” Of course it is not a quote. I changed the names, like “Homeland Security” for Gestapo and “FBI” for SS, in this Encarta Article.
The notion of Habeas Corpus is one of the oldest rights within the Common Law that unites all English speaking peoples. It is our greatest protection against dictatorship. In 1215 the Magna Carta first codified that "no free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed . . . except by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land." In 1641the Habeas Corpus Act provided that no man could be put on trial except before the Courts "by due process and writ original according to the old law of the land." The common law further allowed the right to be informed of reasons for arrest, the right to a fair trial, the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and most importantly the right to face their accuser. From these simple notions we were blessed with the Bill of Rights, our constitution. Article I, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution provides that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except in cases of rebellion or invasion. So what about Padilla?
In time of war a nation must proceed in ways that at other times might be construed unreasonable, certainly externally or invaded, and may be excused certain grievous mistakes like the American concentration camps for citizens of Japanese ethnicity. We now know what a national shame those errors were.
Why repeat them? “Are we at war?”, a prominent professor at OSU recently asked me. I wonder. It’s a matter of perspective, to some I would suppose, we are always at war our freedoms and rights are always threatened by a faceless enemy. And to some the real threat is always internal, the people, ask J. Edgar Hoover, and to some like Thomas Jefferson and other founding fathers, the real threat is always the government. I would tend to take the side of Washington and Jefferson. Their wisdom has not failed us…so far. So what about Padilla?
It seems pretty strange that the Executive should have pursued these new powers; the power to deem at will a person “an enemy of the state” and hold him without hearing, suspend their right of habeas corpus and hold him incommunicado ‘till, “the President says the war on terror is over”, in the case of Padilla. It would seem that the justice system could have worked just fine on this citizen. I laugh when I read “Padilla alleged such and such…” the fact is he has not been charged with any crime, he was instead named “illegal combatant” i.e., enemy of the state. Why?
It is a failing, perhaps, of mine that I tend to believe the theory of conspiracy theory, that a few people know a whole bunch I don’t know and want to make sure I don’t know. My only excuse is personal experiences with “the powers” during the “war years”, none too pleasant. I also, I guess from a Catholic school kindergarten, feel obliged to connect the dots, though I didn’t always follow the numbers. Anyway, it comes down to this; What is it Padilla knows that the government wishes to silence or what is it the government knows that they don’t wish to reveal? Hmmmmmm.
It really doesn’t matter though, about Padilla himself. It’s the idea that the government can by whim, without trial, imprison and silence a citizen. This follows an earlier erosion of basic rights, the right to face your accuser. It was only a few years ago that the government was given the powers to take a person to trial and not disclose where they received the information or from whom, under the guise of National Security. In other words, evidence from the government had to be accepted as truth and it could not be refuted as the accused was not to be made privy to it, in the name, of course, of National Security.
Couple these un-ratified changes to the constitution with the now revealed “Shadow Government”, a government without Representatives or a Judicial branch, and the Department of Homeland Security (what ever happened to the Department of Defense?) and I worry for my children’s future. If these or any of these changes had been imposed by a foreign government we’d be at war.
So are we at war? I think we need to look at a few of the words being used first. Though Johnson declared “War on Poverty” it’s very difficult to have a “war” on a condition and I think, more so, on a weapon. That’s what terrorism is, a weapon. At least a condition can have forces of the state martial against it. But a weapon, especially the major one in your own arsenal…I don’t think so.
War is on people. Terrorism is fire bombing Dresden, what Zionist Jews did to British folks, Algerians against French, Islamic fundamentalist against the great Satan, American colonialists against the British. Palestinians against Israelis, Israelis against Palestinians, Somebody against US and the most grievous; get me mad and I’ll really nuke you. I suppose terrorism is the first choice of people seeking self determination because it is usually the only weapon at hand. War should not be condoned nor terrorism; but self-determination and freedom is the right of all peoples. The reward should be peace. Sadly in our world this does not seem to work, though it could.
The notion of combatants and civilians is a strange idea too. I suppose Horatius didn’t know of these differentiations when conquering the Sabines nor Sherman in his more recent march to the sea, nor Truman’s devastation of Hiroshima, nor Rabin bombing Palestinian refugee camps. War is always “total war”. It is always abhorrent. It is inherently terrorism.
Just yesterday I heard I curious thing. A commentator was describing one of the awful tragic devastations in Israel. He stated, and was reinforced by several others, that what made these bombings particularly evil were the bombs themselves. Palestinians apparently were actually using rocks and pebbles as shrapnel, I presume because they had nothing else. The commentator went on to say this was proof of how despicable the Palestinians were. I assume that if they were using “nice” U.S. manufactured claymores to remove heads and limbs from their enemy they would be less despicable and not terrorism, sorta regular ordinary war.
The issue ultimately is why the vernacular, “war on terrorism”. I think because it’s carte blanche and can’t be tied to any peoples or anything good. The word War allows the government to evoke “powers” and everybody is opposed to terrorism. It allows the U.S. and others (including recent crack downs on dissidents in China and Cuba) to legitimize any incursion military or otherwise anywhere in the world, Iraq or North Korea or Chicago. It allows any country to label any person or group whether, right or wrong, actively belligerent or suspected to possibly maybe someday be belligerent, a terrorist. It also allows continuation of ancient religious wars without calling them crusades and “outlaws” rebellion regardless of the justice of the masters.
It’s no secret that the folks we are currently hunting and executing are members of a very old fundamentalist Islamic sect, the Wahabi who are also ex-CIA operatives from the old Soviet-Afghan war. The Persian Muhammad ibn Abdul Wahab ibn Suleiman al-Najdi 1111 - 1206 AH (1699 – 1790 A.D.) started this group, it is said, by marrying into an Arabian family. No one else would listen to his crazy notions. His followers have been at war with the “West” and pretty much everyone else since then, especially other Islamic groups. They have two basic tenets beyond a firm puritanical nearly Baptist belief in Islam. Basically that they alone are the keepers of the “true” belief and they must protect Islam and its holy shrines from the infidels and the self-righteous right to label anyone they chose blaspheming idolatrous enemy of Islam. Is it as prophesized, one becomes their enemy? Do we need to become Wahabi to defeat them?
Similarly with these war words we do not translate the name of the group Al-Qeada which I believe means “The Belief”. Wouldn’t it be funny if the Prez said, “We are at war with The Belief”. If I recall correctly Taliban means simply school. “Today we bombed the School.” Our perception of revenge would certainly be altered.
The wrong with this war vernacular is it precludes peace. We do not negotiate with terrorists. We kill them. We do not make peace with terrorists. We kill them, some figuratively most literally. They on the other hand do not make peace with idolaters and infidels, they kill them.
When we label a nation terrorist such as Afghanistan, the Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Palestine we eliminate the potential for compassion, understanding and compromise but worse we forget that a nation is made of people and beliefs, not terrorists.
When we give up freedoms and the basis of our culture we have lost the war, our enemies belief rules our nation. Our leaders have forgotten what we were fighting for when they subvert our constitution. A belief that can not ever be altered by terrorist bombs only by our own words.
On the other side, no misguided or even evil belief or ideology was ever defeated or even deterred by a stone, bomb or gun, but, all have fallen to words and acts of reason, truth and compassion. That should be our weapon in this war of ideology, words and acts of peace and freedom, the strongest belief.