Our freedoms, supposedly what we're fighting to protect, have been snatched from us, mostly in secret, by the Bush Administration. The concept of habeas corpus -- of justifying to a court why someone has been arrested -- is dead. The right to a jury trial: dead. The prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment (i.e., torture): dead. Attorney-client confidentiality: dead. Guaranteed access to a lawyer: dead. Right of privacy in one's home: dead. Letter and email privacy: dead. And so on. All these police-state actions are in violation of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Articles of the Bill of Rights.
Under a cockamamie theory that a president can ignore or violate laws whenever he claims he's acting as "commander-in-chief" during "wartime," Bush has: authorized secret "disappearances" and tortures of suspected "terrorists," including American citizens; has established a network of secret CIA prisons around the world; has authorized "extraordinary renditions" of suspects to countries that specialize in especially brutal torture. Police agents can enter your home, tap your phones, peek into your computer and emails (and now snail-mail) -- and are not required to present a court warrant or even tell you that you are being subjected to an investigation. The Constitution is in shreds.
The Republican Party for most of its modern life (especially after Waco) has been vehemently opposed to the federal government amassing too much police power in its hands. But this White House crew these days is after as much power as it can get its hands on -- and is aided in this by their GOP lackeys in Congress and in the corporate-owned mass-media -- and has created huge bureaucracies to snoop and spy on its own citizens.
SO WHAT'S TO BE DONE?
Ordinary Americans have to see politics less as a once-every-election activity and more as an ongoing, daily campaign to save our country. That means actively opposing the worst of CheneyBush policies, of course, but it also means constantly letting Democratic leaders and our members of Congress know how we feel about their vacillations and timidity; we must hold their feet to the fire and demand that they truly act differently than the Republicans -- not just with regard to Iraq but to a whole host of domestic and foreign issues, where all too often they have caved in the past and let Karl Rove and his minions roll all over them.
No more. The issues for which we're fighting are far too important for us to slip back into our lethargic, let-someone-else-do-it mode. Keeping democracy alive and well ultimately is up to us, each of us.
In the Vietnam-War era, five different presidents were told by their national-security experts that there was no chance for the U.S. to win a stalemated war with guerrillas in that country, but those presidents persisted in the disastrous folly anyway. More than 54,000 U.S. troops and an estimated two million Vietnamese died in the slaughter before the Americans conceded that they had made a terrible error. Unless the Democrats, and the rest of us, step up now to stop Bush's non-sensical escalation of the Iraq War, a similar catastrophe awaits.
The Democrats have to be warned in no uncertain terms about their responsibilities with regard to rescuing our troops in Iraq. Either act as an authentic Opposition Party should, or risk being abandoned in 2008 by the activist base that returned them to power. Perhaps the prospect of the incumbent Democrats reverting to non-relevancy, with the Republicans back in the majority with their boots once again on the Dems' necks, may finally concentrate their minds on what American voters sent them to Washington to do. #
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at San Diego State and Western Washington State Universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org). To comment: crisispapers@comcast.net .
First published by The Crisis Papers 1/9/07. >> www.crisispapers.org/essays7w/surging.htm
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
