America is standing on the edge of a dark, dark place. Your leaders in Washington and your friends in the mass media aren't going to help you find your way back. You're going to need to take the reins yourself for a while.
September 11 started the war. When will it end? Maybe never. Where is the battlefield? The entire world, including the United States. Who is an enemy combatant? Anyone the President says is an enemy combatant, including a U.S. citizen--no need for a charge, no need for a trial, no need for access to a lawyer. What if they're found not to be an enemy combatant? We can keep them in prison anyway, and we don't have to tell their families they're alive or their lawyers that they were cleared. What can you do to an enemy combatant? Anything you want. Detain him forever, for the rest of his life, because this is a war like any other and we have always been able to detain POWs for the duration of the war. But you don't need to follow the Geneva Conventions, because this is a war like no other in our history. And oh yes--if the President decides that we need to torture a prisoner for the war effort, it's unconstitutional for Congress to stop him. They took that position in an official memo, and they have not backed down from it. They have said it was "unnecessary" but they have never backed down from it.
They are not only entitled to do these things to people; they are entitled to do them in secret. When Congress asks for information about them, they can just ignore it. And they are entitled to actively deceive the public about all this.
That's the power they claim. At what point are we going to take that claim seriously?
Pretend for a moment that it's late February, 1933 and you're in Germany. Government has never been more divided, with bitter competition between Nazis and Communists to control their "congress." Your leader is clearly out to expand and consolidate the powers of his office. Opposition is increasingly demonized as dangerously obstructionist. Nebulous threats of unseen enemies justify all manner of atrocious acts. You're starting to become a little concerned about where things are headed...
What would you do? What have we learned from the rise of tyranny in that era? How did the citizens of that time and place fail to protect themselves?
Don't get me wrong, I don't think we're facing their situation, at least not yet. Some important differences remain. 1933's Reichstag voted dictatorial powers to Hitler, while our own Patriot Act is struggling to find support. Hitler had storm troopers to seize the Reichstag, while Bush doesn't yet seem able to send anyone up to Capitol Hill to do away with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Hitler's public approval was high and steady, while Bush's is low and trending generally downward.
Some alarm bells are ringing. Nevertheless, we need to look carefully at the path we're on.
Bush seems to regard the law as an inconvenience, something to be overcome to reach his goals. He's surrounded himself with people hand-picked to reinterpret it. At this point, he thinks he can intercept any communications he likes, take anyone off the street (U. S. citizens included), disappear them to hidden prisons and hold them uncharged with no access to courts or lawyers, forever, where they can be tortured or killed at his discretion.
Now, we're supposed to take him at his word that he's the "good guys," and he'll never do these things for the wrong reasons. Three problems here. First, he's demonstrably lied about so much (easy one - ask him about his TANG days), there's really no hope that we'll ever be able to trust what he says again. Second, the Constitution was built precisely to create a nation where this sort of thing couldn't happen. Making it happen flies in the face of the basic tenets of American government. Third, even if he's above the base nature of most men (which I doubt - offer him a drink and see what happens), the road he's busily paving could easily be walked by less scrupulous people at some point in the future.
We must turn aside from this path.
George W. Bush must be impeached, and the damage he's done must be unmade. His specious legal arguments need the full scrutiny and discourse of our best jurists. His hidden tactics need to be brought forward and judged. The cloak of his politics needs to be stripped away from whatever truths he's concealed, and he needs to be held accountable for his decisions. If he cannot bear these things, then he is no leader, and he is certainly no American.
If his best efforts in the interests of this nation can't stand the objective light of day, then what in the world are we doing? If we do not at least try to right our course, then who have we become?
[Cross-posted at Chaos Digest]