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It's a quest for prosecutorial fire aimed at terrorists, but it's burning basic Constitutional rights, searing civil liberties and scorching our very way of life.
It started with the wholesale roundup and detention of more than 1,000 people. Nearly all are Middle Eastern men, and not one of them has been charged with any crime linked to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Oh, that's okay, pundits from the left and right rang out. These are extraordinary times and we must have the tools to pursue the guilty. Besides, they're only immigrants, they're guests here, and what rights should they have anyway?
And then we heard those old refrains, "We should trust our government to do the right thing and be fair," and "These powers will not be abused." The usual chorus of right-wing wackos -- professional anti-government types -- was strangely silent.
Watching President Bush's soaring numbers in the polls, the gutless wonders in Congress, with a few noble exceptions, made not a whimper as Justice Department lawyers plotted even greater excesses.
The next trampling on basic rights came when Attorney General John Ashcroft signed an executive order permitting eavesdropping on conversations between lawyers and their detained and uncharged clients. Again the public, pundits and most of the legal community naps through the assault on the Constitution.
How do these actions resonate abroad in nations whose help we need in combating terrorism? How do we fight to preserve the values embodied in the Constitution against an enemy who hates them while we set aside those very values in the pursuit of that enemy? This is a serious credibility problem that threatens vital alliances while doing nothing to halt the threat of terrorism.
Not satisfied with the extraordinary powers already in hand, Ashcroft demands and gets more. So far, the Justice Department has failed to name, charge or indict a single person in connection with the terrorist attacks, but each week the department gets a new, sweeping, and dangerous power to get that job done.
Now Ashcroft invokes wartime powers to try the culprits he has failed to nab. It's obvious the Attorney General is a bit ahead of himself here, but certainly his lackeys in Congress and the media are not going to point this out. People might think and the manufactured consent might falter.
The answer to terrorism now is the military tribunal. What the bright lights in the Department of Justice have cooked up for suspected terrorists is as easy a sell politically as it is terribly chilling.
Foreign nationals, presumably Al Qaeda members and fellow travelers, will be judged by special military tribunals. The President alone gets to decide who faces this Orwellian delight.
Again, let's keep independent judges out of these matters. They tend to delay things and gum up the works.
Here are a few of the guiding principles of the military tribunals. First of all, the proceedings can be held in secret. That's right. We should be afraid of the oxymoronic notion of military justice in the light, let alone the dark.
The defendant may or may not get the lawyer of his choice. The military will decide.
No unanimous verdict is necessary, and neither is guilt required to be determined beyond a reasonable doubt. Provisions for appeal may not be provided and, of course, executions are allowed. We'll get to that later.
The administration defends the planned tribunals in the abstract, although some real defendants would give their case a better ring of realism.
"Those who plot against our country will not be allowed to abuse our protections or our freedoms," Vice President Cheney bellowed.
I wonder if the Vice President includes any of his billionaire buddies from Saudi Arabia, whose money helped fund the Taliban, as "those who plot against our country."
Ashcroft -- again proving he's no Ramsey Clark or Elliott Richardson, former Attorneys General who showed reverence for the Constitution -- noted, "Foreign terrorists who commit war crimes against the United States, in my judgment, are not entitled to and do not deserve the protection of the American Constitution."
Well, what can you say when the Attorney General so blithely dismisses the presumption of innocence and points to a system of criminal justice more suited for, let us say, the Taliban rule in Afghanistan than the cradle of democracy?
What is to be gained by all this other than political advantage and pounding legal gorilla dust? Conservative political pundit William Safire confronts the Ashcroft liberty assault in a New York Times column entitled "Seizing dictatorial power."
Safire urges conservative iconoclasts and card-carrying hard-liners to fight the power grab and "stand up for American values." Few conservatives have, and most liberals just sit back and say they're willing to sacrifice some freedoms for safety and national security.
And that's the really big lie. None of the assaults on civil liberties are bringing those responsible for the violence to justice and none of this nonsense will protect us from future threats.
Remember, it didn't take a military tribunal to convict Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and Ramzi Yousef for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Good police work caught up with them and they're both serving life terms.
Timothy McVeigh waged a personal war against the U.S. government and he was caught, convicted in a civil trial and given the death penalty he wanted to advance his cause. Other than the FBI's withholding of evidence, the system worked without new powers for the prosecution.
Now, the Spanish have captured a man they believe is a major Al Qaeda figure. But guess what? He's staying there and will not be extradited to the United States. The reason is that Spain and all the other nations in the European Union will not extradite suspects to countries that practice the death penalty.
That means if the French nab bin Laden, he'll rot in a jail there for decades, eating stale baguettes, drinking Perrier and watching Jerry Lewis movies. That's a better punishment than the martyrdom he craves and our government will so willingly provide.
Justice in all democracies is flawed. We don't need terrorists to show us how to make it worse.