| In the ever widening war against
terrorism, the Justice Department has decided that we can
relax the
attorney client privilege, where matters of terrorism are concerned.
What they are basically trying to do is listen in on conversations between
an attorney and their client - in this case, the alleged terrorist or
co-conspirator. Now, let's just assume for the moment that this is
actually one of those things that we actually should do. Let's just
for the moment believe that the pendulum of justice has swung too far in
favor of protecting the accused, and needs to be balanced.
I'm not saying this is the case, I'm just trying to remove the validity
of the Justice Department's decision from the discussion. The point
I'd like to discuss is how far are we willing to go.
The privacy of the attorney-client relationship is pretty well ensconced
in our law here in America. It's considered to be fundamental in
providing a fair defense. It's rooted in the constitution, in the
fifth amendment, which specifically lays out a citizen's right to not
incriminate themselves.
How far are we willing to go?
We have to start asking ourselves what are the limits to which we are
willing to go to protect ourselves against terrorism, and bring those
responsible for the 9/11 atrocities to justice.
Well, so far we're willing to broadly expand the surveillance
capabilities of the FBI and other agencies without strong judicial
oversight. We seem to believe that the burden of actually making sure
we're not trampling on our civil rights is too heavy to bear where terrorism
is concerned. It's just too heavy in times of war.
Please remember that the FBI has a well documented history of trampling
on civil rights. The FBI kept a lot of files on the members of the
civil rights movement. You remember Martin Luther King don't you?
There was an awful lot of illegal FBI activity directed at this man who was
trying to do nothing more than get equal rights under the law for black
humans living in the united states.
And it didn't matter that they weren't going to use the surveillance
material in a court of law. They didn't need to. The information
was intelligence that could be used advantageously against the civil rights
movement. Foreknowledge of the planned activities, knowledge of the
internal politics within the movement, understanding of their strategy,
advance warning of planned protest dates - all
these things are extremely useful to those who wanted to stop the civil
rights movement.
So, are we willing to allow this to happen again? I simply do not
believe that the FBI would refrain from using privileged information gleaned
by this surveillance. What if this information would put a serial
killer away? Human nature would indicate it is highly unlikely.
Please note that I am not saying that the FBI of today is the FBI
of years gone by. Today's FBI is obviously very different. There
has been a lot of work to reign in the abuses of the past. A lot of
this repair work has been through the use of the courts. The courts
provide the balance mechanism. "Foreign
terrorists who commit war crimes against the United States, in my judgment,
are not entitled to and do not deserve the protections of the American
Constitution, particularly when there could be very serious and important
reasons related to not bringing them back to the United States for
justice ... I think it's important to understand that we are at war
now."
- John Ashcroft, Attorney General
War against whom? According to everything I personally
know at this moment, we're not at war with anyone. No,
according to the
law
that was written, S.J.Res.23, we're not technically at war. We're
just exercising war powers. It takes an actual declaration of
war to be at war. We're just in a pre-war state
Basically what Ashcroft is saying is that, in his opinion,
terrorists don't deserve the constitutional protection that they are
afforded to by right. By simply invoking war powers, we can
apparently ignore fundamental constitutional rights. We're
overthrowing a government without declaring war. Maybe that's
necessary. Maybe it's not. But doesn't this strike anyone else as odd? This is
precisely the same kind of reasoning that we berated Russia and China
for. The formula is:
 |
Declare someone an enemy of the state |
|
Declare that an enemy of the state has no rights |
|
Do what you want to them |
This is not how I was taught that we do things here in these
United States of America.
In this country, we pride ourselves on the rule of law.
As far as I can tell, that fundamental assumption has been thrown out the
door in the pursuit of those terrorists who have committed atrocities
against us.
Quite frankly, I believe this means we have lost. They
have won. The terrorists, communist China and the United States are
now basically operating the same way. We're quickly sliding down the
slippery slope into the garbage pit we professed to be above.
And our congress is doing nothing about it. In the
wake of 9/11/01, our congress was bending over backwards to give the Bush
administration everything they wanted in the fight against terrorism.
A lot of civil libertarians were screaming that things were going too far
and that they'd have a hard time putting the genie back in the bottle.
Well now we see what the genie is doing and no one seems to
remember where the bottle is. The best that we're getting from
congress is a few sound bites which basically say "I, as a congressman, am
concerned" and "I, as a congressman, am not being consulted on this rush to
expand powers of the executive branch".
Gee. What a fat lot of good that will do.
Everyone is still so frickin' afraid of being labeled soft on terrorism that
they can't find the back bone to stand up to such obvious abuse of power.
In the wake of 09/11/01, everyone is scared to death of projecting the image
of "not being behind the president".
Well, wake up people. There are some pretty severe
abuses and destruction of laws that have served us so well in the past.
Compounding one tragedy with yet another doesn't do any good. It just
makes things worse.
You. Yes, you. The person who is reading this.
You are allowing this to happen. Still have your American flags
proudly displayed on your car and on your house? Well, get off your
ass and start writing your congressman and senators and tell them what you
think about this. Get off your good intentions and actually fight for
the values you claim to hold so dear.
It's really easy to display the flag. It takes no
courage what so ever. It takes real courage to stand up and say "NO"
to those who are not simply eroding our precious fabric of laws that make
this country great, but quite frankly are taking a jack hammer to them and
destroying them as we speak.
The next time you see someone talking about this, stand up
and be counted. Don't look at the ACLU with disdain when they start yelping about what's happening to this country. Stop
simply parroting
patriotic slogans and actually start acting like a real American citizen.
While you still can, that is. Because even though I
will be first in line to say "I told you so" when the jack boots start
stomping outside your door, I really wish it won't come to that.
And the only way that will happen is if popular opinion makes a
crystal clear
statement as to the idiocy of throwing away our civil rights in the pursuit
of terrorists.
After all, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Not eternal flag waving. |
