The "State of the Union"
Since September 11, 2001
BY: James Lafferty, Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild, Los Angeles
George Bush says the country is at war, the economy is in recession, and the "state of the union has never been better". I beg to differ.
I believe that, metaphorically speaking, this nation now finds itself standing at the entrance to a dark cave; a cave filled with war and repression and xenophobic nationalism. Just how deep--and full--that cave is, remains to be seen. But if the actions of this government since September 11th are any indication, that cave of war, repression and nationalism, may be the deepest ever experienced by the American people. Am I right? Well, let's review the evidence so far.
It began with the massive round-up, arrest and detention without charges, of well over 1,100 people whose only crimes appear to have been their apparent nationality and religious background, or, at worst, an expired student visa, or bad check charge. And still hundreds are being held indefinitely, in solitary confinement, without benefit of counsel and without any charges having been filed against them. And still more thousands are being called in for questioning by the FBI simply because of their national origin.
These round-ups, carried out with little protest from the general public or the politicians, are reminiscent of the Palmer Raids of 1919-1920, when thousands of aliens across this country were rounded up because of the fear that they might be anarchists or communists, and hundreds were summarily deported. And, of course, we should not forget the incarceration of 110,000 Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, despite the fact that during the entire period of World War II, not a single Japanese-American was ever charged with any act of disloyalty. In this regard, and in this climate, it is well to remember that under the U.S. Constitution, aliens, just like everyone else, enjoy a wide array of rights, including the right to due process.
On September 15th, Congress passed a "joint resolution" under the so-called "war powers act", which gave Bush a blank check to wage war any way he sees fit and even freed him, in advance, of the need to go back to Congress in 60 days, as is required by the act, to get Congresses' continuing approval. So much for the "separation of powers" and the Constitutional mandate that any U.S. war be declared by Congress.
And, there are a couple of additional points to consider relative to the war powers resolution of September 15th: first, there is no apparent distinction made in the resolution between the use of the armed forces at home and abroad, in contravention of a law passed by Congress after the Civil War--and you may have noticed that National Guard troops are already on duty at domestic airports and are about to be assigned to our national borders, as well; and, second, there is no evidence that once and if the terrorist danger passes, matters will return to normal. Indeed, Vice-President Chaney, emerged from hiding long enough to tell the meeting of Republican governors on October 25th that "homeland security"--that's his term--is not a temporary measure for the current crisis, but--and I quote--"will become permanent in American life." "I think of it as the new normalcy", Chaney said.
Then came the new USA Patriot Act, which passed the Senate 98 to 1 and the House 357 to 66. Among but a few of the more Draconian features of this bi-partisan legislation are the following: a) it permits the disclosure of traditionally secret grand jury testimony to federal agencies; b) it permits "roving wire taps"; c) it permits the seizure of voice mail messages and permits Internet service providers to disclose the e-mail of their customers--that's you and me; d) it permits "sneak and peek" searches that allow your home, or my home, to be searched while we're at work and they don't even half to tell us about it before or after the fact; e) and, of some interest I hope to this campus, it amends the General Education Provisions of the National Education Statistics Act to provide for the disclosure of students' records to the Attorney General of the United States; f) perhaps most Draconian of all, it allows an alien to be detained indefinitely without trial, so long as the government brings the detained alien before a court every 6 months and says why it still wants to hold him.
And let's not forget those hundreds of "prisoners of war"--and that's what they are no matter how hard the Bush Administration tries to redefine the term--who are locked away in cages in Guantanamo.
In short, the government has, in effect, since September 11th, simply erased a portion of our First Amendment right to free speech; erased a portion of the Fourth Amendment's prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures; erased a portion of the Fifth Amendment's guaranty of due process; erased a portion of the Sixth Amendment's guaranty of a prompt and public trial; and a portion of the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
At the local level, other repressive laws have been passed in the wake of 9/11. In New York State for example, you can now get 20 years to life for "hindering" the prosecution of a terrorist. (I hope that doesn't apply to the suspected terrorists' lawyer!) And, of course, we're hearing calls for national id cards and the LA City Council--until challenged by the National Lawyers Guild--required anyone entering that hallowed chamber to sign in with their name and address--in clear violation of State law.
Of course, there is also the Presidential Order setting up those military "commissions" to try those accused of terrorism, and while we've been assured by Bush that only aliens need fear these commissions, who knows for sure how far they will reach and, besides, they are unconstitutional even if applied only to aliens. Certainly, the use of secret evidence in trials, already taking place in immigration courts before September 11th, is now expected to grow dramatically in the aftermath of September 11th.
Consider, too, the evidence flowing from the media's role in this new war and new assault on civil liberties. Former Senator Hiram Johnson used to say that "the first casualty when war comes is truth". Of course, one way to guard against that is to have a strong and independent media that is willing and able to bring the truth to the American people about the war. Certainly, for all of its limitations, the media played a key role in helping the American people come to understand that the war in Vietnam was not, despite what the government said, really in our national interest. But no sooner did the US start bombing Afghanistan than the Defense Department purchased the exclusive rights to all of the Afghanistan satellite images taken by the world's best commercial imaging satellite, thereby insuring that US news agencies couldn't show pictures of what was going on in Afghanistan. And the purchase agreement allows the government to keep the pictures secret forever!
Next, the government asked all the major networks not to broadcast unedited videos of Osama bin Laden. And they all quickly agreed. Certainly, network anchors like Dan Rather made it clear where he stood. He told us that Bush was his President and wherever Bush told him to line up, he'd do it. Fox News went one better and openly declared its support for the war and has now wrapped itself in so many American flags and spent so much of its air time presenting an outrageously distorted view of the war and the reasons for it that, you guessed it, its ratings are now higher than CNN's. (Not that CNN has been much better.) And when pictures began to emerge of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, tv executives let it be known that they didn't think it was "appropriate" to be showing pictures of civilian casualties overseas "so soon after the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings". Of course, were they to show those pictures people in this country might begin to question the propriety of the massive U.S. bombing campaign and, worse yet, see the "enemy" as human beings.
And then those of censorious mind went after entertainers who dared to question US policy. And entertainers like Bill Maher and Danny Glover, and musicians like Rage Against the Machine and cartoonists like Aaron McGruder, creator of "Boondocks", were all suddenly persona non grata for their perceived "unpatriotic" acts, or remarks. Not wanting to be outdone, The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, founded by Lynn Chaney, the V.P.'s wife and Senator Joseph Lieberman, quickly issued a report that identified over 117 statements made by college professors around the country which, in their opinion, were unpatriotic statements. And their report urged alumni to bring pressure on college administrations to, in turn, pressure their faculty to get behind the war effort. Shades of Nixon's "enemies list", or Joseph McCarthy's too-numerous-to-list-list of suspected communists?
But the evidence of repression doesn't end there. The government is now also going after companies that host dissenting Internet sites. After all, under the pressure of the USA Patriot Act, which allows the government to prosecute and seize the property of any company that, "helps," "supports," or does anything that can be called or labeled supportive of terrorism, many Internet service companies are now closing down questionable web sites. In the last couple of weeks, the "Raise the Fist" anarchist web site in L.A. has been removed from the Internet. Another web site was recently closed for offering "inappropriate material" to its viewers. The "inappropriate material" in question? it offered video taped speeches by people prominent critics of the government such as author Noam Chomsky and historian Howard Zinn and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. All of this as White House Spokesman Ari Fleischer warned reporters in a White House briefing that, "people have to watch what they say and watch what they do."
Finally, let's consider some of the evidence in support of my claim that we are experiencing a very unhealthy nationalism in this country and that it poses what may well be the gravest threat of all to our freedoms. And here I'm speaking of the rampant and xenophobic nationalism that has swept this country. I'm not just talking about the proliferation of plastic American flags on car antennas, or flags on clothing and bill boards. I'm talking about the over-all prevailing mood among the populous that, "America can do no wrong"; and, "the Hell with what the rest of the world thinks". A nation that quietly and approvingly accepts racial profiling, secret trials with secret evidence, a clearly biased and willingly uninformed news media, and the notion that those who oppose the Administration's actions are somehow "un-American", is a nation in danger of losing its freedom. A nation that demonstrates a knee-jerk willingness to back a president who draws ever-shifting lines-in ever-shifting sands and reserves to himself and his cronies the right to decide which nation and which resident of this nation is on "our" side and which is not, is a nation in danger of losing its freedom. A nation whose education secretary calls for 52 million public school children to all recite the Pledge of Allegiance simultaneously on the same day; a nation where dozens of school districts are now openly defying the Supreme Court ban on prayer in school; a nation that creates something called the "Office of Homeland Security"; and a nation that refuses to address the question, "why do they hate us?" except to respond, "they hate our democratic form of government," is a nation ripe for repression and a so-called "war on terrorism" that threatens to engulf much of the world.
And this brings me to my final point: my claim that the Bush Administration and his corporate sponsors, have set us upon a course of "permanent war". In Bush's State of the Union address, he borrowed the famous line, first used by Mussolini, to talk of "an evil axis" of Iraq and Iran and North Korea. Indeed, the list of countries currently deemed to be on the wrong side of that line-in-the-sand, now numbers over 20 nations and, as I said before, keeps shifting and only King George the II is allowed to say who's with us and who's against us; only Bush is allowed to determined who's picture gets put on that "wanted dead or alive" sign he loves to talk about in his down-home-cowboy style.
Remember, during the Vietnam War, almost from the beginning, every administration would say, "there's a light at the end of the tunnel". But not Bush, or Chaney, or Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz. Their message is the exact opposite: they predict a war without end and talk approvingly of this new repressive state of affairs becoming "the new normalcy"!
Why is this so? Why such a bleak outlook? Is it just to prepare the American people for the reality that lies ahead if, as I suspect, the U.S. government continues on its current path? Yes, that's certainly one reason. But, I believe, there's also a more insidious reason behind the Administration's bleak outlook. I believe that they are not really anxious to see this war come to any sort of official "end"; rather, that its a war they intend to spread to other countries and continue for as long as it suits them to do so, or until the American people and the rest of the world stop them. So, they have no real incentive to talk about the war's end.
And why do they have no incentive to talk about the war's end? Well, I think they have been pleasantly surprised to see how willing the American people are--so long as the war continues--to give them a blank check. A blank check to up the military budget to half a trillion dollars a year by 2007. A blank check to pass so-called "free trade" acts that give our very sovereignty away to the multi-national corporations and unelected world trade bodies. A blank check to cut the taxes of the rich, even though America is already, economically, the most non-equalitarian nation in the industrialized world. A blank check to restrict the basic freedoms of Americans and to silence those pesky global justice protesters who keep demonstrating about Third-World debt and the environment and run-away corporate power. A blank check to turn Social Security over to their buddies on Wall Street. A blank check to allow religiously run private charities to deliver the social services that government should be providing. A blank check to finally put prayer in every class room, and to once again force women to go overseas to get an abortion. And the list could go on and on. In short, to use the cover of war to silence those who might dare to oppose any of their domestic policies, and especially to silence those who might dare to oppose this permanent new war itself. I realize what I've just said sounds awfully cynical. But as that great comedienne and social commentator Lily Tomlin says, "no matter how cynical you get, its almost impossible to keep up".
Well, I'm old enough to remember McCarthyism and the civil rights movement in the south and the Vietnam War and I will tell you this: I have never in my lifetime been as fearful of a full-blown repression settling over this country and being viewed, as V.P. Chaney might put it, as "the new normalcy", as I am right now. After all, when repression comes to any country it doesn't descend upon it in one fell swoop. Rather, it comes incrementally and at first only its early victims notice its arrival. But then one day we can all wake up to find that Chaney's "new normalcy" has descended upon us all, and that the repression is complete.
Whether the current state of affairs becomes, in fact, the new normalcy, is, of course, up to us; whether we are entering a period of holy war without end, is up to us; whether we are, by our actions around the world today creating the conditions that breed more and more terrorists willing to sacrifice their own lives to end our political and cultural hegemony in this world, is up to us. Because as this war unfolds and spreads, I believe more and more of our people will come to learn, through experience, that their lives are becoming less safe, not more safe. Because, as this war unfolds and spreads, I believe more and more of us will come to learn the real reasons why they hate us, and come to understand that it is in our best interests, as well as theirs, to stop the cycle of war and exploitation and repression. When that day comes, and only then, will we be ready--if we have the will to do so--to leave that cave of war and repression and disfigured nationalism that I spoke of at the start.
But its all up to us--and especially your generation. For enlightenment to come and peace and freedom to prevail, we must all insist upon, and fight for, our right to engage in the fullest possible debate over the right course of action for our nation to take. The question is not whether we will, "rally around the flag". The question is will we, "rally around the Constitution". When our nation lets loose its bombs on the next civilian population--perhaps in Iraq, or the Philippines, or in the Sudan, we've got to say what some of the victims of the Trade Center attack have said: "not in my name"; when the next batch of foreign looking residents of this nation are rounded up for questioning, or detention, we've got to stand up and say "not in my name"; and when anyone in this country who dares to speak out in defense of liberty and in opposition to endless war is silenced by the government for doing so, we've got to be willing to take their place and say, "not in my name".
The stakes have never been higher. The danger to liberty and world peace has never been greater. Now, more than ever, those who can still think and still speak and still act must do so. They, you and I, must all work tirelessly to re-shape America's actions and policies so that it is our ideas, and not our bombs, that win the day abroad; and, to re-shape America's actions and policies so that it is our political freedom, and not reactionary "patriot acts", that win the day at home, as well. On behalf of that great day, I wish us all every success!