By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, originally published on CounterPunch.org, 8/13/06
Unless November’s new blood improves
the Democratic Party’s civil liberties pedigree, the Democrats
will have failed even before they are sworn in next January.
In its disregard for truth,
public opinion, the separation of powers, the Geneva Conventions,
the US Constitution and statutory law, the Bush administration
has been more of a regime than an administration. The Bush/Cheney
executive branch has operated independently of all the constraints
that provide accountability and prevent despotism.
The Bush regime was able to
evade these restraints, because Republicans controlled both houses
of Congress and because Republicans wielded 9/11 as a weapon
to forestall political opposition.
With signing statements and
other unilateral declarations of presidential authority, the
Bush regime asserted executive branch powers beyond the reach
of Congress and the judiciary.
The Bush regime was a coup
d’etat against the Bill of Rights and the jurisdictions of
Congress and the courts. Unless Democrats roll back this coup,
Americans have seen the last of their civil liberties.
Judging by Democrats’ statements
in the flush of their electoral victory, Democrats have little,
if any, awareness of this critical fact. Democrats are anxious
to get on with their agendas and have shown no recognition that
the first order of business is to repeal the legislation that
permits torture, warrantless detention and domestic spying.
If Bush threatens to veto the
resurrection of US civil liberty, the Democrats can impeach Bush
as a tyrant as well as for pushing America into an illegal and
catastrophic war on the basis of lies and deception.
Bush is the most impeachable
president in American history. However, the incoming Speaker
of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has declared impeachment to be “off
the table.” Obviously, this means that Bush will not be
held accountable and that the Bill of Rights is a casualty of
the vague, undefined, and propagandistic “war on terror.”
Do Pelosi and the incoming
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have the intellect and character
to deliver the leadership required for Americans to remain a
free people? Instead of bemoaning the damage Bush has done to
civil liberty, Democrats are up in arms over one child in five
being raised in poverty. The more important question is whether
children are being raised as a free people protected by civil
liberties from arbitrary government power.
Do Democrats share the delusion
of Bush supporters that it is only Middle Eastern terrorists
who are deprived of the protection of the US Constitution? One
can understand the reluctance of Americans to extend constitutional
protection to terrorists who are trying to kill Americans. However,
without these protections, there is no way of ascertaining who
is a terrorist.
Currently, a “terrorist”
is anyone given that designation by any of a large number of
unaccountable government officials and military officers. No
evidence has to be provided in order to detain a designated suspect.
Moreover, designated suspects can be convicted in military tribunals
on the basis of secret evidence not made available to them or
to any legal representation that they might be able to secure.
In other words, you are guilty if charged.
As the case of US citizen Jose
Padilla makes clear, these gestapo police state proceedings apply
to Americans. Padilla was declared to be an “enemy combatant.”
He was held in a US prison for three and one-half years with
no charges and no warrant. He was kept in isolated confinement,
tortured, and denied legal representation.
In order to avoid US Supreme
Court jurisdiction over the case, the Bush regime filed charges
after stealing three and one-half years of Padilla’s life. However,
the charges have no relationship to the Bush regime’s original
allegations that Padilla, an Hispanic-American, was an al Qaeda
operative who was going to set off a radioactive dirty bomb in
an American city. The US government no longer designates Padilla
as an “enemy combatant.” The dirty bomb charge has
disappeared, and US Federal District Judge Marcia Cooke has criticized
the government’s indictment as vague with sketchy evidence “weak
on facts.”
The reason that the Bush regime
wants to detain people indefinitely without evidence is that
it has no evidence. The reason the Bush regime passed torture
legislation is in order to produce the missing evidence by torturing
a suspect into self-incrimination. “Evidence” procured
by torture has been illegal in civilized societies for centuries.
But the Bush regime has resurrected the medieval rack and substituted
it for the Bill of Rights.
If Democrats cannot bring themselves
to rectify the inhumane and barbaric practices that now pass
for US justice, then they, too, have failed the American people.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of
National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com