From Bush/McCain: Americans are to abandon civil liberties to protect American "Freedoms"

Here's two stories this morning that show the wrong-headedness and the anti-democratic anti-American manner in which the Bush administration is trying to defend America from "Terrorists." The first is from a McClatchy investigation into the manner in which people are rounded up, imprisoned, and subjected to abuse and imprisoned for indeterminate periods with no way of getting a review of the reason for their imprisonment.

It's not that the imprisonment is always wrong. It's that when it is wrong, it is never questioned, and that along with the imprisonment goes a great deal of abuse to anyone not seen as "cooperating" in the manner the authorities expect and demand. The Bush system is remarkably similar to the way the secret police of the Russian Czars used to arbitrarily arrest and imprison individuals alleged to be threats to the Russian government. What's wrong with it? Here's a description of what the McClatchy investigation has shown:

An eight-month McClatchy investigation of the detention system created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has found that the U.S. imprisoned innocent men, subjected them to abuse, stripped them of their legal rights and allowed Islamic militants to turn the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba into a school for jihad.

Today's McClatchy article is entitled "America's prison for terrorists often held the wrong men."

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.

Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo. [Snip]

One former administration official said the White House's initial policy and legal decisions "probably made instances of abuse more likely. ... My sense is that decisions taken at the top probably sent a signal that the old rules don't apply ... certainly some people read what was coming out of Washington: The gloves are off, this isn't a Geneva world anymore."

This is what the U.S. Supreme Court just rejected. But the demand for arbitrary and unreviewed arrests, detention and abuse of suspected terrorists is strongly supported by the entire Republican Party including John McCain.

The Republican Party has no competences on which to base runs for election and power, so they have to resort to frightening voters and saying "We'll do anything to get elected protect Americans (so that we can keep power.)

This use of fear to extend government arbitrary power in democracies is not unique to the United States. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Labor Party are using exactly the same set of arguments to turn Great Britain into a surveillance state ruled by an arbitrary non-democratic government. But as Glenn Greenwald points out, Great Britain has some politicians willing to stand up to defend traditional British freedoms. Here is the opening of his discussion of British politicians as contrasted to the craven American politicians.

The intense and escalating political dispute in Britain over civil liberties is interesting in its own right, but it also vividly illustrates how craven and barren our own political system -- and the U.S. Democratic Party -- have become. The sacrifices now being made by British politicians of all parties in opposition to expanded government detention and surveillance powers is, with a few noble exceptions, exactly what our political elite in the Bush era have been -- and still are -- too afraid or too craven to undertake. As the Democratic Party prepares this week to endorse the Bush administration's illegal spying program and immunize telecoms which deliberately broke our surveillance laws for years, these contrasts become even more acute.

The current Republican leaders fear and hate democracy, openness in government, and the right of individuals to demand accounting from their political leaders. This can be seen in the consistent Republican efforts to restrict voters to those who keep them in office by voter suppression methods like strict voter ID laws. The shrieking and complaining from the Republicans over the Supreme Court Decision to allow Guantanamo prisoners access to the federal courts for habeas corpus is exactly about this demand that they not ever be questioned in their arbitrary and often illegal government decisions. The most striking complaint was from Justice Scalia in his dissent where he stated that granting Guantanamo detainees access to habeas corpus “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

Here, from Andy Worthington, is how the Bush administration and the Republican Party accomplished the avoidance of oversight and review:

The Detainee Treatment Act (DTA), which originated as an anti-torture bill conceived by Senator John McCain, was hijacked by the executive, who managed to get an amendment passed that removed the prisoners' habeas rights, although the legislation was so shoddy that it was not entirely clear whether the prisoners had been stripped of their rights entirely, or whether pending cases would still be considered. What was clear, however, was that the DTA limited any review of the prisoners' cases to the DC Circuit Court (rather than the Supreme Court), preventing any independent fact-finding to challenge the substance of the administration's allegations, and mandating the judges to rule only on whether or not the CSRTs had followed their own rules, and whether or not those rules were valid.

For the Rule of Law to exist, laws must be enforced, and for them to be enforced they have to be questioned for fairness as they are applied. The only alternative to a government by the Rule of Law is a government run based on the arbitrary whims of the leaders. Democracy cannot long exist in such a leader-oriented tyrannical environment. Elections are not democracy. Saddam Hussein had elections every so often. Democracy requires laws which the public generally accepts as just. Those laws must be based on a Constitution of basic law and those laws must be enforced by institutions (especially an independent judiciary - look at Pakistan) that make the Rule of Law apply to real people as they interact with government.

The fact is that America is losing its way as a democracy (or as a constitutional democratic Republic if you must be picky) under the 9/11-panicked Bush administration and its conservative backers. Not all of those conservative backers are Republican, either. Guantanamo is only one example of how American is losing its way.

John McCain, by his objection to the recent Supreme Court ruling requiring habeas corpus access to the federal courts for Guantanamo detainees is on the Bush administration side in this debate. McCain would do nothing to change the very worst elements of the Bush legacy. No surprise, he has to attract the previous Bush supporters plus a lot of independent voters to get elected President. But it's also his nature to be autocratic and Imperial. He really is running as Bush/Cheney's third term on a platform of leading America deeper into the ditch the Bush administration has dug.