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One-Party Rule and the Corporate Press
Threaten Freedom and Democracy
Will
November Bring Hope or Another Stolen Election?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
In one month we will know if Americans
understand the danger of the Bush administration's fanatical
preoccupation with terrorism combined with one-party control
of the executive and legislative branches. If voters let pass
the opportunity in the November election to take Congress out
of Republican hands, America will experience a more rapid descent
into a police state.
The Bush administration's response
to 9/11, an event about which we have incomplete and unreliable
information, has been to trample important civil liberties such
as habeas corpus, the attorney-client privilege, privacy, due
process, and prohibition against self-incrimination.
Today, "detainees"
incarcerated by US government officials are held indefinitely
without charges or warrants--essentially imprisoned without trial,
denied access to lawyers and family, and tortured in an effort
to attain self-incrimination, while US citizens are spied upon
without court warrants.
These are the distinctive features
of a police state. They have brought President Bush and his government
into conflict with the US Constitution, the Geneva Conventions,
and US statutory law. To sanctify these violations of Constitution,
treaty, and law, last week the US Republican Congress passed
a warrantless surveillance bill and a detainee bill that destroys
privacy and removes court protections and Geneva Conventions
protections from detainees.
Many Americans are unconcerned
about these developments, because they believe only real terrorists
are affected. In fact, the majority of "terrorist detainees"
are innocent people sold to Americans as "terrorists"
for bounties. Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf says, "We
have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars." Amnesty
International's Claudio Cordone says of that organization's report
released September 29, "Bounty hunters, including police
officers and local people, have captured individuals of different
nationalities, often apparently at random, and sold them into
U.S. custody."
Moreover, the definition of
"terrorist suspect" is subject only to the discretion
of the arresting officials. No evidence has to be presented or
even possessed to justify the detention of the person as a terrorist.
As no evidence is required, anyone can be branded a terrorist
suspect.
Consider, also, that laws tend
to be expansively interpreted. For example, the Racketeer Influenced
and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) was intended to apply to
organized crime. Today a RICO claim can arise in almost any context,
including divorce cases. It is applied to individuals, legitimate
businesses, and political protest groups.
President Bush, Vice President
Cheney and a variety of neoconservative and Republican writers
are attempting to broaden the definition of terrorist to include
truthful critics of Bush's Iraq war. On September 29, for example,
the Associated Press reported that Bush said that critics who
claim the Iraq war has made America less safe embrace "the
enemy's propaganda."
In making this charge, Bush
is damning the National Intelligence Estimate prepared by US
intelligence agencies which concluded that the war in Iraq was
making Americans less safe by breeding more terrorism.
If Bush can accuse the CIA
of "embracing terrorist propaganda," any columnist
or reporter who reports truthfully can be put in the "against
us" camp and interred for giving "aid and comfort to
the enemy."
By passing the detainee and
surveillance bills, Congress has given the executive branch the
power to silence dissent. Naive Americans believe that there
is a difference between the government having arbitrary and unaccountable
powers to arrest enemies and using these powers against its own
citizens. But governments always use the powers they gain. Otherwise,
there is no point to the US Constitution, which was written to
restrain the growth of government power. If government can be
trusted with arbitrary and unaccountable power, the US Constitution
has no purpose.
The Democrats, of course, have
done nothing to protect us from Bush's illegal war or from his
assaults on the Constitution and civil liberty. Democrats have
been intimidated by the threat of being politically placed in
the "against us" camp, and Democrats are as much in
the pockets of AIPAC, the oil industry, and the military-industrial
complex as Republicans.
Nevertheless, one-party rule
magnifies error by marginalizing dissent and debate. The Republican
Congress acquiesces to the Republican executive in order to maintain
a common front that the opposition cannot penetrate. Detrimental
policies and laws harmful to liberty are passed for the sake
of party power, not because they are good for Americans or true
to the Constitution.
The Democrats don't deserve
to be in office any more than do the Republicans, but by putting
Democrats in office, voters can strengthen Americans' ability
to dissent from Bush's police state measures and Bush's commitment
to interminable wars in the Middle East. One-party rule suppresses
dissent within the government and, thus, makes dissent all the
more difficult outside government.
Freedom and democracy in America
are already impaired by a heavily concentrated media ownership
that no longer serves the public interest. A one-party government
combined with a corporate controlled press is no recipe for maintaining
freedom and democracy in America.
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
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