A few weeks ago, Ken Mehlman asked the public to write the White House and give their views on the secret CIA detainees now being transferred to
Guantanamo and how they should be treated and under what rules they should be tried.
I did watch key excerpts of Mr. Bush’s address and now follow Mr. Mehlman’s advice to write a letter to the White House.
Dear Mr. President:
September 11, 2001 did not change everything.
We should not be drubbed into converting this proud country into a nation cowering in fear, and into a nation many in the civilized world believes (according to a major poll this week) is more dangerous to world peace than Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, or Russia.
We should have been, and need to become again, a nation of laws and should abide by them, but we have not been that way since 9/11. This long belated effort (suspiciously tied to an election cycle) to “ask congress” to set rules by which alleged “terrorists” can be tried on the basis of hearsay, forced (tortured) confessions, and on the basis of secret evidence that may not be impeached by them is a cruel twist on a country that used to pride itself on being the freest and most optimistic nation on earth. Now we can have pride in neither, and not because of the September 11th tragedy, but because of our collective reaction to it which enabled some to erode our fragile social contract to place our faith in and to abide by laws and our collective sense of human decency.
It is especially ironic that you celebrated this act of bringing people from “secret CIA prisons” to justice when it took the Supreme Court of this country to force your request of congress to set the legal groundwork for their very detention and trial after the Court objected to the unconstitutional (un-American) elements of your secret detention and extra-judicial program in the first place.
Mr. Mehlman has stated that Democrats have bragged about trying to defeat the Patriot Act, and that the #2 Democrat in the Senate even likened America’s interrogation practices to those in Nazi or Soviet concentration camps.
On the first point, any congress-person who asked for reasonable safeguards against government intrusion into the private life of citizens as part of the debate over the Patriot Act was patriotically mirroring the most elemental principle of our founding fathers as they shaped this land with an instrument called the Constitution of the United States.
You should recall that during this debate, Democrats were by far the loudest voice of opposition to the more extreme parts of the Act, however, they were joined by moderate Republicans as well. It is also instructive to note that the Patriot Act passed and was renewed by a Congress that contains at least a few Democrats.
On the second point, I am sorry to have to agree with the #2 Democrat which brings me great sadness as an older American to see what has quickly become of this great land over the past five years of fear mongering, death, and destruction.
I am tired of being asked to live in terror, to give up basic rights in return for false security, and to walk in lock-stepped silence like a vassal to a king while the core values of this country are being shredded.
I refuse. I want my “old” country back, you know, the one that actually won World Wars: the brave one the world respected and admired as a country of fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the unbent rule of law.
Rich Brock, Resipsa
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