Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Dan DeWalt, who writes for ThisCan’tBeHappening.net.
Has the land of the free decided to roll over and concede defeat to terrorism?
George Bush’s “war on terror” reintroduced torture to the American playbook, took away our right to habeus corpus, made illegal wiretapping routine practice and built a culture of fear in our national psyche in order to keep us from rising up against these assaults on our Constitution. Barack Obama has continued these practices and gone further with his obsession with drone attacks worldwide, including strikes that murder American citizens without even bothering with indictments, let alone trials.
Now, in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent manhunt, we’re being told that there are a couple of new aspects to this “new normal” that we’ll just have to get used to. Our Fourth Amendment right protecting us from unwarranted search and seizure is no longer functional if the powers that be deem it inconvenient. And the right to be told that we can remain silent rather than incriminate ourselves under interrogation is now optional, again at the discretion of the police authorities.
Why is murder by bomb called terrorism, while murder by gun seems to be just an unfortunate aspect of America’s tradition of violent behavior? Is it the fact that the Boston bombers have an Islamic association that brands them terrorists?
Let’s examine these two new nails in the Constitution’s coffin. During the manhunt, Boston authorities locked down the city, ordering residents to stay inside while police officers ignored the Fourth Amendment and entered any house at will in their search. It is argued that it was an extraordinary event requiring special measures; indeed, a dangerous man was on the loose. But many an armed and dangerous man has been on the loose before, and we have never before seen fit to jettison constitutional rights to aid in the capture attempt. Now that the second man has been captured, we are told that he will not be given his Miranda rights before he is questioned. This is based on an already flimsy “national security” law that unconstitutionally calls for ignoring the Miranda warning if society is deemed to be in imminent danger. In the Boston case, the very fact that authorities have been waiting patiently for the suspect to regain consciousness and coherence gives the lie to the notion that anything other than a constitutional breach is imminent. Video and eyewitness evidence has already given prosecutors a mountain of evidence that should be sufficient to convict the bomber. If they want to get valuable information from him, they could give him immunity, learn all that there is to learn, and still be able to prosecute successfully.
So why the rush to suspend our constitutional rights? For that matter, why is this mass killing being labeled an act of terrorism, while the Aurora, Colo., mass killing, which also featured an apartment full of explosives and even more innocents killed, is still referred to only as a criminal act? Why is murder by bomb called terrorism, while murder by gun seems to be just an unfortunate aspect of America’s tradition of violent behavior? Is it the fact that the Boston bombers have an Islamic association that brands them terrorists? If James Holmes (the alleged Aurora shooter) were a Muslim, would he now be a terrorist as well?
While the shock of events in Boston may make it easier to acquiesce to these loss of liberties for the moment, these civil liberty erosions will not be a one-time event. Rather it will just be another step in the inevitable slide that we are taking into the muck of authoritarian government making arbitrary decisions about our welfare without the benefit of law or the Constitution. Perhaps we are all convinced that American fascism would be a benevolent fascism, but that is an extremely risky bet to make and one that we will certainly regret in the future.
Other countries seem to be able to cope with terror attacks without discarding their established rule of law. Germany withstood the Baader-Meinhoff gang, Italy the Red Brigades, Guatamalans, Colombians and Salvadorans suffered under U.S.-sponsored state terrorism. Pakistanis and Afghanis now suffer the same. Israelis deal with terrorist attacks from Palestinians and Palestinians deal with Israel’s state terrorism directed against them. Indeed, the American people would be able to continue to live under the legal system that has served us since our inception. We are capable of understanding that while we enjoyed a long period when terrorism was mostly something that happened elsewhere, it has now caught up to us and will be with us in some form from now on.
It is “Official America” that has decided to take draconian steps to curtail our liberties in the name of safety. It’s Official America that makes the ludicrous claim that our soil can be kept absolutely safe and secure from ever suffering such attacks. It is Official America that is so eager to grant unprecedented power to police and national security officials over our lives at the expense of our Republic’s founding and guiding principles in the name of achieving this unachievable goal. It is Official America that is engineering our demise as a free Republic and leading us in their brave new world with a police state mentality.
Islamic terrorists may have a goal of destroying the American way of life. They may have our loose morality, our over-consumption of resources or our international bullying in mind. But our leaders will make sure that these American qualities will remain part of our national fabric. Instead the far more important American ideals of freedom, respect for the law and sanctity of the rights of our citizens are falling victim to the power of fear, engendered by our leaders who have taken others’ criminal actions and turned them into a tool with which they can bludgeon us into a position that is ripe for fascism. They can not do this without our consent. We must not give it to them.
