Pubdate: Thu, 22 Nov 2001
Source: Post-Star, The (NY)
Copyright: 2001 Glens Falls Newspapers Inc.
Contact: http://www.poststar.com/comments/elet_form.shtml
Website: http://www.poststar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1068
Author: Molly Ivins
Note: Column ran intact; drug policy tie-in in final paragraph
Note: Molly Ivins is a columnist for Time
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/ashcroft.htm (Ashcroft, John)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?203 (Terrorism)

NO NEED TO CHALLENGE CIVIL LIBERTIES

AUSTIN -- WHOA! The problem is the premise.

We are having one of those circular arguments about how many civil 
liberties we can trade away in order to make ourselves safe from terrorism, 
without even looking at the assumption -- can we can make ourselves safer 
by making ourselves less free? There is no inverse relationship between 
freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. 
People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.

Exactly what do we want to strike out of the U.S. Constitution that we 
think would prevent terrorist attacks?

Let's see, if civil liberties had been suspended before Sept. 11, would law 
enforcement have noticed Mohamed Atta? Would the FBI have opened an 
investigation of Zacarias Massoui, as Minneapolis agents wanted to do? The 
CIA had several of the 9-11 actors on their lists of suspected terrorists. 
Exactly what civil liberty prevented them from doing anything about it?

In the case of a suspected terrorist, the government already had the right 
to search, wiretap, intercept, detain, examine computer and financial 
records, and do anything else it needed to do. There's a special court they 
go to for subpoenas and warrants. As it happens, they didn't do it.

Changing the law retroactively is not going to change that. Certainly, we 
had a visa system that had more holes than Swiss cheese. What does that 
have to do with civil liberties? When we don't give an agency enough money 
to do its job, it doesn't get done.

As you may have heard, Immigration and Naturalization has been a bit 
overwhelmed in recent years. In fairness to law enforcement, it's hard to 
imagine how anyone could have seen this one coming. It's always easy to 
point the finger after the fact. It was just a damnable act.

Absolutely nothing in the Constitution would have prevented us from 
stopping 9-11, so why would we want to change it?

I also think we're arguing from the wrong historical analogies. Yes, during 
past wars civil liberties have been abrogated and the courts have even 
upheld this. We regret it later, but we don't seem to learn from that.

But the Bush administration's rhetoric aside, we are not at war. War is 
when the armed forces of one country attack the armed forces of another. 
What we're looking at is more akin to the 19th century problem with 
anarchists, the terrorists of their day. And we made some memorable errors 
by giving in to hysteria over anarchists.

In the infamous 1886 Haymarket Square affair in Chicago, after a bomb 
killed seven policemen, eight labor leaders were rounded up and "tried," 
even though there was no evidence against them -- four hanged, one suicide, 
three sentenced. Historians agree they were all innocent.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, executed in 1927, were finally 
exonerated by the state of Massachusetts in 1977. That outbreak of hysteria 
over "foreign anarchists" led to, among other abuses, a wave of arrests for 
DWI: "Driving While Italian." And no one was ever made safer from an 
anarchist bomb by the execution of innocent people. We all know other 
groups, from the Irish to the blacks to the Chinese, have been targeted for 
legal abuse over the years -- all betrayals of our laws, values and the 
sacrifices of generations. Let's not do it again.

The counter-case was neatly put by David Blunkett, the British Home 
Secretary: "We can live in a world with airy-fairy civil liberties and 
believe the best in everybody -- and they will destroy us." Unless, of 
course, we destroy ourselves first.

"Fascism" is not a word I throw around lightly, but what do you think 
happened in Germany in the 1930s?

The US. Constitution was written by men who had just been through a long, 
incredibly nasty war. They did not consider the Bill of Rights a frivolous 
luxury, to be in force only in times of peace and prosperity, put aside 
when the going gets tough. The Founders knew from tough going. They weren't 
airy-fairy guys.

We put away Tim McVeigh and the terrorists who did the 1993 World Trade 
Center bombing without damaging the Constitution. If the laws break into 
some apartment full of al-Qaida literature and plans of airports, 
absolutely nothing prevents them from hauling in the suspects and having a 
nice, cozy, cop-like chat with them. Because there's evidence. That's what 
they call "due process."

When there is no evidence, no grounds for suspicion, we do not hold 
citizens indefinitely and without legal representation. Very airy-fairy of 
us, to be sure. Foreign citizens have only limited rights in this country, 
depending on their means of entry -- different for refugees, permanent 
residents, etc. So what's the problem?

Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft has been so busy busting dying marijuana 
smokers in California and doctors in Oregon who carry out their terminal 
patients' wishes to die in peace, he obviously has no time to consider the 
Constitution. But he did swear to uphold it.
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MAP posted-by: Beth