Liberal, Conservative — Who cares? Let us try to follow common sense
Note to the American people, the words liberal and conservative are useless. These words are thrown around instead of intelligently debating the issues at hand. We need to express exactly what actions a government official has taken that we feel are clearly wrong, or what a news personality said that we feel distorts the facts. Why do I feel it is so important that we have more intelligent discourse and stop bickering using words that are too general to be of use?
Some very scary things have been happening in the United States. I am not going to point fingers because it would obscure my point and invite useless partisan phrase-throwing. Right now I do not care who’s fault it is, I just want to see some action from our government that reassures me that they are serious about protecting what makes our country great.
September 11th, 2001 was a horrible day that will live in infamy. Al Qaeda perpetrated a series of horrific attacks against our nation. Note that I said Al Qaeda and not terrorists. We need to be very precise with our language as to not over-generalize.
The people of this nation stood together after the attacks. Everyone was in shock and wanted to do all that they could to help with the recovery efforts. This is when the good-will of our country really shined bright.
Everything has gone downhill from that time. What we needed was to strike back and send a clear message that we could not be bullied by Al Qaeda. We needed to show that killing innocent people to force their way of thinking was not going to work. We as a nation were all in agreement.
Then our country took terrorism to war. You can not take terrorism to war, it is a concept, not a place or a people. We began to attack Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein from power. There’s a big problem here. Saddam Hussein, while a horrible person in his own right, was not Osama Bin Laden. Saddam was not the leader of Al Qaeda. We were pursuing the wrong guy.
I was astounded and extremely confused. What were we doing? We were then presented with evidence that Saddam Hussein was working on weapons of mass destruction and that based upon this evidence we had to take him out. This turned out to be false information gleaned primarily from one person who was tortured. I don’t know about you, but if I were tortured, I would say whatever they wanted me to.
While we were focusing on Iraq against all common-sense, Bin Laden snuck into Afghanistan. He hid himself so well that we could not find him. No matter, we were fighting a war on terror now.
This was the beginning of the government talking down to us. We were expected to believe without questioning. When what we were told was found suspect, the government would simply change the definition of some of the words or frame the situation differently.
We were torturing others abroad, holding many who may have been innocent indefinitely, and betraying our values as a country. People were termed terrorists and they were carted off to secret prisons around the world.
We were asked to accept the idea of trying these so-called terrorists without allowing them to see the evidence against them. How can you defend yourself if you don’t know what you are being accused of. It sounds an awful lot like when the United States Air Force discharged Milo Radulovic in 1953 based upon evidence in a sealed envelope no one was allowed to see.
Radulović was granted a so-called ‘hearing’ at which the sealed manila envelope was brandished and waved by the attorney for the USAF. However, the envelope was never opened and neither the ‘board’ members, nor anyone in the Radulovich camp were permitted to see its contents.
This brings us back to the present. Recently the Senate and the House of Representatives passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
Coming soon, part 2 a look at the act.
Note: The comparison between the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the case of Milo Radulovic in retrospect was not the best. Radulovic was a US citizen.
Note: Despite being very concerned about the direction that we are headed, I will not write about the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The most troubling part is the revocation of Habeas Corpus for non-citizens. I would definitely keep an eye on this and any other large developments related to legislation that may allow our nation to abuse human rights.