A TORQUEMADA
FOR OUR TIMES
Anyone who
doubts that has only to look at the actions of the Bush administration
on the "home front" post-9/11: the establishment of military
tribunals to usurp the function of our civilian courts; the
passage of the Orwellian
"USA PATRIOT Act," which legalizes widespread surveillance
of legal political and religious organizations (as well as
individuals) and lays the groundwork for a national identity
card; the detention of hundreds, who are jailed in secrecy,
on secret charges, at the whim of the Attorney General. This
man is the harbinger of the American Counterrevolution: the
liberties the patriots of 1776 fought and died to establish
are being systematically disestablished by John Ashcroft,
a Torquemada for our times.
NO EXEMPTIONS
And there is nary a peep of protest: oh, a
few old-style liberals, like
Nat Hentoff, are raising their voices, but this is lost
in the chorus of amens from the "jail 'em first, ask questions
later" crowd, which includes plenty of leftists, as well as
those on the right. The polls, we are constantly reminded,
show Americans overwhelming support the draconian measures
being taken by this administration, and, as much as I distrust
polls they exist to be manipulated this time I believe
them. Although
support for police state methods is decreasing, most Americans
think that they're only going to be rounding up those foreigners
you know, the suspicious-looking ones, with Arabic features
and veiled wives. American citizens, they believe, will be
exempt. The first hint that this is hardly true came on Saturday
[November 30], with the news trumpeted on the front page of
the New York Times: "Ashcroft
Seeking to Free FBI to Spy on Groups." Ashcroft, we are
told by "senior government officials," is "considering" a
scheme to "relax" (read: ignore) "restrictions on the FBI's
spying on religious and political organizations in the United
States."
AMERICA'S POLITICAL
POLICE
These restrictions, enacted by Congress in
the 1970s, were imposed in response to the evolution of J.
Edgar Hoover's FBI into America's political police. Before
World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used them to spy on
his enemies, notably the conservative antiwar group known
as the America First Committee, and this tradition of wartime
repression was revived during the Vietnam war era. The left-led
antiwar movement was targeted by the feds, who unleashed the
FBI to conduct the infamous "Cointelpro"
operation designed to infiltrate, disrupt, and discredit
domestic dissident organizations. Of course, this had been
standard operating procedure since the beginning of the Cold
War era: it was a standing joke, during the fifties, that
half the membership of the American Communist Party was on
the FBI payroll and a good deal of the other half was only
waiting to be asked.
THE FEDS AND
CHE GUEVARA
It was during the course of a very unpopular
war, however, that the routine outrages perpetrated by America's
political police became widely known and disdained. At one
point, they infiltrated the Socialist
Workers Party, a Trotskyist organization, in such numbers
that they practically took it over, actively encouraging a
"Fourth Internationalist" faction which emulated Che Guevara
and advocated armed guerrilla warfare in Central and South
America (if not quite yet in the North). They then turned
around and justified their surveillance and infiltration tactics
on the grounds that the Socialists Workers were, after all,
a potentially violent organization.
CALL ME INDISPENSABLE
In "Cointelpro"
the conservative-libertarian critique of government as the
source of the problem, rather than the solution, was
vividly illustrated although hardly appreciated at the time
when it came out that federal agents and local "red squad"
officers acted mainly to provoke extremist violence rather
than prevent it. I would hold that this was not an "abuse"
of the system, but it's logical outcome: if no problem exists,
it is necessary to create one. How else can petty bureaucrats
and timeservers demonstrate their indispensability?
ASHCROFT'S
POWER GRAB
The Times article reporting Ashcroft's
power grab reminds us that "there are two sets of guidelines,
for domestic and foreign groups," and goes on to reassure
us that "most of the discussion has centered on the largely
classified rules for investigations of foreign groups." But
the statements of Ashcroft's cronies cited in the same article
are anything but reassuring. "As part of the attorney general's
reorganization," said Susan Dryden, a Justice Department spokeswoman,
"we are conducting a comprehensive review of all guidelines,
policies and procedures. All of these are still under
review." FBI spokesman John Collingwood agreed:
"Director
Mueller's view is that everything should be on the table for
review. He is more than willing to embrace change when doing
so makes us a more effective component. A healthy review process
doesn't come at the expense of the historic protections inherent
in our system."
A FAMILY HEIRLOOM
But these
"historic protections" otherwise known as the Bill of Rights
are not "inherent in our system" anymore, and haven't been
for over a hundred years. The Constitution, as originally
conceived, was sidestepped long ago, and put under glass
to be taken off the shelf, dusted off, and ritually venerated
every once in a while, then put back on the mantelpiece with
all the other quaint family heirlooms and largely forgotten.
The only
remnant of the original constitutional order remaining is
its general structure, which mandates the division of power
between the three branches of government so that the folly
practiced by one or even two of the others will not overwhelm
and abolish the achievement of the Founders. In wartime, however,
the executive power, under the Constitution, is increased,
as the President assumes his role as Commander-in-Chief. Even
then, he is hardly a dictator: the rule of law, and the supremacy
of the Bill of Rights, is formally still in effect. Historically,
however, this has not been the case, and this time is going
to be no exception.
HAIL BOB BARR!
HAIL RON PAUL!
Among conservatives in Congress, only two
brave figures, Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas),
seem to have actually read the Constitution lately, and it
has been left largely to them to point out that the Bill of
Rights applies not just to citizens but to all persons.
It made my morning to hear Rep. Barr make this salient point
on the Sam and Cokie show, and I hope conservatives were not
only listening but taking to heart his argument that "we are
headed down a slippery slope." Once the Bill of Rights is
ignored, a dangerous precedent is set: they are talking "mostly"
about increased surveillance of foreigners, but what I want
to know is what are they talking about the rest of the
time?
A DANGEROUS
TIME
I have a personal interest in this, as you
might imagine, sharpened not only by my libertarian views
and my job description, but also on account of the particular
personnel involved. To begin with, as the editorial director
of Antiwar.com, as well as a columnist, the prospect of increased
government surveillance of domestic antiwar organizations
bodes particularly ill for me, personally. I don't want to
exaggerate our own importance, but Antiwar.com is the locus
of antiwar activity on the Internet at a very dangerous time.
The US Congress has just been stampeded into passing a ludicrously
misnamed "Patriot" Act that allows the feds to read email,
track Internet surfing, and eavesdrop with impunity. But it
gets worse.
THE GOLDBERG
CONNECTION
My longtime readers may remember my
public contretemps with National Review Online editor Jonah
Goldberg, whose proposal that we should invade Africa
and bring civilization to the benighted savages of the dark
continent was ridiculed, at length, not only
by me but also by the writers for LewRockwell.com, a popular
libertarian website. Of course, Goldberg's nutty screed only
seemed nutty because we were living, pre-9/11, in a relatively
sane era: today it seems less odd, and even a little prescient
although he seems to have gotten the continent wrong. It's
the Middle East, not Africa, that everyone is talking about
colonizing, but never mind the details.
Anyway,
Goldberg got the general idea: war, war, perpetual war. That's
the ticket. Today, at any rate, he has his war, and while,
to my knowledge, young Goldberg has yet to join his local
Army reserve unit (nor have any of the other young neocons
so gung-ho for the US to engage in a war of conquest), Jonah
has taken up arms in a purely editorial sense, acting as the
chief conservative apologist for the depredations of Ashcroft's
Justice Department. It is, for him, a matter of family honor,
as well as ideology: he was recently married to Jessica Gavora,
Ashcroft's chief policy advisor and speechwriter, and this
accounts for his redoubled zeal in defending this Republican
"born again" version of the power-mad Janet Reno.
VENDETTA!
Take a look at the tone of Goldberg's columns
directed
at me, personally, and Antiwar.com. In the context of
Ashcroft's reign of terror, we would do well to remember the
experience of conservatives at the hands of the Clinton administration,
who found themselves the targets of unscrupulous government
officials using the power and prestige of their office to
wage war against their political enemies. It would be naοve
in the extreme to believe that this administration is any
different.
Under cover
of wartime, personal agendas and vendettas are empowered and
unleashed, especially by those who have the ear of the Attorney
General. It is interesting to note that Goldberg's mom, the
colorful Lucianne
Goldberg, runs a news site that explicitly forbids the posting
of articles published by Antiwar.com in a written rule
instituted over a year before 9/11. One can only wonder what
the Goldbergs have in store for us now that they sit at the
right hand of a man seemingly intent on abolishing the Constitution.
THE PRESENT
DANGER
After Alan Dershowitz persuades Ashcroft that
torture is okay "in some circumstances," one imagines Jonah
chiming in with the suggestion that it's high time we put
Justin Raimondo and the staff of Antiwar.com on the rack.
And what about those obnoxious libertarians over at LewRockwell.com,
who have had such fun all these months mocking
the intellectual pretensions of Goldberg's anti-libertarian
polemics? We have to remember that the Goldbergs were
made as ostensibly conservative "celebrities" during the Clinton
years, when gossip, innuendo, and a thinly-disguised form
of blackmail were all standard operating procedure: "dirt"
was the coin of the realm. Given Goldberg's
extreme antipathy, expressed in the most personal terms,
it is no exaggeration to say that these methods, transferred
to the present era, and empowered by Ashcroft's rising police
state, pose a deadly danger, not only to liberty in the abstract,
but to this website in particular.
A FOOL'S PARADISE
Boy, what an opening for a fundraiser give
to the Antiwar.com Legal Defense Fund! But, seriously, anyone
who believes that a Republican administration is above such
petty Clintonian vendettas is living in a fool's paradise.
And anyone who believes the protestations of this administration
that our civil liberties are not at risk doesn't understand
the concept of the "slippery slope." Today, they are targeting
young men of Middle Eastern extraction, but whom will they
crack down on tomorrow? Having already ignored the letter
and the spirit of the Bill of Rights, do you think they will
stop there?
THE HORSE IS
OUT OF THE BARN
What we
are dealing with was visible, this [Sunday] morning, in the
look on John Ashcroft's face during his mercifully brief interview
with Cokie Roberts. It was an expression of sheer unadulterated
panic. As he spoke, it was clear that here is a man who had
yet to recover from the shock of 9/11. After all, the biggest
terrorist act in American history had taken place on his
watch. He and his flacks can claim they inherited a mess all
they want, but in the end the responsibility must be theirs.
In a panic, they instituted a mass roundup, launched an assault
on the right to privacy, and revised our uniquely American
system of justice on the grounds that we face a new danger
never foreseen by the Founders. But the horse is already out
of the barn, and the great failure of this administration
and particularly of our law enforcement and intelligence
agencies is duly recorded. The rest is just an attempted
cover-up.
EMPIRES IN
THE AIR
They have to appear to be doing something
anything in order to divert public attention away from
the massive failure of government to do its only legitimate
job: and that is to protect us from foreign invasion. They
were so busy expanding NATO, building empires in the air over
the Balkans, and aiding our noble Muslim allies, that they
forgot to notice that these same Muslim "freedom-fighters"
were planning our destruction right here at home. In spite
of numerous warnings, including the recommendations of a presidential
commission and dozens of "task forces," they took us
seemingly by surprise: indeed, they even got the Pentagon.
The Pentagon! That is the reason for the panic
we all saw in Ashcroft's marshmallow face during that painful
ten-minute interview: the man's a pathetic failure,
and he's deathly afraid that once we get over the shock of
what's happened we're going to discover just how much
of a failure.
BOOMERANG
At that point, heads will roll but Ashcroft
and his minions are determined to stave this off indefinitely,
and one way to do it is by a strategy of diversion. So far,
they have been remarkably successful because, in wartime,
no one is supposed to ask too many questions: it's not "patriotic."
But that will soon wear off, along with the shock of 9/11,
and the anger this administration hopes to direct outwards,
at Al Qaeda and the Taliban, will have nowhere to go once
Bin Laden and his gang are out of the picture. Ashcroft had
better hope that Bin Laden's mountain fortress is as nearly
impregnable as they say it is, and that we're in for a long
siege, because after we get Osama that anger is going to boomerang
and come right back at him and the others who were asleep
at the wheel.
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