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January
8, 2002
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
January
6, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Students
Put the Heat on Foreign Sweatshops
Tariq
Ali
Battleground
Kashmir
January
5, 2002
Mark Schneider
Kifah:
The Movie Star
Israel Killed
Edward
Said
Is
Israel More Secure Now?
January
4, 2002
CG Estabrook
Anti-War
= Anti-Globalization
Jordan
Green
What's
Changed in New York
January
3, 2002
Walt Brasch
Exit
Cheney, Enter Ridge
Mokhiber
and Weissman
The
10 Worst Corporations
of 2001
Robert
Hunter Wade
America's
Empire Rules an Unbalanced World
Shahid
Alam
Is
There an Islamic Problem?
January
2, 2002
Ross Regnart
Patriot
Act Redefines the Mob as "Terrorist Associates"
John Chuckman
The
Republicans' Secret Plan X
David
Vest
Turn,
Turn, Turn
January
1, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Iraq's
New Year
December
31, 2001
John Absood
An
Alternative to War in Iraq
Ramzi
Kysia
Iraq
Goes Radioactive
December
28, 2001
John Chuckman
Observing
George Bush
Suren
Pillay
Civilian
Bodies
Aaron
Lehmer
Inviting
Future Terrorism
December
27, 2001
Patrick
McNamara
Palestinian
Children Bear Brunt of Mideast Violence
Nelson
Valdés
A
Possible Scenario on the Location of bin Laden
Jensen
and Mahajan
Remember
the Afghan Dead
Philip
Farruggio
A
New Year's Resolution
Ramzi
Kysia
The
People of the Valley
December 26, 2001
John Chuckman
In
Praise of the Unspeakable
Sam Bahour
2002:
Year of the Twos
December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
Days That
Shook The World:
Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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8-Page Special Issue
War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
Search
CounterPunch
Read Whiteout and Find Out
How the CIA's Backing of the Mujahideen Created the World's Most
Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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January
8, 2002
Do We Fear Freedom?
Our Rights Are
Not Abstract
By Robert Corn-Revere
Legal Times
The war against terrorism is a war to preserve
freedom, we are told. The president explained that the terrorists
"hate us for our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our
freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree
with each other."
But even as he spoke, the Federal Bureau
of Investigation was rounding up an undisclosed number of people
for indeterminate periods of detention, and the attorney general
has refused to release any substantive information on the practices.
In defending these and other actions before the Senate Judiciary
Committee on Dec. 6, Attorney General John Ashcroft claimed that
those who ask whether we are sacrificing too much freedom "only
aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish
our resolve."
If irony is not dead, it surely is on
life support.
In a two-week period in October, the
Justice Department announced a policy authorizing the interception
of attorney-client conversations with detainees, a program of
profiling and interviewing thousands of Arab men, and the creation
of secret military tribunals to try immigrants and other foreigners
suspected of terrorism.
More significant than these executive
actions was Congress' passage of the anti-terrorism bill -- the
USA Patriot Act -- signed by President George W. Bush on Oct.
26. While some parts of the act provided needed adjustments to
the law, its far-reaching provisions affect the rights of all
citizens, and not just terrorism suspects. For example, the act
minimizes judicial supervision of telephone and Internet surveillance,
expands the government's ability to conduct secret searches,
and gives the attorney general and the secretary of state the
power to designate domestic groups as "terrorist organizations."
The law also gives the FBI broad access to sensitive medical,
financial, mental health, and educational records about individuals
without having to show evidence of a crime and without a court
order.
It could have been worse, and may yet
be so. An initial draft of the anti-terrorism bill would have
suspended the right of habeas corpus for all terrorist suspects.
Looking forward, Ashcroft reportedly is considering a plan to
enable the FBI to spy on domestic religious and political organizations
if they are suspected of having ties to terrorists. Various proponents
have called for the creation of a national ID card, and there
has even been talk of permitting torture.
Dangerous Precedent
For some, such as Rep. John Conyers Jr.
(D-Mich.) and columnist William Safire, the response to Sept.
11 recalls episodes in U.S. history -- Lincoln's suspension of
habeas corpus, the trampling of free speech during World War
I, the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II,
anti-communist witch-hunts of the McCarthy period, J. Edgar Hoover's
obsession with dissident groups -- in which the rule of constitutional
law broke down.
Others see past examples of extreme actions
as supporting precedent that allows aggressive action by the
government even if it entails a loss of civil liberties. One
such person is respected jurist Richard Posner. The 7th Circuit
judge wrote in the December issue of The Atlantic Monthly that
civil liberties "should be curtailed, to the extent that
the benefits in greater security outweigh the costs in reduced
liberty." All that can reasonably be asked of Congress and
the courts, he argued, "is that they weigh the costs as
carefully as the benefits."
Yet it is not at all clear that the benefits
have been carefully assessed. Eight former high-ranking FBI officials,
including former Director William Webster, told The Washington
Post in November that the newly adopted tactics, such as rounding
up large numbers of detainees, are both ineffective and counterproductive.
Noting that the bureau prevented 131 terrorist attacks between
1981 and 2000, Webster said, "We did it without all the
suggestions that we are going to jump all over the people's private
lives, if that is what the current attorney general wants to
do. I don't think we need to go that direction."
Some (and not just the cynics) have suggested
that part of the demand for new anti-terrorism authority comes
more from the belief that the time is ripe to win concessions
than from a conviction that such measures will stop terrorism.
A senior U.S. official quoted in the Post noted that "a
lot of this is not being driven by problems that prosecutors
or investigators are having. It is just a good time to get everything.
It is totally politically and public-perception-driven."
And all of the polling data appear to
support this political calculus. A recent ABC News/Washington
Post survey found that 86 percent of the respondents support
the post-Sept. 11 mass detentions, 79 percent support interviewing
thousands of Arab men, 73 percent approve of wiretapping attorney-client
conversations of terror suspects, and 59 percent favor the use
of military tribunals.
One explanation for such results is that
constitutional rights are for most people an abstract concept,
while collapsing buildings and death are not. If people believe
they can prevent a real horror by trading away a mere abstraction,
the choice seems simple. It is easier still to the extent that
people believe they would not have to sacrifice their own rights,
but only those of "swarthy males," as columnist Ann
Coulter so memorably (and repugnantly) put it.
When the president declared that "freedom
is at war with fear" in his Sept. 20 address to a joint
session of Congress, he may have had it backward. That is, on
the home front, it appears that fear may be winning.
Robert Corn-Revere is a partner at D.C.'s Hogan & Hartson.
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