Freedom -- the First Casualty
a speech by Tom Eddlem
(November 11, 2006)
Before the election, President Bush got the Republican Congress to go along with canceling habeas corpus, the “great writ” that goes all the way back to the Magna Carta. Habeas Corpus is the one guarantee we have against arbitrary and indefinite detention without trial in Anglo-American law. Osama bin Ladin could never have taken that right away from us by force.
But we did it to ourselves.
Even those of us who have not been separated from our families to serve, or injured or killed in combat, have paid a terrible domestic price in this war.
Freedom has become the first casualty in war. Freedom is always the first casualty in war.
I oppose not only the war in Iraq, but the war on terror too. Oh, I think we ought to go out and bring Osama bin Ladin and those responsible for September 11th to justice, but the war on terror is a war on the Bill of Rights.
What rights have we lost? We’ve lost our Fourth Amendment right against warrantless searches and seizures with the NSA spying programs. Forget the probable cause required by a warrant, the Bush Administration wants to search the phones of people who – by definition – are probably not terrorists.
We’ve also lost our Eighth Amendment right to protection from cruel and unusual punishment through the Bush Administration’s detention centers, both those the administration set up in places like Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, and where we outsourced the job to other countries through the extraordinary rendition program. The author of the Bush Administration’s torture policy, John Yoo, even went so far to say in a public debate last year that the President could legally crush the testicles of an innocent child if he felt he had a good enough reason.
Finally and most importantly, we’ve also lost much of our Sixth Amendment rights in this war. The Sixth Amendment reads, in part:
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to trial by jury … to be confronted with witnesses against him … and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”
The official Bush administration policy is that American citizens possess none of the three separate rights enumerated in that amendment. The Bush Administration refused to allow one American citizen, Yaser Hamdi, to have an attorney while he was detained in an American prison. When his American family sued in court, the Bush Administration fought it all the way to the Supreme Court… and lost. So they settled out of court at the last minute, and continue to deny counsel to detainees, whether American citizens or foreigners, whenever they can get away with it.
When another American citizen, Jose Padilla, demanded that he be charged with a crime and get a trial rather than being detained without charges indefinitely, the Bush Administration fought it all the way to the Supreme Court. Twice.
But they finally charged Padilla with a crime in order to avoid another losing Supreme court vote. … more than three years after he was taken into custody. And I should add that Padilla was originally alleged by senior administration spokesmen to be the “dirty bomber” who was planning a radiological bomb. Later, the White House floated a different conspiracy theory about the mayhem Padilla would allegedly commit in collusion with al Qaeda: He would turn up the natural gas at Chicago apartment buildings and blow them up. When they finally charged him with a crime in January of this year – more than three years after being apprehended unarmed at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport – the administration had forgotten its earlier charges and charged him with a third – never before alleged crime.
Why did the administration have to change the charges so frequently? Benyam Muhammad al Habashi, who was tortured in Morocco under extraordinary rendition, fingered Jose Padilla after two years of torture which included a razor being taken to his genitalia. The other key witness against Padilla, Abu Zubayda, also only fingered Padilla after torture. So it’s hardly surprising that the Feds couldn’t get their story straight: These tortured detainees would say whatever outlandish thing they thought their torturers wanted to hear in order to stop the beatings.
Now I ask you: Do you really want your freedom to hinge on whether some terrorist suspect whimpers out your name under torture?
Radio talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Laura Ingraham say that we shouldn't “give terrorists” the rights of a trial. But trials are not something we give as a protection to the guilty. Trials do not protect the guilty; they protect the innocent. Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was not protected by having a trial. He’s still dead.
As a conservative, I can say that war is just another big government program. I have a challenge to those talk show hosts who dare to call themselves small-government conservatives: If we are granting benefits to terrorists by giving them trials, explain to me how Timothy McVeigh – who got the death penalty – is better off for getting a trial than those getting fat on three squares in Guantanamo.
Next we are going to hear from a speaker who is not a conservative like me, and whom I had never met face to face until this morning. But I already consider him a friend. And despite the fact that we disagree on most issues, we agree on all the most important issues. He wrote me about a month ago:
“We have an anti-empire, pro-liberty, anti-corporate welfare agenda in common. We can go on to debate tax levels and national health insurance - and let the better man or woman win. But at least we will have moved to protect the species and liberty.” That’s what's at stake in the war in Iraq and the war on terrorism.
And that’s why it’s my privilege to introduce John Walsh, a medical doctor and a regular contributor to one of the most literate and thoughtful and independent journals on the political left, Counterpunch. Ladies and gentlemen, John Walsh!
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Thomas R. Eddlem is a native of the Boston area of Massachusetts and a graduate of Stonehill College. He is a radio talk show host in Southeastern Massachusetts and is a frequent contributor to The New American magazine. Tom is also a member of Antiwar League. This speech was delivered on Veteran's Day at the Antiwar League rally in Roslindale, MA.
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