Constitutional Crisis?
Odom, William E.
BECAUSE NO ACT of terrorism has yet destroyed a liberal democracy but acts of parliament have closed a few, Americans should ask if the new U.S. policies, laws, and practices in reaction to the...
...To point this out is not to criticize the policy— except for its fecklessness—but to remind us that the United States is not always averse to terrorism...
...Such an ambiguous category can only lead to bad policies and great injustices...
...intelligence officials several years ago for use against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq...
...economy that probably exceed COLLOQUIUM Osama bin Laden's expectations...
...Army, retired, is an adjunct professor at Yale University and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute...
...He subjected the Parliament's American Treason Act to blistering criticism, noting that it was the ninth in a series of such ill-advised laws enacted to support its American policy, adding dryly that "our subjects diminish as our laws increase...
...citizens or interests...
...WILLIAM E. ODOM, lieutenant general, U.S...
...DISSENT / Fall 2004 n 13...
...they are acts of war if committed from abroad against U.S...
...The billions of dollars spent on barriers, guards, and check-points are transaction costs to the U.S...
...BEYOND ISSUES of principle, the fiscal costs are irresponsible...
...policy today...
...The most egregious was George W. Bush's misleading case to the public to justify his invasion of Iraq that the Iraqi regime cooperated with al Qaeda...
...By the Bush administration's definition of the word, Iyad Allawi, whom it supported as the interim prime minister of Iraq, is a terrorist, one supplied with car bombs by U.S...
...policies, laws, and practices in reaction to the attacks of September 11, 2001, are more threatening to their liberties than Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda...
...Bad policies accumulate...
...The Justice Department uses the threat alert system mainly as political cover against the event of another terrorist attack...
...Terrorism is a political label intended to whip up I2 n DISSENT / Fall 2004 anger against one's enemy, not to ensure justice in the due process of law...
...So-called acts of terrorism are crimes if committed within a U.S...
...Useful first steps would be to remove the barriers in front of the White House and the Capitol, encourage public confidence instead of hysteria about terrorism, rescind the Patriot Act, and withdraw U.S...
...Burke was outraged that the American Treason Act provided for a partial suspension of habeas corpus and enabled the king's "administration to confine, as long as it shall think proper, those, whom that act is pleased to qualify by the name of pirates...
...How do we escape this awful predicament...
...Today he could say to Americans that "your allies diminish as your counterterrorism laws increase...
...In his A Letter to the Sheriffs of the City of Bristol in 1777, we can see the line of reasoning that he would voice today against the Guantanamo incarcerations, military tribunals, the use of the "terrorism" label, and the Patriot Act...
...Holding prisoners in Guantanamo for over two years without greater transparency raises questions about its legality...
...In other words, we have more precise terms for so-called terrorist acts, words far more appropriate for legal statutes...
...Thus they could be ". . . detained in prison . . . to a future trial and ignominious punishment, whenever circumstances shall make it convenient to execute vengeance on them under the colour of that odious and infamous offence...
...Foreign students and important visitors are being turned away at great loss to U.S...
...Security measures have grown far out of proportion to the safety they provide...
...And the administration flatly denies the intelligence community's incontrovertible failures...
...This is especially true of the oversized Department of Homeland Security...
...Shouting furiously at the world about the evils of "terrorism" makes the United States look hypocritical, if not downright silly and incompetent...
...jurisdiction...
...forces from H Iraq so more effort can be directed against al Qaeda...
...If one thinks of the Guantanamo prison and changes "piracy" to "terrorism," then Burke's charge sounds surprisingly contemporary...
...When Senator Abraham Ribicoff enrolled a bill in 1979 against "international terrorism," it could not be enacted into law because any way the term was defined, the United States was a violator...
...Edmund Burke, were he alive today, would say they are, judging by his opposition to the British policies that caused and lost the war against American independence...
...The FBI's astounding incompetence remains unaddressed as does its officials' use of the Patriot Act to excuse their past fecklessness...
...The "terrorism" label is a source of great mischief in U.S...
...higher education, science, and culture...
Vol. 51 • September 2004 • No. 4
