Security cannot replace freedom

If the recent Senate hearings with the attorney general aren’t enough to frighten the freedom right out of your body, then you haven’t been watching. Roving wiretaps, military tribunals, lack of habeas corpus and due process, and a laundry list of other civil liberties are being jettisoned from our system, all in the name of the current administration’s version of justice.

This certainly isn’t justice, and it certainly, at any other time in our history, would have brought a collective voice so loud as to rattle every window and wall from sea to shining sea. Is anyone listening to what is happening? People being held without being charged, names not released. Military tribunals introduced to try suspected terrorists. Roving wiretaps: meaning if you or someone you know is linked in any way, shape or form to “subversive terrorist activity,” then your phone or any phone you could possibly use can be tapped. Your mother’s, friend’s, work, school, church. Without a warrant.

Remember in our not-too-distant past what happened with J. Edgar Hoover. Anyone who criticized the FBI or Hoover was immediately a suspect. Attorney General John Ashcroft stated he needs more weapons to combat terrorism. Hello? The FBI and the CIA had the tools necessary prior to Sept. 11 to do their job and dropped the ball.

I’ve traveled to 20 countries on five continents during a 20-year career in the Navy. I have seen places where freedom of speech is non-existent, where bookstores do not exist, where freedom of religion is merely a utopian dream. The things we take for granted are being stripped away before our very eyes.

There is no inverse relationship between safety and civil liberties. Do we want the terrorists captured? Of course we do. Do we want to rid ourselves of terrorist threats? Of course we do. Do we want to strip ourselves of our civil liberties in the process? Do we want Bush and Ashcroft rewriting our Constitution? I believe we have a process for amending the Constitution.

What is occurring now in Washington D.C. is far more frightening than anything any terrorist could have ever plotted. Speak up, people, your freedom to do so is being threatened as you read.

Bothell

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