bush speech today
06/September/2006 11:22 Filed in: Civil Rights
Shock and awe
describe the feelings of Amercians today who care
about civil liberties and the power of the Executive
Branch. Today, President Bush gave a speech that was
frightening and chilling in extending the powers of
his office again. Bush spoke of "methods" in which he
obtained information from "enemy combatants" without
disclosing those methods. He defended secret bases
where he help these "combatants." What few on the
right may understand is that if everything Bush said
was true, meaning, that all the detainees are guilty
and all the torture was "legally sanctioned." he is
still wrong. Why? Because what if a President of the
United States is corrupt? Whether or not you believe
Bush is corrupt is not important to the discussion.
If he is then there are no checks. There is no way to
monitor the Executive powers he has taken upon
himself in case he was corrupt. We have a system of
checks and balances for a reason. That reason is
because people with power can be corrupt. Not because
they necessarily are corrupt. Can those on the right
see the difference? We have a legal system for a
reason. If a cop arrests someone we don't skip the
trial process because we all believe the cop is
honest. Detailed procedures are in place to protect
the innocent. Because someone in the Executive says
someone is an "enemy combatant," who checks that? How
do we know if we don't have access to them? Now the
Bush administration expect us to turn a blind eye to
torture again. They want congress to decide what
torture is because obviously we did work that out in
Geneva. We want to believe torture is a legitamate
method of interrogation because someone we trust said
this is an "enemy combatant." But what if we don't
trust them? Shall we give the same powers to someone
who is not of our political persuasion? Fear and
"security" will cause most people to easily
relinquish their basic civil liberties.