Courting disaster by abridging Constitutional liberties

Today we face a time of fear when the public is once again ready to condone the government's intrusion upon civil liberties. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the American people have been more willing to accept security measures at the expense of civil rights. Clearly after such an attack, security lapses must be addressed and new policies implemented to ward off such future attacks. As new threats come to light, the United States must be prepared to adapt its security culture to meet previously unforeseen challenges.

However, such an adaptation in no way means that any and all methods are acceptable. Those measures that bend or bypass the Constitution are as great a threat - if not a greater one - as any terrorist attack. The recent executive orders by President Bush must be wholly rejected as a groundless affront to civil liberties.

The most egregious aspect of the new Bush policy toward terrorism is his proposal to try terrorists in military court. According to Vice President Dick Cheney, a military trial "guarantees that we'll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve." Such a statement is shocking in its blatant disregard for the most fundamental aspects of American law. American law does not allow the vice president or the president to determine what type of treatment a person deserves. The primary reason a military tribunal is favored by the Bush administration - an administration run by a man who prided himself on the number of executions meted out when he was governor of Texas - is that guilty verdicts will be more easily obtained. A unanimous verdict by the tribunal is not necessary; proof beyond a reasonable doubt is not necessary. In essence such a trial would be a sham, an illusion perpetrated by the American president to give the appearance of justice while still allowing for expeditious sentencing. Such a trial is an affront to the American legal system and the Constitutional liberties upon which it stands.

In our war against terrorism, there can only be two forms of justice. The first is to try the terrorists in civilian courts according to our principles of jurisprudence. In such a case they would be entitled to the same fair trial accorded to every suspect, whether a suspected shoplifter or serial killer. Such a method has been used - albeit in an international setting, but nonetheless according to our principles of jurisprudence - from Nuremberg to the present trial of Slobodon Milosovic. As heinous as either the Nazis' or Milosovic's crimes were, the prosecution had to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that those accused were in fact guilty of genocide. A staple of our judicial system, which separates us from all other nations that only pay lip-service to legal justice, is that we uphold the rights of the accused in all circumstances.

The second alternative is to treat the terrorists as non-lawful combatants. In this case no trial is necessary. Since they are considered soldiers of their cause, we are justified in killing them where we find them. This, in fact, is precisely what our bombing campaign and special forces raids are meant to achieve.

Thus when one breaks American law, one is tried under American law, according to its judicial principles. This means that if one is in the U.S. military, one is tried in a military court, as stipulated in the Constitution. All others are subject to the jurisdiction of civilian courts. If we wish to bring the terrorists to legal justice, then let us bring them to justice in our style. Since, however, the terrorists attacked the United States in what can be considered an act of war, our national security dictates that we simply eliminate the terrorists.

Cheney may be right when he says that the terrorists "don't deserve the same guarantees and safeguards that would be used for an American citizen going through the normal judicial process," but that leads to the conclusion that we simply use our superior force to wipe them and their supporters off the face of the map. In either scenario there is no room for the Kafkaesque mockery of military tribunals. Such a practice would erode the liberties that we as Americans citizens enjoy. If the president can simply decide who gets to be tried in which court and what rules those courts are to follow, what is to become of the rights of the accused as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights? The Sixth Amendment might as well be discarded. In fact, the president has already expanded the ability of law enforcement to use wiretaps in allowing conversations between the accused and his lawyer to be taped. Such a practice appears to be a blatant violation of the Fifth Amendment's prohibition against self-incrimination and the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of counsel for the defendant. If conversations between client and lawyer can be used against the defendant in court, the two clauses enumerated do not mean very much at all. Thus more than simply being a debate over whether foreigners are entitled to the same speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, it is a debate over what intrusions into our own liberties we are willing to tolerate. To allow Bush to create his own personal Star Chamber erodes the very foundation of our legal system. Dan Ostrow is a politics major from New York, NY. He can be reached at dtostrow@princeton.edu.