Today's Wall Street Journal is giving its characteristic pro-government spin to the Ashcroft Senate hearing. "Ashcroft wins the civil liberties debate, " they bluntly proclaim, by facing down "the liberals." I hope (and I'm pretty certain) that this will not be the end of the national debate on civil liberties. The military tribunals issue has been miscast as an either/or proposition. In fact, most of its opponents haven't rejected the idea outright, but rather have demanded a discussion about the details, and expressed reservations about the far-reaching original proposal. Even Lawrence Tribe has, in The New Republic, supported the general idea of such emergency measures, while arguing that the current proposal is flawed and needs to be "mended." Sure, some of the criticism has had an element of hysteria, and some of those offering it may indeed have less-than-honorable ulterior motives. But Ashcroft's blanket denunciation of any and all criticism is absurd.
There is much to be concerned about, even for non-terrorists. I think there should be some formal guarantee that such measures could not be used to crack down on ordinary people in circumstances that have nothing to do with the specific threat they are designed to address. It's not enough for the government to say "oh, don't worry about it, we won't do that." (According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration has, in the face of such criticism, "clarified" that it is planning a more limited process than the original order calls for-- *now* I feel better...) Is it too much to ask that the details of this process be spelled out? To say this is not to express solidarity with our enemies, as the WSJ and Ashcroft imply.
So did we get the vigorous debate and oversight that Tribe and others have called for? Not really, or rather, not yet, and not enough of one. But the WSJ's celebration of "Leahy's Rout" is uncalled for and premature. Here is Ashcroft's often-quoted homily on the perfidious civil libertarians among us:
To those who pit Americans against immigrants, citizens against non-citizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil.
It is not disloyal -- in fact, it is a form of patriotism -- to ask whether government is getting the powers most appropriate to the task, whether it is using them wisely, whether it may be missing important potential strategies, or even whether it is going off half-cocked against the wrong people... Mr. Ashcroft may not like the criticism. But his job is to defend dissent, not to use the moral authority of his office to discourage people from participating in one of the most fundamental obligations of citizenship.
Or, as Matt Welch has put it, more trenchantly with regard to Ashcroft's job-security, "where's Rudy Giuliani when you need him?"
Posted by Dr. Frank at December 7, 2001 10:53 AM | TrackBack