By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
September 10, 2003
As we approach the second anniversary of the terrorist bombings of September 11, 2001, some of the mental confusion of this era is being demonstrated. For example, in the September 5 Nation Magazine, an anniversary piece criticizes Democrats and Republicans alike for statements that we should win the war on Terror. Jonathan Schell wrote, “(Sen.) Biden says we must win the war. This is precisely wrong. The United States must learn to lose this war – a harder task, in many ways, than winning, for it requires admitting mistakes and relinquishing attractive fantasies. This is the true moral mission of our time (well, of the next few years, anyway).”
Throughout the left wing media, and sometimes in the right wing media, we are deluged with fiction such as Amy Goldstein’s recent Washington Post article which states, “By its very terms, the Patriot Act hides information about how its most contentious aspects are used, allowing investigations to be authorized and conducted under greater secrecy.
“As a result, critics ranging from the liberal American Civil Liberties Union to the conservative Eagle Forum complain that the law is violating people's rights but acknowledge that they cannot cite specific instances of abuse.”
The Patriot Act is not a secret document. It is available on the Internet for the entire world to read, and I recommend that everyone, but especially those who are prone to believe the drumbeat of accusations about the Patriot Act to READ it. (Click here read the Patriot act. It’s only 131 pages long, which is a mere 15% of the number of pages America’s children, many as young as 10 years of age, have been reading in the latest Harry Potter book.
You will note that many of the Patriot Act paragraphs seem to begin with statements ending with “the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is amended” or “the Communications Act of 1934 is amended.” Why? Because, contrary to the propaganda being spread throughout the media and various organizations, the provisions of the Patriot Act simply amends laws already on the books used by America’s law enforcement arsenal in tracking down crime syndicate bosses and drug lords for at least 25 years to make them also apply to terrorists. We have not heard a soul complain about the 1978 law having destroyed their personal liberties or the Bill of Rights. Why will making those provisions apply to terrorists destroy personal liberties or the Bill of Rights?
As I write I have before me on my desk a flyer that claims the Patriot Act was causing us to lose our “fundamental rights, including the freedom of religion, speech, assembly and privacy, protection from unreasonable searches and seizures, due process and equal protection to any person, equality before the law and the presumption of innocence, access to counsel in judicial proceedings, and a fair, speedy and public trial by an impartial jury.” Nowhere on the flyer was I told who wrote it, where I could READ the Patriot Act or that the Patriot Act merely makes the Foreign Surveillance Act of 1978 applicable to terrorists and the 1934 Communications act applicable to cell phones.
The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed when Democrat Jimmy Carter was president, Democrat Sen. Robert Byrd was Majority Leader in the Senate and Democrat Rep. Thomas O’Neill was Speaker of the House. So, how come we are only now learning that that bill caused us to lose all our fundamental rights? Or, maybe we are to assume that people who blow up other people on the street and seek to seize control of nations with terror are not bad enough to use the same surveillance we use on drug lords or crime syndicates?
Terrorism is a tactic used throughout the world by small minority groups who want to seize control of governments. It is not used against Americans only. In fact, just Monday Maoist Communists struck again in Nepal, a Himalayan mountain nation of 24 million. In the past few years, almost totally unreported by the American media, 7,500 people have died from Maoist terrorism in Nepal, a country most Americans would have trouble finding on a map. In Monday’s report to the nation on terrorism, President Bush said,” There is more at work in these attacks than blind rage. The terrorists have a strategic goal. They want us to leave Iraq before our work is done. They want to shake the will of the civilized world. In the past, the terrorists have cited the examples of Beirut and Somalia, claiming that if you inflict harm on Americans, we will run from a challenge. In this, they are mistaken.
“Two years ago, I told the Congress and the country that the war on terror would be a lengthy war, a different kind of war, fought on many fronts in many places. Iraq is now the central front. Enemies of freedom are making a desperate stand there -- and there they must be defeated. This will take time and require sacrifice. Yet we will do what is necessary, we will spend what is necessary, to achieve this essential victory in the war on terror, to promote freedom and to make our own nation more secure.” Some criticize Bush for not telling us when the troops will be coming home. “Good grief,” they say,
“we’ve had our troops over there in Iraq for almost SIX MONTHS! Bush has to tell us when they are coming HOME!” It makes me wonder. Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt told us on December 8, 1941in his “day of infamy” speech something just as vague as Bush’s comment, “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, (by the Japanese) the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”
Here we are 62 years later and we STILL have American troops in Germany, which is not even the country that attacked America on December 7, 1941.
What, do you suppose, would America’s response have been to a Jonathan Schell insisting “The United States must learn to lose this war to Adolf Hitler?” After all, it wasn’t Germany that attacked us in 1941. Yet, no one is complaining that we ended up defeating Nazi Germany and then keeping troops there for 62 years.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com