|
Terrorism from Within
By Robert Quint, Watertown
Reasoning citizens of these United States need more than ever to make their voices heard and their votes count. We should be opposing the current onslaught on democracy and citizen’s rights with great diligence.
The very fabric of democracy and individual rights in the U.S. is being torn and shredded, all in the name of a "war" on terrorism. The phrase "to protect Americans against terrorism" is being used to justify the most flagrant abuses of citizens’ rights and protections by Bush, Ashcroft and the slim conservative majority of the Supreme Court, along with other supporters from the religious right, who want to make our government a theocracy. I call it internal terrorism, and it may prove to be more effective than Al Qaeda in destroying democracy.
To quote an editorial by Bernard Stein that appeared in the July 29 New York Times: "Using the terrorist threat as a scare tactic, the administration has taken one step after another to erode our fundamental freedoms while asking us to pledge allegiance to the flag … The administration consistently reminds us that we must take these steps to protect our lives. Perhaps it needs to be reminded that when our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, they pledged ‘our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor’ to protect the fundamental freedoms they held so dear and not the other way around."
The sad fact is that Democrats who I felt were going to stand against such abuses are giving in to the intimidation and rhetoric of the right. Normally sensible politicians erroneously assume they have to go along with this to get elected or re-elected. We need to prove to them that this is not so.
The concept of spying on each other in Ashcroft’s proposal of "TIPS" is another attack on democracy that would turn friend, neighbor and family members against each other, as such methods did in Nazi Germany and communist Russia. There it was used to identify persons opposed to the government, not to inform about outside terrorists. What a frightening tool in the hands of a U.S. government controlled by intolerant fundamentalist religionists. If it is information about acts of terrorism we are after, I am sure that even without a special government program, any responsible citizen would respond appropriately and notify authorities if he observed excessive quantities of fertilizer or other bomb-making material or other suspicious behavior.
If the rest of us citizens not of the religious and political right—who are still collectively the majority—don’t put a stop to this, shame on us. We need to get out and vote against the politicians who are so willing to destroy our First Amendment concept along with other rights and protections that are being attacked daily. We should start immediately with the upcoming Congressional elections. We need to punish those politicians who are supporting this attack on our rights and democracy by removing them from office.
Any Connecticut candidate supporting the hawkish stand on Iraq proposed by Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld should be voted against. The latter persist in their stance to rush in despite numerous warnings by high-ranking military personnel, including our Secretary of State Colin Powell, to be cautious.
Al Qaeda is apparently alive and well and operating in Pakistan after our invasion of Afghanistan. Will we be any more successful in Iraq? Will we not be using methods of mass destruction when we kill thousands of innocent people with our devastating bombs to get at one man? Is this not terror to those innocent people in those countries? Can we expect less than hatred and retaliation from the mainstream non-terrorist members of the Arab world?
One can legitimately ask if the focus of our administration is terrorists or oil interests. A case in point is the fact that the U.S. has established bases around Afghanistan that are in strategic oil producing and distributing areas. Ironically, the President spurns development of alternate energy sources and measures to conserve energy.
Not to exercise our vote and speak out in opposition to these attrocities is to do a great injustice to ourselves and the children of the next generation.
| 
