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The Taliban at Home
You
may have read or heard all about Taliban, Al Queda and Osama bin Laden you
want by this time. But one part of the question has not been discussed
sufficiently.
We
are referring to home grown Talibanners in high places. We mean those
individuals holding government posts who also hate the American way of
life. They are the fundamentalists both religious and political who are
seeking to undermine the constitutional rights of the American people in
the name of the War Against Terrorism.
Strangely
enough the Islamic fundamentalists and American fundamentalists both hate
the American way of life. Fundamentalists of all stripes hate American
peoples' culture embodied in our Bill of Rights and freedom to pursue
personally chosen life styles: "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of
Happiness."
The
most glaring example of home-grown fundamentalism is the War Powers Act
giving President Bush unlimited right to prosecute the war. His early
decision to suspend trial by jury and substitute Military Tribunals to
round up and hold indefinitely suspected terrorists is unconstitutional.
Our regular constitutional courts have the power to handle such cases.
But
the scary question under the War Powers Act is what will happen next? Will
Attorney General Ashcroft and Bush decide who is suspect next and order
unlimited detention and Military Tribunal trial? If the next group of
suspected terrorists, say pacifists asserting their constitutional right
to be pacifists are rounded up and put before a Military Tribunal they
would have no recourse to regular courts for defense. The Army would
decide their fate. In other words militarism would become the law.
This
fundamentalist threat to the American way of life would, or will become a
threat to union rights. Any strike threat or job action to protect union
rights could be declared "terrorist" or a threat to the war on
terrorism and declared illegal and subject to a Military Tribunal form of
injustice. Bush has already said he will use any and every measure to
break a threatened strike by airline workers.
Be
on the alert. In what is actually a war against a small, weak, almost
comic-opera enemy, do not let those at home get away with their schemes to
scuttle our democracy!
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