Big Brother is a Big Bully

David Cole and Jules Lobel offer an interesting account of how the Cheney/Bush regime's "preventive paradigm" in their so-called "war on terror" lead to the trampling of our constitutional rights:

The Bush strategy turns the law's traditional approach to state coercion on its head. With narrow exceptions, the rule of law reserves invasions of privacy, detention, punishment and use of military force for those who have been shown--on the basis of sound evidence and fair procedures--to have committed or to be plotting some wrong. The police can tap phones or search homes, but only when there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that the search is likely to find evidence of the crime. People can be preventively detained pending trial, but only when there is both probable cause of past wrongdoing and concrete evidence that they pose a danger to the community or are likely to abscond if left at large. And under international law, nations may use military force unilaterally only in response to an objectively verifiable attack or threat of imminent attack.
These bedrock legal requirements are a hindrance to "going on offense." Accordingly, the Administration has asserted sweeping executive discretion, eschewed questions of guilt or innocence and substituted secrecy and speculation for accountability and verifiable fact. Where the rule of law demands fair and open procedures, the preventive paradigm employs truncated processes often conducted in secret, denying the accused a meaningful opportunity to respond. The need for pre-emptive action is said to justify secrecy and shortcuts, whatever the cost to innocents. Where the rule of law demands that people be held liable only for their own actions, the Administration has frequently employed guilt by association and ethnic profiling to target suspected future wrongdoers. And where the rule of law absolutely prohibits torture and disappearances, the preventive paradigm views these tactics as lesser evils to defuse the proverbial ticking time bomb.

Rather than defuse any bombs, Bush and Company's reckless, unfocussed aggression against the Muslim world has led to the needless deaths of many thousands of Americans and Iraqis by roadside bombing. While the Muslim world's initial revulsion, at the murderous attack of Osama bin Laden, opened a narrow window six years ago to make real progress against the terrorists, the unprovoked attack on Iraq instantly turned symapathy into hate. We in America are less safe today than we were on September 10, 2001. Why? The answer is simple: our government has done many things in those six years to convert possible allies into implacable enemies.