How will US President George W. Bush's administration be remembered historically? After five years in office, and with another three years to go, some answers are already apparent. Others are emerging gradually. The latter category includes an increasing assault on civil liberties within the US that now compares to that of former president Richard Nixon's administration more than thirty years ago.
Of course, civil liberties were bound to suffer in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout US history, threats to national security, whether real or imagined, have led to clampdowns on the rights of citizens and, to a far greater extent, on the rights of immigrants and others suspected of acting in the interests of alien forces.
In the twentieth century, abuses of civil liberties were particularly severe during four periods. In the years 1917 to 1919, US participation in World War I and anarchist bombings after the war led to almost two thousand federal prosecutions, mass roundups of aliens, and summary deportations. During World War II, Japan's attack on the US was followed by the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans because of their race, including many who were born in the US.
In the late 1940s and the 1950s, the Cold War and fears that the Red Menace would sap US resolve from within led to myriad anti-subversive programs, with tens of thousands of Americans losing their livelihoods as a result. Finally, during the Nixon years, the president's paranoia about opposition to the Vietnam War and to his policies fuelled a pattern of abuses that eventually brought about his resignation in disgrace.
The Nixon administration's legacy is particularly instructive in assessing the Bush record. Though Americans tend to lump Nixon's violations of civil liberties together under the heading of "Watergate," much more was involved than the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters and the subsequent cover-up. The participants in those events included the "Plumbers," a personal secret police established by Nixon and so named because one of their tasks was to eliminate leaks of information that the White House did not want to disclose.
Another secret assault on civil liberties was Nixon's adoption of the "Huston Plan" which authorized political surveillance by burglary, electronic eavesdropping and the use of the military to spy on civilians. Nixon used these methods against political opponents, journalists and government employees suspected of disloyalty to the president.
As far as we know, Bush has not gone that far. Nevertheless, electronic eavesdropping without court authorization, of the sort Bush ordered starting in 2002, played a particularly important part in Nixon's downfall. One of the three counts against Nixon in the vote to impeach Nixon by the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee was based on such eavesdropping.
In fact, Bush pursued his policy despite a 1978 law -- adopted in response to the Nixon-era abuses -- that specifically requires judicial approval, and in contradiction to his public assurance that no such eavesdropping takes place without a court order. Now that his electronic surveillance program has been exposed, Bush's Justice Department has launched an investigation into how the news became public, threatening the journalists who reported the information.
But even before the latest revelations, the Bush administration's assaults on civil liberties were legion, including its imprisonment of hundreds of men without charges at Guantanamo Bay in an effort to evade judicial review of their cases. It also rounded up, jailed and deported hundreds of aliens in an anti-terrorist drive none of whose targets was shown to have any link to terrorism.
The list does not stop there. Bush's subordinates authorized methods of interrogation that led to torture and his administration adamantly resisted legislation that would ban its use. It even insisted that it could imprison an American citizen, Jose Padilla, incommunicado for an indefinite period without criminal charges until, faced with the prospect of Supreme Court review, it suddenly pressed charges that had nothing to do with the allegations that had formed the basis for his detention.
Indeed, a hallmark of the Bush administration's violations of civil liberties is that many involve efforts to evade judicial review. Guantanamo, the deportations, the Padilla case and the electronic eavesdropping program all share this characteristic.
At the same time, Bush has systematically packed the federal courts with judges chosen for their readiness to defer to presidential power. His latest nominee to the US Supreme Court, Judge Samuel Alito, exemplifies this trend.
The mood in the US today is far from the point that it reached in 1973 and 1974, when the drive to impeach Nixon and convict him in the US Senate forced him to resign. But, while it seems safe to predict that Bush will serve out the rest of his term, it also appears certain that history will look upon him as a president who sought to undermine civil liberties.
Unfortunately, given Bush's repeated assertions -- in defiance of America's constitutional tradition of checks and balances -- that his office endows him with unilateral powers to violate rights, he appears to be untroubled by that prospect.
Aryeh Neier is the president of the Open Society Institute and a founder of Human Rights Watch.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
You wish every Taiwanese spoke English like I do. I was not born an anglophone, yet I am paid to write and speak in English. It is my working language and my primary idiom in private. I am more than bilingual: I think in English; it is my language now. Can you guess how many native English speakers I had as teachers in my entire life? Zero. I only lived in an English-speaking country, Australia, in my 30s, and it was because I was already fluent that I was able to live and pursue a career. English became my main language during adulthood
The international women’s soccer match between Taiwan and New Zealand at the Kaohsiung Nanzih Football Stadium, scheduled for Tuesday last week, was canceled at the last minute amid safety concerns over poor field conditions raised by the visiting team. The Football Ferns, as New Zealand’s women’s soccer team are known, had arrived in Taiwan one week earlier to prepare and soon raised their concerns. Efforts were made to improve the field, but the replacement patches of grass could not grow fast enough. The Football Ferns canceled the closed-door training match and then days later, the main event against Team Taiwan. The safety
There are moments in history when America has turned its back on its principles and withdrawn from past commitments in service of higher goals. For example, US-Soviet Cold War competition compelled America to make a range of deals with unsavory and undemocratic figures across Latin America and Africa in service of geostrategic aims. The United States overlooked mass atrocities against the Bengali population in modern-day Bangladesh in the early 1970s in service of its tilt toward Pakistan, a relationship the Nixon administration deemed critical to its larger aims in developing relations with China. Then, of course, America switched diplomatic recognition
The National Immigration Agency on Tuesday said it had notified some naturalized citizens from China that they still had to renounce their People’s Republic of China (PRC) citizenship. They must provide proof that they have canceled their household registration in China within three months of the receipt of the notice. If they do not, the agency said it would cancel their household registration in Taiwan. Chinese are required to give up their PRC citizenship and household registration to become Republic of China (ROC) nationals, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said. He was referring to Article 9-1 of the Act
RSS