Letters to the Editor
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What the Democrats Haven't Communicated...
The Democrats have railed about Guantanamo, torture, habeus corpus, etc. The Republicans have responded with a simple "we will get the terrorists". Americans respond with a great call to "get the terrorists" and that they don't know what Democrats stand for.
Every American has had experience with a power-hungry authority figure -- from a school hallway monitor, to a parking ticket giver, to the state police, to the TSA groping grandmothers at the airport.
Democrats need to articulate to the American public that the consitutional protections that are being unwound protect them from these very people. It was never publicized in the United States that the vast majority of people held at Abu Graib were entirely innocent. They were literally seized in the night after American forces kicked down the doors to their homes. Maybe 30 to 40% of the people held at Guantanomo have been released. Again these were innocent people picked up in big raids or on the word of neighbors with an axe to grind.
We can't afford to give George W. Bush the freedom to torture you -- because it is somewhat well understood by all Americans that he isn't very good at intelligence or planning. That is what the Democrats are trying to protect you from.
Don't let the Republicans get away with framing the stripping of Constitutional rights as applicable onlyto "the Terrorists". Does any American in a post-Katrina, post-Iraq war world believe that Bush should have the power to determine who is, in fact, a terrorist?
We have the Keystone Kops saying that they need to detain and torture at will -- and the Democrats are so pathetic that they are going along.
(My husband is a legal alien -- has a Green Card, has lived here for 14 years, paid a ton in taxes. That he can be seized at an airport with little provocation and held for no reason for an indefinite amount of time has really changed my view of the United States. That I was purposely groped at the airport last weekend by TSA agents for the first time -- and when I objected was told that I would be arrested -- has added to my sense of paranoia. I also understand that the definitions in the law passed last week could included U.S. citizens. All completely unprecedented to even ponder.)