The Road to Tyranny

I have to hand it to President Bush.  In just a few short years he has managed to irreparably damage the US Constitution, and has done this with the support of the US Congress and the cooperation of "maverick" politicians such as John McCain. Congress seems ready to pass the "Torture Compromise" bill, which will put the United States in the company of rogue nations who ignore basic human rights.  As the New York Times writes today in its lead editorial: "Our democracy is the big loser."  Andrew Sullivan points out eloquently how as a nation we have embarked on the Road to Tyranny: 

"Put all that together and you really do have the danger of taking emergency measures for wartime and transforming a peace-time constitution into an essentially martial system, where every citizen or non-citizen can be apprehended at will and detained without charge. I repeat: this is a huge deal. It really should be a huge deal for conservatives who care about restraining government power. Its vulnerability to abuse is enormous; sanctioned torture, history tells us, never remains hermetically sealed. It always spreads. It eats away at decency and law and civility. If the president sincerely believes that torture is our most potent weapon in this war, and that habeas corpus is a quaint relic from the past, then we are in far greater peril than even the most dire pessimists believe."

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Das Verbot, Habeas Corpus-Klagen einzureichen, wird jedoch als inakzeptabler Angriff auf das amerikanische Rechtssystem gebrandmarkt. Tatsächlich ist ein Angriff auf die Menschenrechte und die Einführung eines Willkürsystems, dessen Opfer jeder weltweit werden kann, ohne dagegen vorgehen zu können. Die westliche Welt müsste angesichts dieser Anschläge auf Rechtstaatlichkeit und Menschenrechte aufschreien. Die CIA wäre dann nicht sehr viel anders als eine Religionspolizei in einem Taliban-Regime.

Yes, I do hope that European leaders express outrage at this new legislation that violates EU human rights law.