better-dead-than-fed
04-25-2013, 11:08 PM
"The Constitution protects us all: Holding tight to our principles even when terrorism threatens"
by Kermit Roosevelt (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/constitution-protects-article-1.1326580)
"We live in a very dangerous world,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a press conference Monday, referring to the Boston Marathon bombings. “And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”
Bloomberg was sounding a theme that has repeated itself throughout our history. We have often adjusted our view of constitutional rights when danger threatens.
We did so during World War I, to send four-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs to prison for telling a crowd that they were “fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.” (He ran a fifth time from prison and got nearly a million votes.) We did so during World War II, to allow the mass imprisonment of Japanese- Americans. And we did so after the Sept. 11 attacks, to allow the government a freer hand in interrogating suspected terrorists.
One thing that connects all these reinterpretations is that they subsequently came to seem regrettable overreactions. (Torture apologists still exist, but even the Bush administration withdrew the initial memos that told the President he could do practically whatever he wanted.)
But the more important similarity is that they did not serve the goals put forward to justify them. They did not make us safer.
The same dynamic is playing out now following the attacks in Boston. Don’t read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen charged with a crime on American soil, his Miranda rights, some people urged. Don’t let him see a lawyer. Try him before a military commission.
These suggestions are generally illegal, though delaying the Miranda warning was permissible, and withholding it entirely would have meant only that subsequent statements could not be used at trial.
But even if they were legal, they would still be bad ideas. It is absurd to think that someone who plans and executes a terror attack on American soil does not know about his right to remain silent; mirandizing him costs nothing.
Letting him see a lawyer will not hamper interrogation; any lawyer worth his salt will tell Dzhokhar that cooperation is his only chance of avoiding the death penalty, and hearing that from his own lawyer is more persuasive than hearing it from the FBI.
And if anyone still believes that military commissions are an easier route to conviction than federal court, they are impervious to evidence. Federal courts routinely convict the accused of terrorism offenses.
What the people who say such things really mean is that they want to throw down any legal obstacle that stands in the way of protecting Americans.
Such toughness has its allure. And it is tempting to believe that if we sacrifice enough rights, preferably those of other people, on the altar of security, we will be safe.
But it’s not the law that typically stands in our way. Why didn’t the FBI keep closer tabs on Tamerlan Tsarnaev after getting a 2011 tip from Russia about his radicalism? It is not because they were prohibited by law or the Constitution. They investigated him and found nothing suspicious enough to warrant further surveillance.
Maybe they misread the evidence, or maybe it just wasn’t there. But the only rule that stopped the investigation was a sensible guideline against continuing after a conclusion that the subject poses no threat.
The law isn’t what stood in the way of preventing 9/11: There were FBI agents clamoring to their superiors about foreigners learning to fly jets but not to land them.
The problem isn’t that we as a country haven’t been tough enough. It’s that we haven’t been smart enough.
Sacrificing rights does not generally make us safer. In fact, it may make us less safe. Interrogators in Iraq asked foreign fighters why they had come there to kill Americans, and the top answers were Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Smart policy-making asks whether the things we do in the name of fighting terrorism create more terrorists than they stop, whether they inspire enough hatred to offset any benefits they bring.
That is not the only question, of course. Hatred is not necessarily a reason to change policy. If people hate us for being good, if they want to kill us for standing up for human rights and the rule of law, then we should fight them unflinchingly.
If death comes in that fight, we should accept it as the price we must pay for defending our ideals. The brave people who wrote the Constitution knew that some things were worth dying for.
But torture is not one of them. Neither is stupidity. Neither is fear. The framers of the Constitution risked their lives for the rights and values enshrined in that document. It is the saddest of ironies that we have put our own lives at greater risk by abandoning them.
by Kermit Roosevelt (http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/constitution-protects-article-1.1326580)
"We live in a very dangerous world,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a press conference Monday, referring to the Boston Marathon bombings. “And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”
Bloomberg was sounding a theme that has repeated itself throughout our history. We have often adjusted our view of constitutional rights when danger threatens.
We did so during World War I, to send four-time presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs to prison for telling a crowd that they were “fit for something better than slavery and cannon fodder.” (He ran a fifth time from prison and got nearly a million votes.) We did so during World War II, to allow the mass imprisonment of Japanese- Americans. And we did so after the Sept. 11 attacks, to allow the government a freer hand in interrogating suspected terrorists.
One thing that connects all these reinterpretations is that they subsequently came to seem regrettable overreactions. (Torture apologists still exist, but even the Bush administration withdrew the initial memos that told the President he could do practically whatever he wanted.)
But the more important similarity is that they did not serve the goals put forward to justify them. They did not make us safer.
The same dynamic is playing out now following the attacks in Boston. Don’t read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen charged with a crime on American soil, his Miranda rights, some people urged. Don’t let him see a lawyer. Try him before a military commission.
These suggestions are generally illegal, though delaying the Miranda warning was permissible, and withholding it entirely would have meant only that subsequent statements could not be used at trial.
But even if they were legal, they would still be bad ideas. It is absurd to think that someone who plans and executes a terror attack on American soil does not know about his right to remain silent; mirandizing him costs nothing.
Letting him see a lawyer will not hamper interrogation; any lawyer worth his salt will tell Dzhokhar that cooperation is his only chance of avoiding the death penalty, and hearing that from his own lawyer is more persuasive than hearing it from the FBI.
And if anyone still believes that military commissions are an easier route to conviction than federal court, they are impervious to evidence. Federal courts routinely convict the accused of terrorism offenses.
What the people who say such things really mean is that they want to throw down any legal obstacle that stands in the way of protecting Americans.
Such toughness has its allure. And it is tempting to believe that if we sacrifice enough rights, preferably those of other people, on the altar of security, we will be safe.
But it’s not the law that typically stands in our way. Why didn’t the FBI keep closer tabs on Tamerlan Tsarnaev after getting a 2011 tip from Russia about his radicalism? It is not because they were prohibited by law or the Constitution. They investigated him and found nothing suspicious enough to warrant further surveillance.
Maybe they misread the evidence, or maybe it just wasn’t there. But the only rule that stopped the investigation was a sensible guideline against continuing after a conclusion that the subject poses no threat.
The law isn’t what stood in the way of preventing 9/11: There were FBI agents clamoring to their superiors about foreigners learning to fly jets but not to land them.
The problem isn’t that we as a country haven’t been tough enough. It’s that we haven’t been smart enough.
Sacrificing rights does not generally make us safer. In fact, it may make us less safe. Interrogators in Iraq asked foreign fighters why they had come there to kill Americans, and the top answers were Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Smart policy-making asks whether the things we do in the name of fighting terrorism create more terrorists than they stop, whether they inspire enough hatred to offset any benefits they bring.
That is not the only question, of course. Hatred is not necessarily a reason to change policy. If people hate us for being good, if they want to kill us for standing up for human rights and the rule of law, then we should fight them unflinchingly.
If death comes in that fight, we should accept it as the price we must pay for defending our ideals. The brave people who wrote the Constitution knew that some things were worth dying for.
But torture is not one of them. Neither is stupidity. Neither is fear. The framers of the Constitution risked their lives for the rights and values enshrined in that document. It is the saddest of ironies that we have put our own lives at greater risk by abandoning them.