The Enablers

[bemildred]

Four years ago, the United States was hit by a terrorist attack. Three days later, the U.S. Congress signed away the people's freedom, writing a blank check for tyranny to a ludicrous little man installed in office after the most dubious election in American history. Last week, the poisonous after-effects of this abject surrender took yet another sinister turn, as Bush factotums in the courts once again upheld the Leader's arbitrary power over the life and liberty of his subjects.

The joint House-Senate resolution of Sept. 14, 2001 -- approved by a combined vote of 518-1 -- gave President George W. Bush the most sweeping powers ever granted an American leader. Bush was authorized to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against any organization or individual that he alone declared was somehow connected to the Sept. 11 attacks. His arbitrary will would be the sole deciding factor. This timorous resolution was, in effect, a repeal of the Magna Carta: the nobles of the land giving back hard-won rights to a harsh, incompetent despot.

A few critical voices at the time -- this column among them -- noted the dangers of this panic attack among the political elite. "We must now trust that this man who can't hold his liquor will be able to hold near-absolute power without getting drunk on it," we wrote on Sept. 21, 2001. There was of course no basis for that trust, and it was immediately betrayed. The Bush Faction seized upon the congressional resolution as an "Enabling Act" justifying a broad range of unconstitutional measures, including torture, kidnappings, mass roundups, secret hearings, secret prisons, arrests without charge, indefinite detention, kangaroo courts, "extrajudicial killings" and, finally, aggressive war.


In a series of secret "executive orders" and Justice Department memos, the Bush Faction overturned the Constitution and established a new authoritarian principle of state: The president, they said, was not bound by any domestic or international law in his prosecution of the "war on terror." And this "war" -- an inchoate, amorphous concept covering a multitude of sins -- was founded upon the carte blanche of Sept. 14.

Chris Floyd