More Repressive at Home, More Lawless Overseas | America 10 Years After 9/11

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from the Progressive:




More Repressive at Home, More Lawless Overseas | America 10 Years After 9/11
By Matthew Rothschild, September 10, 2011h


On this tenth anniversary of 9/11, let’s face facts: The United States is a more repressive place to live in, and it conducts itself in a more lawless manner overseas. The edifice of repression that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney erected after 9/11, far from being dismantled by Barack Obama, has actually been buttressed. And he’s even added a couple of new floors. We are not the same nation we were ten yeas ago. We are less free. We are more bellicose. And our leaders have put in place mechanisms that future Presidents may use to utterly destroy our democracy.

I. More Repressive at Home

One month after the attacks of 9/11, Wis. Sen. Russ Feingold took to the floor of the Senate and warned:

"There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country where the police were allowed to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country where the government was entitled to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept your email communications; if we lived in a country where people could be held in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they were up to no good, the government would probably discover and arrest more terrorists, or would be terrorists, just as it would find more lawbreakers generally. But that would not be a country in which we would want to live, and it would not be a country for which we could, in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short, that country would not be America.”

But actually, to an appalling degree, that country is, in fact, America today. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/post_september_11_america.html