Enemy Combatant? Is your freedom in jeopardy?

When I think of John Whitehead and the Rutherford Institute, I usually think of the Religious Right, but lately I'm discovering that he can be right on target -- and such is the case with his posting on GW Bush's use of the Patriot Act and increasingly imperialistic presidency to infringe our liberties -- all in the name of the "war on terror."

Whitehead quotes GW as saying "There should be limits to freedom." Now there may be truth to that statement, but what does the President mean by that. Whose freedoms and how are these limits determined. Whitehead makes this very cogent comment that is really worth considering:

In a world where the president has the power to label anyone, whether a citizen or permanent resident, an enemy combatant and detain that person indefinitely without trial, no liberty exists and everyone is potentially an “enemy combatant.”

He writes this in the context of a discussion of the fate of Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri, a legal alien residing in Illinois, who was scooped up in a raid, held for 4 years without charges, his family unable to contact him for more than a year. Why, because the President had deemed him an enemy combatant and thus without rights? Why? Because that's what the president said, and what the "decider" says, goes.

He writes:

This issue is bigger than Al-Marri. It’s even bigger than the Bush Administration and its so-called war on terror. The groundwork is being laid for a new kind of government where it will no longer matter if you’re innocent or guilty, whether you’re a threat to the nation or even if you’re a citizen. What will matter is what the president—or whoever happens to be occupying the Oval Office at the time—thinks. And if he or she thinks you’re a threat to the nation and should be locked up, then you’ll be locked up with no access to the protections our Constitution provides. In effect, you will disappear.

I want to live securely, but I surely don't want to see us become a police state, with my life in the hands of a capricious authority. With the current occupants of the White House and considering the rhetoric of some, like Rudy G., it isn't that far from the possibility that we could face real tyranny. Is this overblown? It's possible, but the rhetoric of security does pose dangers to our freedom!

To read the whole piece, click here.