Will Bush Build an East German Stasi? by Marc Ash
t r u t h o u t | Friday, 7 June, 2002

Where are we going here? This man who could not manage a majority at the polls is back once again, asking us to abandon everything we know about the way the country is run and follow him. It's not clear exactly what he has planned this time, but if recent history is an accurate guide Bush, Ashcroft, Mueller and whoever is guiding them from the shadows will undoubtedly move to attack every thing they have always despised in the name of safety from renegade Arabs.

I have an idea; we may want to wait until we find out what the Bush Administration knew about the Sept 11th attacks before they occurred, and for that matter who attempted to kill Senators Daschle and Leahy before we sign on for years of social repression at the hands of these people who seem to have materialized out of nowhere with a script that appears to be running like clockwork -- for them. Until now, we as a nation have been prepared to assume all the warning signs about the Bush Administration, could not possibly, be leading where they surely appeared to be. God help us if we are wrong.

Courage is often found in the least likely places. One might think the average Israeli would be frightened to the point of hysteria by now. Applying Tom Ridge's Pavlovian "terror warning color scheme" to the situation in Israel, it would be fair to say every day is a "Flashing Red Day." Surprisingly, they're really quite laissez faire about the prospect of dying. The average Israeli is more than willing to carry on without feeling any particular need to destroy Israeli democracy as a remedy to the violence. There is a lesson in that. Bravo, Israel.

What Bush, Mueller and Ashcroft seam to be proposing bears an unsettling resemblance to the dreaded East German Secret Police Agency, the Stasi. As a matter of fact, most of the key elements are already in place now: discretionary surveillance of anyone at any time, defacto suspension of probable cause, open-ended discretionary detention outside jurisdiction of the courts. These are powers a democracy should resist yielding to the state -- at all costs.

Benjamin Franklin once said; "He who would give up essential liberty in order to have a little security deserves neither liberty, nor security." Mr. Bush proposes that, what we fight for, is freedom itself. Very well then -- let's have at it.