"The Kind of Government We Have Chosen to Have"

Glenn Greenwald has a post up about Jose Padilla and the torture he claims to have undergone at the hands of the U.S. Government. Padilla is a U.S. citizen.

The whole post is must-read, as is the comment Greenwald links to in the update to the post. That comment is a beautiful thing. It should be read on every television and radio channel and sent by email to every person in the U.S. Check out what at least one police officer has to say about Padilla's treatment:

"To find oneself in the situation of Mr. Padilla with no contact and no assurance of any aspect whatsoever of your future is something that isn't even known by the most closely confined inmates in a super-max prison where their guilt has already been adjudicated. Even those inmates have access to the judicial system. To defend even the basic character of Mr. Padilla's confinement absolutely requires that the defender assume that Mr. Padilla is guilty even if they are unwilling to acknowledge that belief. To allow the executive branch, on its own initiative, to operate on this basis is something that I, who routinely deal with those accused of crimes, can scarcely imagine exists outside of the pages of pages of 1984."

Now, let's think about this a minute. Comparisons of the Bush Administration to various totalitarian regimes is generally met with howls of protest. It's over the line, right? Beyond outrageous. On the face of it, that's a reasonable response. After all, George W. Bush hasn't started jailing political opponents. He hasn't started shutting down opposition outlets in the press. He hasn't set out to destroy groups or organizations that disagree with him. This is still America, after all. We're still free.

Except that George W. Bush has claimed and Congress has granted him the power to do all those things. What greater power can a tyrant have than the power to make anyone who opposes him disappear? George Bush now has that power. He can name any U.S. citizen an enemy combatant and, presto, they're gone. No appeal. No recourse. And he can have them tortured until they say exactly what he wants them to say.

Sound far-fetched? Believe we can trust Dubya not to abuse his power in that way? Here's the thing. First, anyone who trusts any government is an idiot. Governments have a tendency to gather power and power tends to be misused. Second, Dubya won't be president forever. The next person to hold that office might have different priorities. The power will remain and eventually someone will misuse it.

Doubt that? Look at history. If there's one thing history teaches, even if you only look at the past 200 years in the United States, it's that people who hold power can't be trusted.

The men who created this country, who gave us our Constitution, understood that. They're profound distrust of the government is the very foundation of The Bill of Rights. Little wonder then that those for whom trust of the current government is orthodoxy view The Constitution as an uninteresting anachronism, useful for waving and not much else.

Americans who still value the founding principles of this nation over having an authoritarian daddy figure to make the monsters go away must be outraged over the Padilla case and the recent blunt desecration of The Bill of Rights by Congress. Those who prefer to believe things just aren't so bad should think of it this way -- your government can arrest you, jail you, hold you for the rest of your life, deny you any outside contact, and torture you. Right now. For any reason at all or for no reason.

No true American could ever intend the government to have that sort of power, or fail to be outraged when the government claims it. We have a chance in the upcoming election to deny that is the government we want. If we Americans fail to send that message this will indeed be the government we have chosen.