If This Is Freedom, What Exactly Is Dictatorship?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
November 30, 2003Let me see if I have this right. In the United States of America:
1. The president now has the unrestricted power to declare war against a country that has not attacked the United States, wreaking death and destruction on both sides of the conflict.
2. The president now has the unrestricted power to round up unlimited numbers of American citizens within the United States and incarcerate them in military brigs or concentration camps for the rest of their lives and keep them from ever again communicating with friends, families, and attorneys, simply on the president's certification that the incarcerated Americans are "terrorists," as he has done with Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi.
3. The president now has the unrestricted power to seize American citizens abroad and remove them to its military base in Cuba, where they can be kept for the rest of their lives and kept from ever again communicating with friends, family, and attorneys, solely on the basis of his certification that the imprisoned Americans are "terrorists," as he initially did with Yaser Esam Hamdi.
4. The president now has the unrestricted power to kill American citizens abroad solely on the basis of his certification that the killed Americans are "terrorists," as he did to Ahmed Hijazi, the American who was killed with a U.S.-fired missile in Yemen.
Pardon me for asking the following two indelicate questions:
First, if all this is freedom, what exactly is dictatorship?...
Second, after the Iraqi people are freed from dictatorship, would it be asking too much to do the same for the American people through the adoption of the following two amendments to the U.S. Constitution:
"The Congress shall have the power to declare war, and this time we really do mean it." "No person shall be denied life, liberty, or property without due process of law, and this time we really do mean it."
Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
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