Two years after launching of the War on Terrorism and the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the most successful war being waged by the United States seems to be against the U.S. Constitution, not terrorists.
Although the war in Afghanistan removed the Taliban from power and damaged Osama bin Ladens al-Qaida network, international terrorism experts contend the organization is still dangerous and its sympathizers may be growing in number.
The invasion of Iraq did topple the brutal regime of Saddam Hussein, but in the aftermath of the war, the U.S. finds itself in a quagmire, with mounting casualties, a broadening insurgency and a nation in chaos.
The Bush administration, however, is proving to be successful in its war on the Bill of Rights.
We are seeing a revival of McCarthyism, the 1950s phenomenon when the national fear of communism led to the suppression of civil liberties in the name of protecting our freedoms from communism.
With Attorney General John Ashcroft playing the role of this generations Joe McCarthy, the administration is shredding the Bill of Rights in the name of protecting our freedoms from terrorists.
Under the guise of patriotism, the government is detaining material witnesses indefinitely and without any judicial review.
The government can designate anyone, even U.S. citizens, as enemy combatants and detain them indefinitely without any charges being filed, without notification of their detention or without any legal representation.
The FBI is reviving the Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program), which was discredited by the Church Committees investigation in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, to pry into the private lives of Americans.
The so-called PATRIOT Act, which Congress passed so rapidly and so unthinkingly in the days after Sept. 11th, expands the FBI powers, giving its agents the authority to seize academic and medical records, to go into public libraries and examine records to see what library patrons are reading, to force bookstores to surrender their records of book purchases, to monitor Internet communications, and to share illegally obtained information with other agencies.
President Bush has decreed to himself the authority to establish secret military tribunals that bypass the constitutional right to a fair and public trial.
We are becoming a nation of secret subpoenas, secret arrests and secret trials all in the name of protecting our liberty.
According to a recent Gallup Poll, 60 percent of Americans said the administration is about right in restricting our civil liberties, while another 25 percent say the administration hasnt gone far enough.
Until the American people wake up and stop the shredding of our Constitution, the terrorists of Sept. 11th accomplished what they sought the destruction of America.
Granted, the al-Qaida terrorists actions on Sept. 11th didnt succeed in destroying the United States, but they may have succeeded in destroying the ideals and principles that have made this nation unique, that have made it a beacon for the rest of the world.
If we allow this to happen, we will have willingly surrendered our liberties in exchange for security and wind up with neither.
