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A few days ago, I watched Attorney General John Ashcroft testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to defend his anti-terrorism measures. Knowing well what was coming, I prepared to become sick to my stomach as soon as he opened his mouth.
At first, he sounded surprisingly reasonable. “We need honest, reasoned debate, not fear-mongering,” Ashcroft said. Fair enough.
But then, just as I was beginning to cling to a faint hope of avoiding overwhelming sickness, it happened. Reaching deep inside himself to pull out his best impersonation of a Soviet dictator, Ashcroft let loose: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to . . . enemies and pause to . . . friends.”
Wait a minute. “Phantoms of lost liberty”? The only reason why we lost liberty, you jackass, is because you took it away from us! As I recall, after Sept. 11 the freedoms of the Constitution were still there; freedom of speech, expression, assembly and others were not buried beneath the rubble at Ground Zero but were standing, as intact as ever-and fell only when Ashcroft destroyed them with his anti-Muslim tirades of hatred. The phantoms of lost liberty may indeed be haunting our land, but only because Ashcroft sent them into exile, not because terrorists destroyed them.
And now this: “Your tactics only aid terrorists .They give ammunition to .enemies and pause to .friends.” He’s referring to people who oppose him and his tactics. In his twisted mind, dissenters and freedom-lovers-true Americans-are aiding and abetting terrorists by exercising their right to .well … to exercise their rights. OK, then, were the founders of our country terrorists because they fought for freedom and dared to dissent? No, they were not terrorists-and neither are we.
Then-oh, what horror-the vomit-inducing gibberish continued to pour out of Attorney General Ashcroft’s mouth. Also testifying that day was Ali Maqtari of Yemen, who recounted his nearly two-month-long detention during which he was allegedly “allowed minimal contact with his attorney and family and was threatened by investigators while in custody,” (Washingtonpost.com) an ordeal experienced by many of the detainees. Not one to decline an opportunity to cause cancer in the viewers who practiced self-torture by watching him speak, Ashcroft delivered. Holding up what he said was an Al-Qaeda terrorism manual, he claimed that it instructed Al-Qaeda members to abuse their American right to free speech by concocting stories of mistreatment. In other words, he claimed that the detainees who complain about unjust treatment are terrorists who lie.
OK, Mr. Ashcroft. I might believe you if you had evidence. But you have withheld proof and it is now known that only about a dozen of the hundreds of detainees are connected to Al-Qaeda in any way. In other words, there is no proof. You have no proof of their guilt, just as you have no proof of their supposed inclination to lie. You claim to be of integrity and honesty while ignoring the one essential element of guilt: evidence. Obviously, the essence of “integrity” and “honesty” completely eludes you.
Mercifully, his testimony did end, leaving myself and many others with fear. Fear for myself, my fellow Americans and non-Americans and a fear for this country. I feel sorrow for the peaceful and law-abiding immigrants who are cowering in fear because Ashcroft has scared them to death; even more, I feel sorrow for the Constitution-written in the sweat and blood of millions of people who fought and died for it over centuries past, only to be ripped to shreds by an ungrateful, disoriented freak whose twisted vision is his only concern. It’s just not right. One man, whose life extends for only slightly more than a few decades, should not be allowed to destroy a legacy assembled over centuries. Without the Constitution, there can be no America, and no one human being should ever be allowed to trample upon it.
Vladimir Skaletsky is a sophomore political science major.
