Not exactly my sentiments

An old friend who saw combat in Korea passed along one of those e-mails that begins, "Are we fighting a war on terror or aren't we? Was it or was it not started by Islamic people who brought it to our shores on September 11, 2001?" and goes on to say, in the context of "if it is a war and they did start it," the writer doesn't care if U.S. troops are doing all they can to win the war, including humiliating prisoners if it makes them talk and saves lives. I don't really want to argue with my old Marine friend, so I parse words and agree with him that if you go to war, you're supposed to go all out to win.

Early on, the writer writes stuff like "I'll start caring when Osama bin Laden turns himself in and repents for incinerating all those innocent people on 9/11," which is a sympathetic enough thought, but she goes on to say, "I'll care when the American media stops pretending that their First Amendment liberties are somehow derived from international law instead of the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights."

Whoops! Now it's time to say something instead of just hitting the "delete" button and moving on to the next forwarded message. I wrote to my friend:

I don't have a major quarrel with this lady except over this line. I don't even understand what it means. Neither the Bill of Rights nor international law "grants" anyone any rights. The Bill of Rights is a list of "inalienable rights granted by our Creator" (to borrow a phrase from another important document) that the U.S. government is prohibited from stepping on. It is very dangerous to think of these rights as something the government created, because then you are delegating to the government the right to take those rights away. Can't be done ... we agreed when we adopted the Constitution. Of course, it's being done -that's why I get so agitated about it.

Second, First Amendment liberties are not something that belong to "the American media" - it's not "their" First Amendment liberties that are at risk, it's your right to say and write what you're thinking, it's this lady's right to write this little essay and our right to distribute it to our friends and family. When people come out and say "the media shouldn't be allowed to say that," they're really saying, "the government should have the right to shut anybody up when they get out of line."

And while I don't necessarily quarrel with her about the specific treatment of prisoners, I do think we need to be extremely alarmed about the recent Supreme Court decision that said it's OK to hold a U.S. citizen indefinitely without being charged if he has ties to "enemy combatants." How do we know he has ties to enemy combatants if that hasn't been proven in a courtroom, and if you have proof of his crimes, why hasn't he been charged? It seems someone is saying they don't trust the courts to do justice and find this guy guilty - and if you don't trust the courts to do their job, you're one step away from chaos. Either your rights to a trial by jury and to know the charges against you are sacred and absolute, or we're opening the door to kangaroo courts and dictatorship.

These are scary, scary times and not because there are fricking hurricanes out there. Mostly I understand the lady's sentiments, but there are some underlying assumptions that have to be challenged.