How will US President George W. Bush's administration be remembered historically? After five years in office, and with another three years to go, some answers are already apparent. Others are emerging gradually. The latter category includes an increasing assault on civil liberties within the US that now compares to that of former president Richard Nixon's administration more than thirty years ago.
Of course, civil liberties were bound to suffer in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout US history, threats to national security, whether real or imagined, have led to clampdowns on the rights of citizens and, to a far greater extent, on the rights of immigrants and others suspected of acting in the interests of alien forces.
In the twentieth century, abuses of civil liberties were particularly severe during four periods. In the years 1917 to 1919, US participation in World War I and anarchist bombings after the war led to almost two thousand federal prosecutions, mass roundups of aliens, and summary deportations. During World War II, Japan's attack on the US was followed by the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans because of their race, including many who were born in the US.
In the late 1940s and the 1950s, the Cold War and fears that the Red Menace would sap US resolve from within led to myriad anti-subversive programs, with tens of thousands of Americans losing their livelihoods as a result. Finally, during the Nixon years, the president's paranoia about opposition to the Vietnam War and to his policies fuelled a pattern of abuses that eventually brought about his resignation in disgrace.
The Nixon administration's legacy is particularly instructive in assessing the Bush record. Though Americans tend to lump Nixon's violations of civil liberties together under the heading of "Watergate," much more was involved than the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters and the subsequent cover-up. The participants in those events included the "Plumbers," a personal secret police established by Nixon and so named because one of their tasks was to eliminate leaks of information that the White House did not want to disclose.
Another secret assault on civil liberties was Nixon's adoption of the "Huston Plan" which authorized political surveillance by burglary, electronic eavesdropping and the use of the military to spy on civilians. Nixon used these methods against political opponents, journalists and government employees suspected of disloyalty to the president.
As far as we know, Bush has not gone that far. Nevertheless, electronic eavesdropping without court authorization, of the sort Bush ordered starting in 2002, played a particularly important part in Nixon's downfall. One of the three counts against Nixon in the vote to impeach Nixon by the House of Representatives' Judiciary Committee was based on such eavesdropping.
In fact, Bush pursued his policy despite a 1978 law -- adopted in response to the Nixon-era abuses -- that specifically requires judicial approval, and in contradiction to his public assurance that no such eavesdropping takes place without a court order. Now that his electronic surveillance program has been exposed, Bush's Justice Department has launched an investigation into how the news became public, threatening the journalists who reported the information.
But even before the latest revelations, the Bush administration's assaults on civil liberties were legion, including its imprisonment of hundreds of men without charges at Guantanamo Bay in an effort to evade judicial review of their cases. It also rounded up, jailed and deported hundreds of aliens in an anti-terrorist drive none of whose targets was shown to have any link to terrorism.
The list does not stop there. Bush's subordinates authorized methods of interrogation that led to torture and his administration adamantly resisted legislation that would ban its use. It even insisted that it could imprison an American citizen, Jose Padilla, incommunicado for an indefinite period without criminal charges until, faced with the prospect of Supreme Court review, it suddenly pressed charges that had nothing to do with the allegations that had formed the basis for his detention.
Indeed, a hallmark of the Bush administration's violations of civil liberties is that many involve efforts to evade judicial review. Guantanamo, the deportations, the Padilla case and the electronic eavesdropping program all share this characteristic.
At the same time, Bush has systematically packed the federal courts with judges chosen for their readiness to defer to presidential power. His latest nominee to the US Supreme Court, Judge Samuel Alito, exemplifies this trend.
The mood in the US today is far from the point that it reached in 1973 and 1974, when the drive to impeach Nixon and convict him in the US Senate forced him to resign. But, while it seems safe to predict that Bush will serve out the rest of his term, it also appears certain that history will look upon him as a president who sought to undermine civil liberties.
Unfortunately, given Bush's repeated assertions -- in defiance of America's constitutional tradition of checks and balances -- that his office endows him with unilateral powers to violate rights, he appears to be untroubled by that prospect.
Aryeh Neier is the president of the Open Society Institute and a founder of Human Rights Watch.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS