COURT TURNS AGAINST BUSH POLICY (7-2004)

The United States Supreme Court ended its session last week leaving a sour taste 
in the mouth of President Bush following some historic decisions against the 
president’s terrorism policies.

In a sweeping rebuke of Bush’s wartime powers policy on prisoners the justices 
made clear that terror suspects can use the U.S. court system to contest their 
indefinite detention as "enemy combatants."  Bush had maintained that the 600 
foreign prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba should not have access to the 
U.S. courts, because they are not being held in the U.S.

“A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the 
rights of the nation's citizens,” Sandra Day O’Conner wrote for the majority. 
O’Conner was again the swing vote as she has become increasingly more mercurial 
in making decisions through her tenure on the High Court.

The Guantanamo prisoner issue was not the only rebuff of Bush’s policies coming 
out of the Supreme Court this session. In another decision, the court ruled that 
American citizen Yaser Hamdi, who is being held in a U.S. military jail, should 
get a fair opportunity to rebut the government's case against him before a 
neutral party

Although the White House tried to put a positive spin on the court’s decisions, 
staffers were clearly dismayed. Some even accused the Supreme Court of trying to 
run the war on terrorism from the bench.

There is a delicate balance between our beloved freedoms, guaranteed to us by 
the Constitution, and the need to weed out potential terrorists on U.S. soil. 
And most people claim they are willing to give up some of their rights in 
exchange for increased security.

But we, as a nation, often tend to overreact to threats. Following the Columbine 
school shooting, for example, there were several instances where first and 
second graders were suspended from school for threatening to shoot someone with 
a toy gun, or a gun made out of folded paper.

We see violence portrayed daily on TV news programs while more positive stories 
go unreported. Why? Because violence sells. It also causes us to become 
paranoid.

The U.S. government has raised the terror threat on a number of occasions since 
the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. None of the alerts were for specific targets or 
for specific times. And no terrorism came to pass during any of the warning 
periods. 

Keeping us all scared to death has become an unofficial government policy. A 
frightened nation is a compliant one.

But it’s also a more violent one. Why do U.S. citizens tend to kill each other 
at a rate 10 times greater than almost any other country? We’re scared, and we 
overreact.

The best way to assure that terrorism remains in check is for all facets of 
government – the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, etc. – to remain in constant 
communication and be ready to act on a moment’s notice. That was the breakdown, 
the weak link, prior to Sept. 11. 

The government doesn’t need to keep us all scared. It doesn’t need to limit our 
rights and freedoms. The High Court was correct in spelling that out to Bush.

Certainly we should be suspicious when there is a suspicious situation, and 
report it to the proper authorities. Otherwise, Americans should go on about 
their business as though terrorism doesn’t exist, because it really isn’t very 
common. Let’s keep things in perspective.