Rendition Fiasco Proves Ugliness Of Bush Tyranny

Freedom–including the freedoms of privacy and assembly–is security for the individual. Rendition Fiasco Proves Ugliness of Bush TyrannyBy Cliff Montgomery – Feb. 25th, 2008The rendition case of Canadian national Maher Arar, who was wrongly identified as a radical Islamist and deported from America to Syria for sessions of torture, was discussed at a Congressional hearing in October, 2007. The account of that hearing was published in early February.The transcript tells us much about our representatives.”The refusal of the Bush Administration to be held accountable [for its handling of the Arar case] is an embarrassment to many of us,” Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) of the House Judiciary Committee said. Delahunt also issued an apology to Arar.Naturally, this is how most lawmakers felt on both sides of the aisle. But the neo-conservatives who have assumed much control over Republican Party leadership could not allow common sense and Christian decency to rule the day, not even here.Since it was their Bush Administration which was responsible for the atrocious offense to Mr. Arar, they clearly felt it more important to spin this embarrassing matter from one of their own than to fix the obvious problem of a power-mad White House.Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), did endorse Delahunt’s apology to Maher Arar, but then felt the need to ruin it by defending Bush’s indefensible scheme of extraordinary rendition, which put the innocent Arar through Hell.As usual, the neo-con tactic was a disgusting display of rhetorical hubris.”Should we halt every government program that, due to a human error, results in a tragedy?”  Rohrabacher had the nerve to ask.”I challenge anybody to compare the error rate of rendition, this program, with the error rate in any other government program,” Rohrabacher added.Of course, Rohrabacher was trying to make the issue a simple matter of cold numbers. It is a bit like a doctor rhetorically asking, “So our methods clearly have caused the death of an individual–everyone makes mistakes. Should we have to change our methods, just because those methods will continue to be severely dangerous to the well-being of some human beings?”The answer to such an asinine statement should be obvious.But the Arar case also reveals the clear weakness in the Bush Administration’s prime argument for absolute executive power. Since 9/11, it has insisted that civil rights and basic freedoms must be curtailed in order for the president and his administration to ‘ensure security’ for all living in America.In other words, the matter has been framed as the false dilemma of “Freedom vs. Security.” We may have freedom, we may have security; but we may not have both.The Arar case proves that argument to be a simplistic fraud. If Mr. Arar, an innocent Canadian man living in America before his rendition to Syria and subsequent torture, is not safe from the arbitrary power of the Bush White House, then no one–citizen or non-citizen–is safe.Arar’s story proves that absolute executive power is not a matter of “Freedom vs. Security,” because freedom–including the freedoms of privacy and assembly–is security for the individual.People are only really secure if they are free, and if their basic natural rights are respected by their government. Lack of freedom is itself lack of security.No free person has ever been made more secure by becoming an object without rights. No group has ever been made more secure by putting blind trust in a master, or denying their own natural freedoms.The 20th Century was the century of the absolute tyrant, who ruled his nation by fiat ‘for the security of the people’. Yet no person in those totalitarian states was ever secure, or ever felt safe.That’s why freedom matters. A free people may hold their representatives accountable for gross sins against the country and abuses of representation. That’s why free nations recognize that at every moment, the “inherent rights” belong only to the people, and never to the career politicians.Wartime only makes those inherent rights more necessary for every human being, not less.The Arar case is not an empty mistake of numbers, but a sin of injustice revealing the principal error of neo-conservative “logic”. It proves that a nation suffering under a tyrant is in as bad a way as one suffering under a terrorist.True, most people living in America probably won’t find themselves extradited to another nation so that moral perverts may torture them mercilessly. But most people living in America will never be the victim of a terrorist attack, either.Such is not the purpose of terrorism, or tyranny. Both are psychological attacks upon a people. It is not the certainty of the attack that stifles others, but rather the fear that they could be next.As long as a nation is haunted by either terrorists or tyrants, no one there can ever be safe.Like what you’re reading so far? Then why not order a full year (52 issues) of thee-newsletter for only $15? A major article covering an story not being told in the Corporate Press will be delivered to your email every Monday morning for a full year, for less than 30 cents an issue. Order Now!