Letters to the Editors

Secret tribunals speak ill of our system of justice

© St. Petersburg Times,
published December 4, 2001

For many years now, American administrations and private citizens have condemned civil liberties abuses in Chile, China, the Soviet Union, Iran, South Africa and many others. Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes have rightly been criticized for secret trials, arresting people and holding them indefinitely with no charges being pressed, no rights of habeas corpus, withholding evidence from prisoners, denying any right of appeals, eavesdropping on private consultations between the prisoner and his attorney, and even imposing the death penalty without a unanimous decision of the court or providing any recourse to a higher court or tribunal.

Yet here in the United States, the government is doing just that by establishing the kind of kangaroo courts that were the previous hallmark only of brutal and repressive dictatorships. Apparently, the majority of Americans either approve of these draconian measures, or are completely indifferent to them. After all, people say, they are foreigners and terrorists; who cares about their civil rights? Attorney General John Ashcroft says that these people "don't deserve" the protections of our Constitution and the traditional American justice system.

But we should care, not so much because we care about terrorists but because we cherish the freedoms that we say we are fighting for. What do these clandestine tribunals say about us and our justice system to the rest of the world?

Adherence to basic constitutional provisions is not a left versus right issue, but should be of concern to all alert Americans. We are fighting against the terror from the outside that wants to destroy our way of life. Let's not allow the American way to be eroded from within.
-- Norman Orenstein, Clearwater

How can questioning be objectionable?

What can be the possible objection to the questioning by our law enforcement of potentially dangerous aliens? These people are in this country on sufferance, and sufferance alone. They are being permitted to remain at large, a demonstration of our enormous tolerance. If they are unhappy with the idea of cooperation with a host nation, a host nation at war, then by all means let them immediately depart the United States.
-- Lee Skipwith, St. Petersburg

A galling criticism

Re: The president is eviscerating our identity by dismantling the Constitution, Dec. 1.

Much of what Nat Hentoff says in this article strikes a chord with me. I'm not a lawyer but I've become familiar with many of the tenets of our system of justice through service as a hearing officer. Like Hentoff, I've come to identify our country in terms of the protections built into our Constitution. Now, within a year of our Supreme Court's debacle, the very government it installed is making end runs around our Constitution.

It galls me to read in Hentoff's column that the Wall Street Journal has castigated critics of such action, like myself, calling us "couch-potato civil libertarians." While our president and others prosecuting this war and dismantling our Constitution went to extraordinary lengths to avoid service in Vietnam, I and many others, who fell short of their privileged stature received draft notices, obeyed those notices and served there.

Yet today, according to the Wall Street Journal, those who oppose our leaders are couch potatoes, not those who skipped the war their fathers sent other people's sons to fight. And today, just as their fathers did, they are sending other people's sons to war.
-- Douglas Dear, Tampa

No sympathy for those being questioned

Re: Concern over targeted questioning, Nov. 29.

When a front-page article expresses sympathy for the people here who are under suspicion by the FBI, I begin to question the motives of the newspaper staff. The story includes phrases such as: "Many are worried," "growing concern among people of Middle Eastern descent," "I'm feeling this tension" etc. Are we readers supposed to feel sympathetic for those who are being questioned by federal authorities? Many of those questioned are in this country on visas that have expired. Many fit the same profile as the hijackers who killed thousands in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Our citizens are concerned about the next terrorist attack. If I sound unsympathetic to those being questioned by the FBI, just read the Times article on the same day: Poll: Americans support inquiry tactics. This should have been on the front page rather than on 6A. The poll states that 79 percent of Americans support plans to interview these 5,000 who are here on temporary visas. I must be in that 79 percent.
-- C.J. Bjornberg, Clearwater

Remember our history

Attorney General John Ashcroft has wrapped his burial of the Bill of Rights in the flag.

Few will argue that we don't need to take extraordinary measures in the wake of Sept. 11. When those measures include conducting secret trials where defendants are not allowed access to evidence and witnesses against them, indeterminate detention without charges, investigation and detention solely on the basis of ethnicity and judgment without appeal, then we need to take a breath and remember the lessons of our own history.

The reason our founders explicitly included the rights of the accused to confront their accusers is that secret charges and secret evidence were commonplace in other countries and frequent tools of persecutors. Searches were conducted for any reason and no reason. People were arrested, imprisoned and, sometimes, summarily executed without anything remotely resembling due process.

We all want to catch and punish those responsible for the tragic events of Sept. 11. However, if it takes trampling on the rights of Middle Eastern students, residents and/or citizens, suspension of many of the rights that have separated the United States from banana republics, or otherwise disregarding the ideals unique to this country, the price is too high.
-- Ric Moser, Hudson

Cheerleaders for the war

Re: Out-of-step chattering classes take a fall, Nov. 27.

Every so often I read one of your columnists and wonder what planet is he (or she) on. Such a one is John Leo. His latest diatribe against people capable of critical thought takes the cake. He sets up a straw man to beat all, "the media chatterers of the left." Just who are these folks? I haven't seen any of them on television or heard any on the radio, but I have seen and heard an endless parade of military and security "experts." I wish there had been a few sane, cautionary voices, aware of the spiraling consequences of war, but the "chattering classes" these days consist entirely of cheerleaders for the war. What's more, though Leo seems not to have noticed, the airwaves for the last two decades have been dominated by right-wingers.

His head-in-the-sand perspective is illustrated strikingly when he lumps together as heroes, "agents of the CIA," with firefighters and police. Even conservatives for whom the CIA has been something of an icon recognize that it failed big time on Sept. 11. But outside the panels of the Doonesbury comic strip I have seen nothing in the media about the implications of that failure on our efforts to combat terrorism.

I do agree with Leo that there is a cultural divide in the United States, but I would describe it as follows: On one side are those who recognize flaws in our system and seek to correct them. On the other are those like him who cling to ignorance and confuse it with virtue.
-- T.C. Bollinger, Tarpon Springs

Greeks condemn terrorism

The representatives of the member associations of the Panhellenic Federation of the State of Florida, participating in an emergency general assembly on Nov. 11 in Clearwater, vehemently condemn the terrorist acts of Sept. 11 against our fellow American citizens in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania and express our deep sympathies and support to all who have lost family, relatives and friends.

Furthermore, we condemn any form of terrorism against innocent people and the use of terrorist activities aimed at restricting our personal freedoms.

We believe that the principles of democracy, freedom and human dignity, which are gifts to humanity by the Greeks, must govern the relations among nations and people.
-- Michael Servos, president, Panhellenic Federation
of the State of Florida

Just plain totalitarianism

Re: The real foe is religious totalitarianism, by Thomas L. Friedman, Nov. 28.

Rabbi Hartman is mixed up. Different religious faiths must claim to believe different religious truths, otherwise why have any different religions at all? I do believe there is one Christ, supreme over every authority. That is the foundation of my Christian faith. I'm not Jewish or Muslim. However, the doctrine of my faith, and the Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim faith, does not expect or encourage me to force others to believe what I believe.

Where does that "live and let live" philosophy come from, that defines America's relationship to its many different religions? From all these religions, with the approval of our government. In America, we "agree to disagree" and live at peace. Pluralism has slipped sometimes to a peculiar notion, that in order for us to live in peace, we must all agree. Baloney.

Isn't the problem, then, not religious totalitarianism, but just plain old totalitarianism?
-- Jill M. Rommel, Clearwater

Old school is history

Re: Protest deserved coverage, letter, Nov. 27.

I read with interest the letter that recounts some of the misinformation about the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Ga. The letter writer's comments reminded me how easily an ideology of opposition can run away from reality.

To set the record straight, the Army's School of the Americas is closed and few of its more than 60,000 graduates over nearly 40 years have been involved in the crimes the letters writer outlines. During 2000, Congress created the Department of Defense Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which opened it doors in January. Instead of just training Latin American military, the institute provides professional education to rising military, law enforcement and civilian leaders from Latin America, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. The institute's programs, augmented by civilian professors, teach the same information taught in other U.S. military and other government schools, but offers the most extensive human rights training of any school in the Department of Defense.

My staff and I ensure our students understand the appropriate role of the military and law enforcement in democratic societies: to protect and honorably serve their citizens.

Again, the old school is history. WHINSEC has a new approach and different policies. The dialogue that takes place here among the students from all over our hemisphere contributes to peace, prosperity and freedom.
-- Col. Richard Downie, Ph.D., director, Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation, Fort Benning, Ga.

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