AUSTIN, Texas -- Sometimes I forget how truly simpleminded the
Bushies can be. The front-page of The New York Times reports, "The Bush
administration seems to accept and even relish (Attorney General) Ashcroft's
role as lightning rod on difficult criminal justice issues."
Since the attorney general has so amply demonstrated his
clueless incompetence, it may seem difficult to plumb why it should be so.
But it is precisely, you see, because liberals consider John Ashcroft a
dangerous nincompoop that the administration thinks he's doing a good job.
They really are that simple.
In the Texas Legislature, the press occasionally gives the
If-He-Votes-Yes, I-Vote-No Award for some egregious example of this
particular strain of non-thinking. Any halfway smart politician loves to
have another pol in this position. That's when you introduce a resolution in
favor of Motherhood just to watch the other guy vote against it.
It takes no great detective to see the pattern here. Before
Sept. 11, Bush's entire foreign policy consisted of being Not Clinton. If
Clinton was for something, Bush was against it, and vice versa. This did
not, you may have noticed, lead to an effective foreign policy.
Likewise, most people had difficulty understanding why the
administration was so set on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
when it didn't make any sense. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates 3.2
billion barrels of economically recoverable oil, which would at most reduce
our foreign dependence by a couple of percentage points. We can save twice
that with a tiny improvement in fuel mileage, which the Bushies opposed.
It's just dumb to drill there, and the enviros were in a snit about it.
Precisely. It was because the enviros were in a total snit that
the Bushies felt they were doing the right thing. Unfortunately, this is
4-year-old thinking.
Because John Ashcroft has become a bugbear for liberals, the
Bushies assume he must be doing something right. Not necessarily.
As David Cole reports in The Nation, "To date, despite the
thousands of Arab and Muslim immigrants arrested, searched, profiled and
questioned, Ashcroft has charged only a single person -- Zacarias
Moussaoui -- with any involvement in the attacks of Sept. 11. And he was
arrested before the attacks occurred. Such broad-brush tactics are unlikely
to succeed, for they give notice to potential targets, allowing them to
evade detection while alienating the very communities we must work with to
identify potential threats who may be living among them."
Ashcroft is still "detaining" -- such a nice euphemism -- -
hundreds of non-citizens on immigration charges, even though many of those
charges have been resolved. Under Ashcroft's orders, they are being tried in
secret proceedings closed to all outside observers.
U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds has declared the closed
proceedings unconstitutional, and Superior Court Judge Arthur D'Italia of
New Jersey, calling the secret arrests "odious to a democracy," has ordered
the INS to release the names of those
detained.
Ashcroft's prosecution of Lynne Stewart, the New York lawyer who
has bravely defended some terribly unpopular clients, is a mystery. She is
not charged with furthering any illegal or violent activity. Ashcroft has
also made prosecution of Massaoui more difficult by insisting on the death
penalty. We knew in advance that meant France would not cooperate by
releasing information that could lead to the death penalty. It's all very
well to sit around and gritch about the French, but it doesn't get us any
forwarder.
Then we have this ludicrous situation at Gitmo, where we now say
we may keep these people locked up even if they are acquitted of whatever
charges are finally leveled against them. A permanent policy of imprisonment
without conviction or even trial -- that's worse than stupid, it's horrible.
The administration has already backed down from its original
position and will now require public trials, unanimous votes for the death
penalty and some review. But they insist they can put you in a dungeon
forever and they never have to say why. It's like the old French lettre de
cachet that used to figure as plot device in potboilers like "The Count of
Monte Cristo." One can only conclude the problem is the administration has
no idea what to do with these prisoners.
To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other
Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web
page at
www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
