“It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.”
                                                                                - Thomas Jefferson

Beyond the invasions of two countries; beyond the trashing of the budget surplus handed them by the Clinton administration in order to give even more to the wealthiest members of our society; beyond the shredding of the Constitution and trampling of individual rights, the most heinous legacy of the Bush/Cheney years will be the mentality of fear the Bush administration foisted on the American people. Bush/Cheney managed to make fear of terrorism so pervasive that we have become like lemmings in our willingness to accept that if the government merely labels an individual as a Terrorist, then that person must, indeed, be a Terrorist. There can be no greater affront to our Democracy than the ready willingness to change our presumption of innocence until proven guilty to a presumption of guilty until proven innocent.

Even with only the basics of our Democracy elucidated in a middle school civics class or a high school American history class, the proposition that our legal system is based upon a presumption of innocence should be intrinsically understood by anyone who calls himself/herself an American. One of our most valuable safeguards against governmental abuse of power has always been this presumption of innocence. For it is not sufficient, under the law, for the government to simply accuse someone of a crime and throw them into jail. The government is required to prove the guilt of the accused.

During the Bush/Cheney years, we somehow lost sight of this basic tenet of our Democracy. When objections were raised to illegal eavesdropping, torture, rendition, indefinite detention or denial of civilian trials, the response from Bush followers was always the same, ”These are Terrorists, and Terrorists have no rights.”  The truth, though, was that the Government only claimed they were Terrorists without offering up irrefutable proof. In the minds of Bush followers, the claim became accepted as proof.  No distinction was made between an accusation by the government and an unchallengeable truth. The fear fed us by Bush/Cheney allowed us to see the Claim and the Truth as being synonymous.

The whole point of the Bush-era controversies is just this - the Government should have to demonstrate someone’s guilt before it is assumed and, most certainly, before that person is subjected to punishment. The Government should have to show probable cause to a court and obtain warrants before eavesdropping. The Government should have to offer evidence that a person actually engaged in Terrorism before locking him or her in a cage. And the Government should have to obtain a conviction in a court of law before any individual is whisked away in the dead of night to be tortured or killed.

Too many of us have come too easily to equate unproven government accusations with proof. And once we accept that, legal due process becomes entirely unnecessary.  We have decided we know these persons are Terrorists.  And how do we know it?  Because the Government says it is so!  This has become all the “proof” that is needed.

But when the light of day is shed on many of these cases, we find the truth is much different from what we wish to believe. Fifteen months after the U.S. Supreme Court rebuked the Bush administration by ruling Guantanamo captives could sue for their freedom, civilian judges ruling in 36 cases ordered the release of 29 detainees, siding with the Defense Department only seven times. In other words, the Government’s assertion that someone was a terrorist was held to be proven less than 20% of the time!

In one federal courtroom last August, a defense lawyer successfully argued the U.S. military had coerced a false confession out of a 50-year-old Kuwaiti who had been at Guantanamo for seven years. The man was set free.

Since Bush/Cheney, the Government can literally just flash someone’s face on TV with the word “Terrorist” over it, as was done with U.S.-born American citizen and Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. If the face is Muslim-looking enough, no other proof need be offered to convince us of the danger this person poses to our Democratic way of life. So far as we are concerned, he is a declared enemy of the United States working to kill Americans and should be “shot on sight; no proof required.”

The blog sphere, sounding much like Dick Cheney himself, screams, “Of course al-Awlaki should be killed without charges; he’s a Terrorist who is trying to kill Americans!!!” Even now, beyond Government assertions about his associations, we know virtually nothing about al-Awlaki other than the fact that he’s a Muslim cleric with a Muslim name dressed in Muslim garb, sitting in a Bad Arab Country expressing anger towards the actions of the U.S. and Israel.  But that’s more than enough.  We are not only willing to mindlessly embrace the Government’s unproven accusation, but we cheer for his due-process-free execution like drunken fans at a football game.  

Our mantra has become, “No civilian trials are necessary for Terrorists (meaning people accused by the Government of being Terrorists). It’s OK:  they’re Terrorists, because the Government says so.”

In order to keep our Democracy safe, we are willing to abandon the principle that is its very lynchpin. And we justify it in the name of FEAR.