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March 31, 2011
Republicans in America sure are a strange bunch. They are now claiming that political correctness is killing Americans and undermining the national security of the United States.
The argument is that political correctness is allowing al-Qaeda-ish wolves in sheep’s clothing to penetrate the country’s defenses is spreading amongst Republicans based in part on claims about unlearned lessons from past incidents of terrorism. Political correctness gives a free pass to Islam which is a dangerous religion.
What is the solution? The Republican response to toughening up national security in the face of external threat requires the national security state to jettison a wide range of traditional legal protections and stiff arm civil libertarians and human rights advocates.
Karen Greenberg, the Director of New York University's Center for Law and Security, says this involves denying US citizens the protections of U.S. law. She says at Tom Dispatch that a recent example of this kind of roll back of civil liberties:
can be found in the case of Bradley Manning, the U.S. Army private who allegedly downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents from Army computer systems and turned them over to WikiLeaks. He is now being held on 24 charges in 23-hour-a-day solitary confinement in a brig at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia, while awaiting a court martial slated to begin later this spring.
Under the Obama administration Manning is being treated as a criminal and a spy. He is charged with violating not only Army regulations but also the Espionage Act of 1917, making him the fifth American to be charged under the act for leaking classified documents to the media. It is punishment without a trial for threatening national security.
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“Karen Greenberg…says this involves denying US citizens the protections of U.S. law”.
Maybe she should ask black Americans what denial of civil and human rights actually feels like. I would guess they could give her some insights as to what to expect.
As far as white Americans are concerned, one could see this as poetic justice. Maybe the best reason to deplore the things described in the post is that one day soon they may happen to us.