Commentary: The New McCarthyism

America is now fighting two separate wars, yet our leaders are trying their best to convince us that these two actions are actually one. Because the war on terrorism is obviously necessary, the Bush administration is trying it's best to convince us, and the rest of the world, that the war against Iraq is part and parcel with our efforts against Al Qaeda and Hamas, by playing on our fears of "dirty" bombs going off on crowded streets, of anthrax again infecting us through the mail, or of nerve agents being released in our subways.

We have been instructed to store ample supplies of duct tape and plastic sheeting to protect our homes from chemical or biological agents, and to make sure that we have plenty of bottled water and canned food on hand in case our distribution system fails; seemingly prudent warnings that have the aroma of scare tactics.

While the team of Bush, Cheney, Rumfield and Powell have managed to convince the home front of the necessity of invading Iraq (most polls show about 59% of Americans support the war effort), he's been less successful abroad, with France, Germany, Russia and China lined-up in an unlikely coalition to oppose our military adventure.

As our allies fail to blindly go along with us, the White House elevates the use of newspeak to heights that even Orwell couldn't have imagined. When Russia announced that they would veto a UN resolution setting March 17th as the final deadline for Iraq to disarm, the White House responded by saying that this was unfortunate because Russia had squandered an opportunity to make a "moral" decision, implying that anyone who chooses peace over war is morally reprehensible. Praise God and bring out the gladiators.

Here at home, our efforts to create an America that is "safe from terrorism" is creating a situation that looks very much like a kinder and gentler McCarthyism. We now have a new federal bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, to spy on our own citizens and a draconian Patriot Act (with the promise of Patriot Acts II & III to follow) to add bite to that department's growl. Slowly but steadily, we are giving up our cherished freedoms for the sake of security, even though Thomas Jefferson warned us centuries ago that if we did so we would deserve nor have either freedom or security.

There have been attempts to throw the first amendment out the window, or to at least limit our freedom of speech greatly. A couple of weeks back John Wooden, who publishes the satirical web site www.whitehouse.org, received a letter from David Addington, a counsel to Vice President Cheney, "requesting" him to remove pictures and a "fictitious biography" of Mrs. Cheney from his site.

"I read it very carefully and while I could see that technically it was a request ... the overall tone of it and the citing of various and sundry cases was obviously threatening in nature," John Wooden told Reuters news service. "You don't get just a request from the vice president's office."

In this case the veiled threat didn't work. Wooden responded by adding red clown noses to photos of Mrs. Cheney over the word "censored," and by posting the letter he'd received from Addington. The New York Civil Liberties Union has taken the case and is currently awaiting a reply from the White House.

Another instance found a lawyer arrested for trespassing at a public mall near Albany, New York after refusing to take off a "Give Peace A Chance" T-shirt he'd just purchased at that very same mall. There have been other cases as well, too numerous to mention here.

The ACLU is understandably concerned over these developments. Recently they ran full-page ads in The New York Times and The Washington Times that said the Patriot Act allows "government agents to break into your home when you are away, conduct a search - and keep you from finding out for days, weeks or even months that a warrant was ever issued."

The ad went on to say that Patriot II, currently being drafted by the Justice Department, would give the feds "even broader authority to search our homes, learn what we read, find out where we vacation and monitor what drugs our doctors prescribe."

In 1963, when I was barely into junior high school and Khrushchev ruled the Soviet Union with an iron thumb, a teacher used to give us a warning. "As time goes by," she often told us, "Russia will become much more free and much more like the United States. We, on the other hand, will become much less free and much more like Russia is now."

It seemed impossible then. But now, as we fight a war that most of the world is against, and as we watch our precious freedoms erode at home, I can't help but wonder if she was right.

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