Imagine living in a country where you could be arrested and detained. You are told, “We know you are guilty. We can’t tell you why, but there’s a guy, we can’t tell you who, who told us something. We can’t tell you what, but you’re guilty.” Then they hold a non-public trial. They choose your attorney; you have no say in who they choose. They hold the trial; you cannot be present. They present evidence, heresy evidence, evidence obtained by torture. Neither you, nor your attorney, can see the evidence. They find you guilty. Five military officers, serving as your jury, agree you should be given the death penalty. You are executed. Sounds like something out of a Kafka novel. Its not, the quote above was John D. Hutson, the Navy’s top uniformed lawyer from 1997-2000, describing the new rules proposed in a draft by the Bush administration for special military courts. According to R. Jeffery Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer, the reach of these trials is being expanded for the first time to include people who are not members of al-Queda or the Taliban, or suspected of direct involvement in international terrorism.

According to the Washington Post, the plan calls for defendants to be tried by a commission of five military officers appointed by the Secretary of Defense. The commission could try you for any of 25 specified crimes, or other crimes as specified unilaterally by the Secretary of Defense. The Washington Post stated that, “Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors. Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials…” An associate deputy attorney general under the Regan administration, Bruce Fein, said that with these procedures, “there is a real danger of getting a wrong verdict.”

We can only hope in the Senate hearings on this plan, that the more rational heads will prevail and insist that the basic due process rights guaranteed by the constitution will be preserved for American citizens. We should however be very alarmed that the Bush administration feels that the only way it can keep us safe is to eliminate the protections our constitution guarantees. The weapon, that terrorist use, is terror—fear. They do not actually expect to be able to kill every American. But they can, through fear, destroy America. They can get us, in fear, to give up the freedoms that our soldiers have always fought and died for. The constitutional values that make America what it is. We could pass constitutional amendments to prevent flag burning; but if we ban what the flag stands for, what is the point? We cannot allow our fear to permit the Bush administration to destroy what makes America special. We must require that our government not give into terror, to fear and find ways to keep us safe without sacrificing our constitutional protections.