Extrajudicial killing and our constitution

The portion of this column omitted from the print edition in Big Horn County News begins, with links and sources, after the seventh paragraph below.

 

So far the public response to the Boston terrorist attacks is a narrow, limited focusing on our breakdown in intelligence and debating over Miranda rights. Moral dimensions are ignored. Yet in the late 1780's one nation mustered the moral courage to compose the strongest document any nation had forged up to that point in history in order to face down great evil. That's our nation, and that's our constitution. It still stands, a model for other nations, asking us as American citizens to be ever mindful of the rights of all people.   

 

Our forefathers knew firsthand the evil inherent in a nation where the government condones extrajudicial killing. They knew the fear that stalked the citizens of such a society. Citizens of thirteen colonies came to an agreement. They successfully ended the targeting homes for break-ins after midnight, false arrest and indefinite incarceration without trial, and execution. That's why they enshrined guarantees in our constitution to "…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…" To make the dream reality they set up an unprecedented model of republican democracy for themselves and their children, including us. That's why we have the right to vote. That's how our government is beholden to us instead of to an elite few who think nothing of trampling on the rest of us. That's how extrajudicial killing of citizens by King George's government was stopped in the United States of America.

 

Historically, it has not been easy to ensure equal protection for all citizens under our Constitution.  Our ideas about who deserves civil rights have changed over time.   We have also suspended application of this great document out of fear in times of national crisis. Although our history is mixed, it seems that, overall we have made strong strides forward in realizing the provisions of our Constitution. We wouldn't have made this progress without active concern and involvement of US citizens.

 

This reminds me of an experience I had back in 2003. I accepted an invitation to conduct a workshop on appropriate heritage language and song for religionists at San Solano Mission in Topawa, the Tohono O'odham reservation near the Mexican border of Arizona. In a palm-shaded open courtyard I shared songs and stories of the Cheyenne and Crow. I listened to responses of the Euro-American pastors and teachers. In the back under a portico colonnade sat elders of the village, quietly listening to our songs and dialogue.

 

Our conversation was interrupted with a deafening blast jolting deep into our bodies. Windows and doors rattled. The blast was followed immediately with a roar that rose so loud we could not keep our hands from our ears. It quickly ceased, and the elders under the portico were hard pressed to comfort us. Surprisingly, they were accustomed to such occurrences.

 

At lunch I sat with my Tohono host and asked him for details about this rude jolt. He told me about children unable to sleep at night for fear of the boom, about families moving out of town, about livestock aborting and large windows broken. He told me the village of Topawa had been made a target for mock bombing runs by our military. I asked him how this happened. He said he thinks the government wants us Indians farther from the border, and would rather do this than tell us.

 

I was shocked that this type of intimidation of tribes can exist in our modern day.  The elders discouraged their tribe from bringing this situation to public attention because they were so grateful to the government for finally giving them the right to vote in 1965.  Then following my visit Arizona's "Proposition 200" came up and became law, placing an imposing barrier to the right to vote for many elderly in that community, being without birth certificates (they birthed at home), drivers licenses (like Crow country), and other paper identification.

 

First the Bush and now the Obama administrations have supported extrajudicial execution of citizen suspects. The Obama administration has now even executed American citizens by drone attacks, a practice previously limited to foreign suspects. Sneaky lawyers have constructed legal justification for this. The language is still secret, not available for public inspection. How can we stand for this? Our outrage should be commensurate with the conviction of those who wrote our constitution almost three centuries ago. They saw the abomination of a government reserving for itself the right to arrest and execute citizen suspects with no effort to apply appropriate judicial process.

 

Think about the implications. Powerful government interests in our country have taken upon themselves a power to abuse and even kill previously relegated only to the Divine. King David in the Bible had a long struggle with this. His repentance is documented in scripture. I predict that American carnage will continue to escalate as we move more into extrajudicial killing and our children follow the example of the powerful. If we want to change this, I propose we do what King David did: repent, and turn from our evil ways. This can start in Big Horn County.

 

The following is exclusive to this blog, not in this column as published in the Big Horn County News April 2:

 

That's how extrajudicial killing of citizens by government was stopped in the United States of America way back with the first 13 colonies.  Things have changed, and it's troubling. We have fallen victim to emotional paranoia leading us into compromises with our constitution that have not and will not help us toward more safety for our children and our families. As extrajudicial killing increases, it will increase among our citizens and children as well.

 

Just last year the policy permitting extrajudicial killing of American citizens by drone attack was given approval, retroactively endorsing the assassination of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old US citizen born in Denver. In October of 2011 he was breakfasting with friends at a campfire beside a trail in Yemen on a mission to locate his father. Unbeknownst to him, his father, also an American citizen, had already been eliminated by an American drone, in a sudden blast totally destroying the automobile in which he and a friend were driving. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki.

 

From Salon / By Andrew O'Hehir, April 13, 2013

How Boston Exposes America's Dark Post-9/11 Bargain

Why did this story drive the whole country nuts? Because we traded rights for "security," and didn't get either.

 

"Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  —Benjamin Franklin, at the time of the ratification of our constitution.

 

The following has some common sense approaches to breaking our cycle of mass violence worldwide.

http://colorlines.com/archives/2013/04/rinku_sen_boston_marathon_explosions.html

 

In the Bible, violence in any form becoming acceptable is connected with lawlessness, unrighteousness, and evil. Read in the Old Testament what was happening that God regretted creating human kind, just before Noah's flood.  Then read what's happening in India and in this country regarding rape:

http://www.alternet.org/school-principal-discouraged-teen-girl-reporting-sexual-assault-because-it-would-ruin-attackers

http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2013/03/13/as-steubenville-rape-trial-opens-victim-blaming-begins-in-court-of-law-and-public-opinion/

 

This blog post uses some strong language with sources cited to disparage our loss of constitutional rights for no gain in security for our children and our families.   See the entire blog post on line:

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-boston-exposes-americas-dark-post-911-bargain?akid=10351.144927.3x2SMi&rd=1&src=newsletter828346&t=4

 

Following are web sites detailing the Tohono O'odham nation's struggle with our government including voting rights, and the unfortunate drift back into vote suppression from 1965 when they won the right to vote as mentioned above. 

 

http://www.hrusa.org/indig/reports/Tohono.shtm

 

http://www.nativevillage.org/Editorials/Oodham%20to%20National%20Guard.htm

 

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/11/22/20091122BMGRruins.html?nclick_check=1

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machita_Incident

http://www.protectcivilrights.org/pdf/voting/ArizonaVRA.pdf

 

--
David Graber

Hardin, MT  59034

graberdb@gmail.com

www.greenwoodfarmmt.org

Self Loathing

A lot of things have changed since I grew up on a Midwest farm back in the 40's and 50's.  Sure, I love the internet and modern conveniences that make my life easier. Yet sometimes I really miss that general sense of pride and support for our American system of government. It almost seems quaint to remember how we had a quiet confidence in our democratically elected representatives.   We often disagreed on which party or policy was best, but most of us believed that county, state, and federal government would act in the interests of all of us, protecting the general public against the greed of the wealthy and powerful few.

 

It seems like our ongoing love/hate relationship with government has become all about hate these days. Unfortunately, much of the angry and destructive rhetoric has become directed against real people, including those in need of public assistance and public employees who meet those needs. The recent sequester points out a real division in how we think about our responsibilities for helping others. It seems that in the minds of many people it is much more acceptable to use public money for building weapons of mass destruction or supplementing incomes of wealthy Americans than for helping children born into poverty.  

 

To get a positive take on our system of government, we almost have to leave the country. It was in China spring of 2002 when I discovered people who have the old-fashioned belief in American government like I remembered as a teenager. My Chinese post-graduate students frequently expressed admiration of the American government. I helped one practice his pronunciation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in preparation for an English recitation contest. I helped a group of four arrange a choric reading of Martin Luther King's "Letter from the Birmingham Jail."

 

The faculty members in my Wednesday evening informal English Conversation Class spoke with amazing honesty about their own government. They quickly drifted into a role-changing pattern of debate between a minority who still supported Central China Communist Party (CCCP) and a majority who wanted American-style free enterprise to transform the fertile agricultural Mien Jiang River Valley draining the eastern massif of the Himalaya uplift into the fertile "Red Basin" just twenty miles west of our campus where Dujiangyen nestles against the foothills.

 

My students were amazed by images of American production agriculture. They were captivated by the capacity of modern harvesting and planting technology, as well as techniques for managing fertility and plant genetics.  A majority of my English conversation group believed that subsistence farmers in the Mien Jiang river valley above Dujiangyen should be replaced with modern American agriculture practices.  We never settled the question of what would happen to 500,000 displaced farmers, but it's a question that I believe is at the heart of a truly democratic society. How do we maintain technological efficiency and effectiveness while still supporting the people who have spent their lives working in non-technology related fields like manual labor and the service industry? Can we help people without hating them and our government when our progress cuts them out of access to a livelihood?

 

We have continued to cut the safety net for ordinary Americans, while failing to address billions of dollars in government handouts being distributed to those who can afford the most lobbyists.  People living in poverty have become a useful scapegoat in misdirecting attention from these real issues of fraud and abuse.  I've had my own anti-government rants, but now I try to remember that many of my friends and neighbors are public servants. They are real people whom I admire and respect and they're doing great work in our community – protecting us from potential dangers, teaching our children, and conducting agricultural research that will benefit us all. When we despise our government of the people, by the people, and for the people, who are we really hating? 

--
David Graber

Hardin, MT  59034

graberdb@gmail.com
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org