Since the 9/11 attacks, Bush and Cheney have taken the imperial
presidency to new heights by presenting themselves as the tough guys
who will protect the traumatized American people from the world’s bad
guys, particularly scary Muslims. From the start, Mukasey has been an
ally in that mission.
As a federal judge in New York, Mukasey
endorsed indefinite incarceration of hundreds of Muslims on phony
material witness warrants after the 9/11 attacks. He also signed off on
Bush imprisoning an American citizen – and Muslim convert – Jose
Padilla simply on a presidential say-so that Padilla was an “unlawful
enemy combatant.”
Ironically, the post-9/11 round-up of Arab cab
drivers, pizza delivery men and students came as the Bush
administration was granting special permission for rich Saudis,
including members of Osama bin Laden’s family, to flee the United
States after only cursory FBI questioning.
The arresting of the
“usual suspects” – while the well-connected who actually might know
something were whisked away – was perhaps the first signal of how
Bush’s “war on terror” would proceed, draconian actions that create the
appearance of a tough crackdown when the reality is entirely different,
Still,
the illusion of protecting Americans has been at the center of Bush’s
presidency, with many of Bush’s followers almost eager to jettison
those “unalienable rights” that the Founders enshrined in the
Constitution in exchange for Bush's hollow guarantees of a little more
safety to ease the mind while driving to the shopping mall.
For
some Americans, sacrificing “civil liberties” is treated as a small
price to pay if that improves chances of preventing another 9/11. After
all, as the slogan goes, “freedom isn’t free” even if the price is
freedom itself.
Exploiting Fear
Amid the exploitation of
their fears, many Americans have been led to believe that surrendering
their constitutional rights is either the “patriotic” thing to do or a
simple case of common sense.
As right-wing Sen. Pat Roberts,
R-Kansas, once put it, “You have no civil liberties if you are dead.”
So, personal safety trumps the ideal of freedom.
But the concept
of placing personal safety over fundamental liberties flies in the face
of American traditions dating back to the Revolutionary War when
Patrick Henry declared, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
By
contrast, Roberts’s statement flipped the concept, rejecting the notion
that Americans must accept some level of personal risk if they are
determined to protect the Constitution and its core principle that some
rights are inalienable, even for Muslims whom President Bush has
designated “bad guys.”
In Cheney’s Sept.17 statement on
Mukasey’s nomination, the Vice President said the retired federal judge
would “ensure that the rights and freedoms of the American people are
protected, and that includes the freedom from the fear of terrorist
attacks.”
By singling out “freedom from the fear of terrorist
attacks” as the only identified “right” in the statement, Cheney
indicated where he and the President put their priorities – on
protecting Americans from the remote personal threat that they might be
harmed in a terrorist attack, forget the niceties of civil liberties
and the rule of law.
As a federal judge, Mukasey demonstrated that he was on board.
Describing
his selection process, the New York Times wrote that “a review of his
record shows that he would defend the administration on the issue that
matters most to the President, national security. [Mukasey] has
repeatedly spoken out to support the administration’s claim to broad
powers in pursuing terrorist threats, especially in conducting
electronic surveillance of terrorism suspects and in imprisoning them
before trial.” [NYT, Sept. 18, 2007]
In other words, Mukasey may
not be the favorite of “movement conservatives” who want an Attorney
General who will push their “social issues,” but the retired judge with
close ties to former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani will give Bush
what he wants most: a political ally to defend his vision of a
President with nearly unlimited powers.
[For more on the
trade-off of constitutional rights for promises of safety, see our new
book,
Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush]
Writings 
In praising George W. Bush’s new choice for Attorney General, Vice President Dick Cheney identified one freedom in particular that retired Judge Michael Mukasey would protect: “the freedom from fear of terrorist attacks.”
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