What are we fighting for?

I noted a few months ago, in connection with the US Congress's passing a measure that denied the right to habeas corpus to Guantanamo Bay detainees, that if we are fighting for our "values" in the "war on terror", we ought to be clear that those values include the right not to be arbitrarily detained.

The US is run by bad men, who consider individual human lives nothing but counters in a game of power and money, but almost worse are the UK's leaders: reasonably good people who allow their desire to do what they see as the right thing in a particular situation to blow away any principle they might be defending. Their approach is more sophisticated but the outcome is likely to be equally bad.

The UK has introduced control orders on certain Muslims, one of which has been challenged in court. The judge concluded that the law on the orders had been written so that they were impossible to challenge. He could not himself overturn the order. In effect, the home secretary can detain citizens at will without providing them with any evidence. This latter clearly denies them the right to access to a court, which is agreed to exist in the European convention. More worryingly, the law has been written so that there can be no judicial oversight. For ordinary citizens, the courts are their only protection -- often only a flimsy one -- against capricious governments.

It is often stated that we are fighting against terrorists and in Iraq for "freedom". But if we allow government ministers to prevent us -- citizens, I mean to say -- from doing particular things, we do not have any freedom to defend against "terror". Allowing us to replace the tyrant every four years is not something I want to go to the last ditch for, nor something I want to see young men and women die in a faraway place to bring to others.

posted by Dr Zen @ 10:39 am