Justice for All
I was in the Post Office mailing in my 2007 taxes when I noticed a poster they had up from the US Department of Justice advertising National Crime Victim’s Rights Week. What attracted my attention was 
their slogan which is plastered across the poster. In large type on the top it says “Justice for VICTIMS”, on the bottom, in even larger type, it says “Justice for ALL”. The more I looked at the poster, the more disgusted I became. The US Department of Justice, the branch of government tasked with overseeing law and justice at the national level in an administration that has imprisoned over 700 people in Cuba without recourse to any legal or human rights, that holds secret military courts where none of the rules of law apply, that grabs people off the street and ships them off to secret prisons in countries that do not abide by the Geneva Conventions so that they can be tortured without interference, prints up posters proudly proclaiming “Justice for ALL”. These people have no shame.
September 11, 2001 was a bleak and terrible day in the history of the United States. We were assaulted by a terrorist act that was of a scale and a level of savagery that would have been incomprehensible to most Americans beforehand. It was horrendous. But it was not the first such day in our history and it was not the worst.
Four US Presidents have been assassinated while in office: Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901 and John F. Kennedy in 1963.
During the War of 1812 the United States was invaded by Great Britain, Washington DC was captured and the White House, the buildings that housed the Senate and the House of Representatives, the US Treasury Building, the Navy Yards and the Library of Congress were burned. Tornadoes and a torrential downpour put out most of the fires but not before the buildings had been gutted and only a few exterior walls remained. What was left of the White House had to be torn down and rebuilt.
On Christmas Eve 1860 South Carolina seceeded from the United States and the next year the American Civil War began. The war lasted from 1861 until 1865 and came within a hair’s breadth of destroying the United States. Approximately 620,000 soldiers died, the number of civilian deaths is impossible to estimate.
On December 7, 1941 the Japanese attacked and largely destroyed the American naval fleet in the Pacific at the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. Five ships, including two battleships were completely destroyed. Ten additional ships were badly damaged including two battleships which were sunk at their berths, raised, repaired and put back into service. In addition, 188 airplanes were destroyed. There were 2388 men and women killed and another 1178 wounded.
The United States was hurt and hurt badly by all of these events. Our country was invaded, our people died, our ability to fight back was severely damaged, some of our most cherished institutions were attacked and the living symbols of those institutions were destroyed. In every case, save one, the United States responded the way we would want our country to respond. We stood resolute and strong, we fought back. And we did so without abandoning the great principles of freedom for all and justice for all on which this country was built. We did not cave in to fear although we were afraid, we did not abandon justice although justice had abandoned us. We stood behind our principles and we came through victorious. We showed the world that even under the utmost adversity we would not abandon the goal of striving to realize the ideals on which our country was founded, that all men are created equal, that all men are endowed with certain and unalienable rights, that there was to be justice for all.
Then came the tragedy of 9/11 and in response George Bush, Dick Cheney and their band of cowards abandoned many of the ideals and principles that made our country great. At the time, we were frightened, confused and disoriented. We didn’t know what to do. Now we can see that what Bush and Cheney did represents more of a threat to the heart and soul of our country than anything Al Qaeda could ever hope to accomplish. They talked the big talk and ran away and hid like craven little girls. Their fear was so great that they believed anything they did was justified as long as it made them feel safe in bed at night. Their cowardice was so great that they implemented a program that has systematically undermined many of the fundamental principles on which our country was built so they could feel safe from the enemies that terrified them.
When did our country, the United States, become the place that held political prisoners in jails without being charged with a specific crime, for unspecified and open ended periods of time, without trial and without recourse to the rights and responsibilities of the US justice system? Since Bush and Cheney turned us from a government of the fearless to a government of the terrified. When did our United States become the country that openly practiced torture, torture!, and tried to hide behind arguments made by mealy-mouthed lawyers that torture was okay when we did it? When Bush and Cheney were running the show. When did our United States sink to the shameful depths of spiriting political prisoners away to secret prisons in countries that refused to abide by the Geneva Conventions so those prisoners could be tortured at will without fear of legal sanction? When Bush and Cheney’s cowardice overrode our history and our principles.
The other night I watched the first episode of HBO’s miniseries on John Adams and saw Adams portrayed as a lawyer who courageously defended the British troops who fired on and killed the people of Boston in the Boston Massacre. Adams had every expectation that defending these men would destroy his business and turn he and his family into social outcasts but he did it anyway because he believed that doing what was right was more important than doing what was wrong because you are afraid.
In the classic American film “High Noon” Gary Cooper portrays a western sheriff who walks out to face a gang of outlaws alone because the entire town has abandoned him in fear and cowardice. He doesn’t do this because he is fearless, in fact he’s terrified, he does it because he knows it’s the right thing to do.
John Adams, Gary Cooper’s sheriff and countless others have been held up as epitomizing the American ideal of taking an unwavering stance behind the principles of equality, freedom and justice on which this country was founded. No matter how great the threat, how terrifying the enemy, when the test came, the United States held firm. When they faced their test, Bush and Cheney abandoned the ideals that made us great to fear and cowardice. They are craven, shameful men. They have shamed themselves, they have shamed our country and they have shamed each one of us because they have done this in our name.
Franklin D. Roosevelt told us “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Bush and Cheney have shown us Roosevelt was wrong. We also have to fear cowardly men who cannot overcome their fear. Soon Bush and Cheney will be gone and we can begin the difficult task of dismantling the government of fear they built and repairing the damage they have done to our country. If we face the mistakes we made under their leadership, if we recognize the way they have betrayed so many of the principles on which our country was built, we can once again have a Department of Justice where “Justice for ALL” isn’t an empty, shameless slogan that reminds the world how far from our ideals we have strayed but is a principle that defines who we are. A principle that we will stand behind and never again abandon. Come what may.
