Then They Came for Me

[babsbunny]

http://blog.buzzflash.com/node/11857

BOB KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH

Speaking out a year ago against the idea of holding civilian trials for terrorism suspects, Liz Cheney captured the paranoid arrogance of the past decade with stunning efficiency:

"This demonstrates conclusively that we are going back to a pre-9/11 mentality," she said.

Oh the horror! Fair trials, rule of law, habeas corpus, Miranda rights, blah, blah, blah - remember what a nuisance our justice system used to be before Liz's father and the rest of the neocon High Nooniacs made us safe by hustling us off to a police state and perpetual war?

I can't help but think about the younger Cheney's comment - and the fear it implies, not of terrorists but of liberals - in connection with the lawsuit that a recently freed Guantanamo detainee, Abdul Razak al Janko, has filed in U.S. Federal Court against Robert Gates, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and about a hundred other current and former military and government officials.

And when I do, the first words that come to my mind are those that Martin Niemoller, a conservative German Lutheran minister, famously uttered at the end of World War II: "First they came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for me, and no one was left to speak for me."