Our liberties we prize... or do we? (civil liberties) 12.7.01

As promised, the answers to last week's questions about my Hawaiian vacation. A couple things went wrong. A few things went right. Turkey doesn't taste better in the tropics, it's too damn hot. "Pass the stuffing" in Korean is "stuffing chu seo." I don't even know if I would want to work and live in Hawaii. Though my T-shirt says I am proud to be Samoan, I am really just happy to see you.
I will do a complete travelogue - including all the dirty stuff - in a special C section story in a couple weeks. That way I can run some color photos and have more room to ramble.
Speaking of rambling...
H.L. Mencken, one of the greatest American literary journalists who ever lived, once wrote that the average person never thinks an original thought in his entire life. Rather, people string together cliches, bits and pieces they've heard or read elsewhere. We call these bits and pieces "sound bites" today because few people read any thing in Danielle Steel novels or TV Guide that are actually worth repeating.
We now know that space is curved, because this week, linear thought extended so far that it came back and bit its own tail.
In response to a Nonpareil editorial that suggested civil liberties might be important in America, a reader responded there is something more important than civil liberties and that is living.
I'm confused. Is it just me? I thought America was where we LIKED freedom. I remember when we used to say it was worth dying for. Roll over George Washington. Do a double take Tom Jefferson. I guess America is just another country where where surrender is an option and getting by is enough.
What are we France? Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't America the country where we have occasionally gone to war to protect democracy in other countries?
Have we not, once in a while, expected our young men to fight and die for freedom in places like Germany, the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam and Kentucky.
Do we not often utter such sentiments as "Give me liberty or give me death?" So what is happening in American?
Let's take a look at Mohammed Irshaid, one of these detainees who has been held because one or two factors made him suspicious, not because he was actually suspected of terrorist activities.
Irshaid is profiled in the Dec. 10 edition of Newsweek in an article called "Justice kept in the dark." For 22 years, Irshaid has been living in the United States working as a civil engineer. He went to college in Ohio, lives in New York and has three children who are all American.
Had he been an Irishman who came ashore near the end of the 19th Century, he would have been considered an American already, but immigration what it is today, it takes money, tests and renouncing all ties to one's homeland.
On Nov. 6, he was arrested at his place of work by federal agents because his visa had expired and they said they had information that linked him to a terrorist plot..
He was tossed in jail in Passaic, N.J. with three dozen other Muslims and held for three weeks without being told what for. A small price to pay, right?
Hasnain Javed, a 20-year old Pakistani attending school at Queensborough College in New York was visiting his aunt in Houston. On the bus ride back, he was detained in Alabama by Border Patrol officers because he was carrying an expired visa.
In a county jail in Wiggins, Miss., he was beaten by inmates for 20 minutes while the guards pretended not to notice. When they stopped pretending not to notice, they watched while the cream of southern culture shouted racial epithets at the college student, called him Osama bin Laden and pummeled him without mercy. God bless America. Serves him right for being a foreigner, I guess.
Dr. Al-Badr Al-Hazmi, a San Antonio radiologist was arrested on Sept. 12 for three suspicious coincidences: 1) for having the same last name as one of the Sept. 11 terrorists, a name as common in Saudi Arabia as Smith is in the United States 2) for having donated money to an organization that builds health clinics in Palestinian territories and 3) for having once had contact with one of Osama bin Laden's 50 siblings, an act our own president has committed since the bin Laden family is rich, prominent and huge and 4) he booked flights on Travelocity as did the terrorists and many thousands of Americans including me.
Al-Hazmi was held in custody for two weeks with only a mattress on the floor and a gown he was given to wear when his clothes and eye glasses were confiscated. He was denied medical treatment for his bronchitis which became worse in the cold cell, contact with his wife for 11 days and a blanket. He claims to have been routinely kicked by FBI agents, they deny this but not the rest.
Additionally, 60 Israelis are being held nationwide, detained as "suspects of special interest to the government." Israel is an ally, right? Oh well, brown is brown.
And these are just a few of the people we know about.
Let's think about it pragmatically. Even if liberty is not important, finding terrorists is and we can't do that if we scare the hell out men who can tell us who they suspect the real terrorists might be.
I wouldn't risk a severe beating by hicks for this country and I was born here.
So here we are as Americans, throwing the baby out with the bathwater and other cliches because it feels so good to be bigots. I think we are all better than this. I know America is.