It is not too much of an exaggeration to claim that George Bush has staked his chances for reelection on the idea of "freedom." The word has become a constant in his speeches and responses during the debate, and the idea has become almost the sole basis of his latest justification for invading Iraq. And, while no one can doubt that a democracy is better than a brutal dictatorship, it is more than a little surprising that Bush's repeated invocation of freedom has not drawn more criticism given his personal treatment of freedom during his first four years in office.
For one thing, if freedom is important enough to cause a war, as the President claims, then it certainly seems odd for him to be putting his personal beliefs ahead of liberty in numerous domestic issues. He has zealously fought for tax cuts, despite a growing deficit that threatens to rob the poor of the same economic and medical freedoms as the rich. And, more pointedly, we have seen his preference for his personal beliefs in his legally unprecedented push for a Constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.
When Bush asserts, in his push for tax cuts and privatization of health-care, that it is not the place of the government to make decisions for us, how can he think it justified to deprive gays the right to choose a partner in the same manner as heterosexuals? His response, that marriage is the bedrock of our society, is not only incoherent and startlingly alarmist; it also harkens back to the 1920s and 30s, when people made the exact same argument against legalizing interracial marriage. And yet, somehow, today blacks and whites continue to marry one another and society continues to function, just as it will a hundred years after gays are no longer denied the freedom to do the same.
Bush has also put his personal belief that abortion is wrong ahead of a woman's freedom to choose, and his belief that suicide is wrong ahead of a patient's ability to die peacefully. Regardless of whether one thinks abortion and assisted suicide are justified or morally abhorrent, Bush's crusade to make both illegal flies in the face of allowing American citizens the simple right to choose the way they live, which is how Bush defined freedom in his post-9/11 speech.
Bush also seems to have no problem impinging upon the freedom of non-Americans either. In one astounding display of disregard for the freedom of a person to live, Bush noted in his 2003 State of the Union that a number of enemies of the United States had been assassinated with at least tacit U.S. approval, a fact that seemed to make him proud despite the fact that the U.S. officially condemned policies of assassination over three decades ago.
And in Iraq, a country whose sovereignty the U.S. violated during the invasion, Bush continues to see nothing wrong with allowing freedom only as he sees fit. American troops shut down the most widely read Iraqi newspaper for printing anti-American editorials, and the administration has considered shutting down Islamic temples they believe to be the meeting places of "dangerous individuals." Recently, they have even toyed with the idea of not releasing body counts, depriving Americans and Iraqis of the freedom to know much beyond what the administration tells them.
The most troubling example of Bush's willingness to take liberties with liberty is his unlawful detention of innumerable Americans whom he has personally declared to be "enemy combatants." Despite the Fifth Amendment's guarantee that citizens will not be deprived of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law," the administration has jailed hundreds of U.S. citizens and, in some cases, still refuses to give the reasons why. More troubling still is Bush's appointing Jay Bybee, a man who has argued for using torture as an interrogation technique, to a federal appeals court. Needless to say, it is more than slightly disturbing that Bush is willing to deny basic rights to Americans when Saddam Hussein's denial of rights and detention to Iraqis.
All of this is not meant to suggest that Bush hates freedom, or that the Iraqi people are less free today than they were under Saddam. That said, if George Bush is to use "freedom" as the justification for a war that has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives, then he had better start acting like a man who believes in what he's fighting for.