George Bush speaks French

Via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, I find Bruce Fein's editorial in the Washington Times, comparing Bush to Robespierre of the French Revolution. I found these two quotes from Robespierre interesting:

No liberty for the enemies of liberty.

That's the sort of attitude that brought us things like Gitmo, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless searches.

The second is:

We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself.

Just try and tell me that's not another way of saying "The Constitution is not a suicide pact," another recent Republican mantra.

The rest of the editorial, demanding the return of habeus corpus is worth a read. He points out that only 5 percent of Gitmo detainees were captured by American forces. The rest were captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance, with little protection against wrongful detention. This is one of the fliers distributed in Afghanistan:

Get wealth and power beyond your dreams. ... You can receive millions of dollars helping the anti-Taliban forces catch al Qaeda and Taliban murderers. This is enough money to take care of your family, your village, your tribe for the rest of your life. Pay for livestock and doctors and school books and housing for all your people.