WASHINGTON: Civil liberties are domestic matters. Foreign affairs are international matters. The two issues would not seem to intersect, and yet they did last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

US Attorney General John Ashcroft addressed the committee last week, defending the Bush administration’s executive order providing for military tribunals to prosecute noncitizens charged with terrorism and the wielding of other broad new powers. Some senators and other people fear that these measures could violate civil liberties, but Ashcroft’s concern was that this debate itself could weaken the war on terrorism.

“To those who pit Americans against immigrants and citizens against noncitizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends.”

The attorney general emphasized that these powers would be applied only against immigrants. He defended secret detention of persons that the government cannot link to terrorist activity and the legitimacy of death sentences by a military tribunal decided on just a majority vote, insisting that all of these measures are “designed to protect the interests of the United States.”

But just what are the “interests of the United States” at a time like this? Is the US best served by expanding prosecutorial powers to their outermost limits, or by tempering law enforcement with a respect for individual liberties? It is an especially important question at this moment, because the ability of the United States to hold together its thinly glued multinational coalition against terror could hang in the balance.

Is anyone in the administration giving thought to what message these measures communicate to the rest of the world? The lessons of history suggest that they should be. Domestic social and cultural matters can impact US prestige and influence around the world.

Today, as the US tries to maintain an international coalition against terrorism, its allies have objected to threats to civil liberties in the US. Protecting rather than restricting liberties is vital to maintaining US influence in the world. —Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Newsday.