The Terrorist Threat

TOM MAERTENS

The Bush administration argues that 9/11 has changed everything. It certainly has brought about changes, most of them negative, including domestic spying of the kind that the U.S. thought it had banished after Richard Nixon.

But terrorists do not represent an existential threat to the U.S., as did the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812 (when the British burned down our capitol), the Civil War (which almost broke up the Union), WWII or the Cold War (which could have led to a nuclear exchange over Cuba).

Whenever the country is under threat, extreme security measures are taken, which we usually come to regret:

— we had the Alien and Sedition Acts during a quasi-war with France which allowed the government to close newspapers and deport foreigners; that Act has become synonymous with nativist zenophobia among historians;

— the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War allowed people to be held indefinitely on suspicion of being Southern sympathizers;

— the Red Scare of 1919 allowed the government to deport American citizens to Russia for nothing more than suspicion that they were Communist sympathizers;

— Japanese-Americans were interned during WWII because of the belief that their ancestry made them security threats;

— The McCarthy period in the '50s is viewed as a hysterical witch hunt, one that was discredited even during McCarthy's lifetime.

No historian of any repute is claiming that these events constituted 'our finest hour' and in fact, most are condemned by historians as contrary to America's professed ideals. For that matter, the arrest of 1200 Muslims after 9/11, none of whom was ever convicted of a crime, looks like a hysterical roundup of an identifiable minority to appease public opinion. (Waiting in the wings in Congress is Patriot Act II, which would allow the Attorney General to remove the citizenship of any American caught aiding terrorists, even unwittingly. So be careful what charities you donate to.)

In the case of McCarthy's red-baiting, which exposed a handful of communists in government, it is clear that our patriotism was manipulated for McCarthy's personal and political ends, just as the War on Terrorism is being manipulated right now.

The administration has used the War on Terrorism to justify domestic eavesdropping by the NSA, it has returned the CIA to domestic spying, and it has formed a military organization, CIFA, to conduct domestic intelligence operations.

Nothing is more dangerous to democracy than military involvement in domestic politics and law enforcement, as events in country after country abroad demonstrate.

You can imagine the leader of a military unit assigned to collect domestic intelligence saying: "Men, we didn't catch a single terrorist last month. We know they're out there. We have to do better. Now go find them."

Any unit with that mission will eventually produce some "terrorists," even if they turn out to be nothing more than peaceful protesters, such as Quakers in Florida or vegans in Georgia.

Our response should be directed towards preventing the spread of nuclear technology and improving security around key facilities and infrastructure nodes to prevent future attacks.

Instead, we have committed ourselves to a trillion-dollar War in Iraq, which has nothing to do with 9/11 and terrorism except that it has enraged many Muslims and prompted them to join a jihad. The conflict in Iraq will likely be viewed by future historians the same way that the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan is viewed: as a training ground for terrorists.

TM