Bill from Ohio writes, “I am willing to give up many privacy issues to the president to stop terrorism. Let him do what he thinks he needs to do to keep me safe.”
Other responses to a recent FoxNews article contain similar cheerleading. This is the voice of America: I want to be safe, comfortable, and (preferably) entertained. I am willing to give up freedoms to this end, since I’ve never been troubled to think much about it anyway.
The general consensus is that a) there have been no follow-up attacks to 9/11, so b) the President must be doing a good job of dispatching those pesky terrorists. Everything else is to be ignored, including the utter idiocy of that logic.
I’ve got news, folks: there hasn’t been another terrorist attack because they just haven’t gotten around to it yet. As we learned from Israel’s attempt to hunt these people down in the 1970s, terrorist organizations are hydras: cut one head off, and two more sprout up to take its place, each more vicious than the last.
Oh sure, Moussaui’s in jail, and we’ve killed a few others in the field, but on the grand scale of things, we’ve done nothing to cripple terrorism. Wherever you’ve got that lovely mix of ignorance, anger and a guy with a smooth tongue to tie it all together, you’ve got the seeds of terrorism. I imagine it just plain feels good to hold up a Kalashnikov and shout angry chants at the top of your lungs in front of an approving crowd.
We will never conquer it, and we are fools to believe we can.
9/11 gave the President the means to declare a War on Terror. Exactly what does this war entail? If he really wanted to make a dent, we should have had military action in Syria, Algeria and Sudan by now. While we’re at it, we should have gone after those who back and support terrorism. I don’t mean guys like Saddam Hussein, I mean the real guys: France, Saudi Arabia and quite a few ex-intelligence and military folks with surprisingly British and American names.
This isn’t a war on anything. It’s a dog-and-pony show to keep the public scared, and to pretend the the government’s doing something about it. This is a wonderful recipe for those in power. It worked for McCarthy. It worked for Hoover. And it’s working just fine in 2006.
Here’s the formula: keep the public edgy and scared. Give them an enemy, preferably someone who looks “different” and speaks a foreign language (look up “pseudospeciation” to find out how this works), and tell them that these people are evil. Provide some vague “evidence,” pour in some self-righteous flag waving and stir.
Once you’ve got a war going, you’ll be able to steamroller over all sorts of laws and concepts of civil liberty for the sake of things like “national security.”
That’s exactly what’s happening now. Not only does the President admit to having authorized illegal wiretaps, he’s defending his actions, and he’s appointing the very man who implemented them to run the CIA. The last president to attempt this was Nixon, gang. Remember how well that turned out?
In 1972, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against Nixon’s claim that he had the power to perform wiretaps without a warrant. Why? Because the 4th Amendment says so, and the Executive Branch has no authority to bypass that.
How soon we forget. Most folks would probably be surprised to know that the NSA’s been text-mining the internet since its inception. The cold-war ECHELON system, though it’s supposed to be defunct, has been expanded to pick up wireless and cellular signals, and it’s been humming away in the US, UK, Australia, the Philippines and Germany for years.
We’re being monitored, and it’s been going on for a long time. We should be outraged. Instead, we’re consoled and told it’s for our own good. Suspension of basic civil rights is never “for our own good.”
The primary counter-argument is, “well, I’m not doing anything wrong, so why should I be worried?” There are some big holes in this. I happen to be one of the most law-abiding folks you’ll ever meet. I don’t even know how to get into trouble anymore.
But here are some fun facts: I work on open-source software and communicate routinely with people outside the country, I own firearms, I’m not afraid to be critical of the government, I have immediate family working in a former Soviet republic, and my sister’s husband is an Iranian expatriate. This is touchdown material for things like ECHELON. A simple family conversation could be misinterpreted, and things could be taken out of context to show that I’m somehow planning something nefarious and possiblty seditious.
Remember the internment camps in WWII? A friend of my grandfather’s was shipped away to one because, based on hearsay from neighbors, the FBI decided he was a Nazi sympathizer. When they searched his house (without a warrant, of course. This was for “national security.”), they found one picture in a family photo album in which a portrait of Hitler was hanging on the wall. In the 1930’s, most German homes and businesses had pictures of Hitler hanging on the wall. It was best to play along.
Nonetheless, based on this one picture, this man was sent west to an internment camp. In the meantime, his business caved, his family went hungry, and he was released, destitute, several years later, without ever having received so much as a trial.
This was in America. The same one we’re living in now.
How long before we seriously have to consider self-censorship? I have a copy of the Quran. I probably have a copy of the Turner Diaries lying around (read this if you think racism doesn’t exist anymore; it will make any decent person sick). When will the time come when I have to hide books? Will I have to search my own house periodically to make sure there’s nothing that might been misinterpreted when the government comes knocking? Will I have to speak in code to family and friends?
The War on Terror is a beautiful conceit. It is a war that has no clearly defined objectives, and therefore can be continued indefinitely. At no point will we ever be able to plant a flag and say, “OK, it’s over. We won.” Things will only get worse.
“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy”
– James Madison