Sooner or later, if citizens are going to support further
wars and impingements on their own civil liberties, they need red meat.
Terror makes
A good excuse
For passing laws
That despots choose.
A good excuse
For passing laws
That despots choose.
The terrorist menace is proving quite useful to the U.S. government, much as the communist menace did many years ago. What could be more convenient than tagging dissenters and opponents as "giving material aid to terrorists"?
There's even a
anti-terrorism law now that
discourages such "heinous" acts as helping educate Palestinian
children.
Peace activists
make a particularly appealing target. Since most of our wars these days
supposedly combat terrorism, detaining those who oppose such wars seems
reasonable enough. They must be supporting the enemy. It's a pretty clever
game. The cops can just go ahead and confiscate the peaceniks' cell phones and
laptops and jail them for a day. Most folks won't notice or care.
The newest
members of the "terrorist" family are activists who document animal
abuse at labs, factory farms, and slaughterhouses. In response, information on
animal mistreatment by farms or corporations is now classified as
"secret," and divulging that information is treated as a serious
offense.
Also officially
secret nowadays is the mistreatment of the suspects at Guantánamo. During their
trials, detainees aren't allowed to say that they were previously
tortured, since that might color the proceedings and bring shame to
our government. Trial observers, while allowed to watch the action from behind
soundproof glass, only hear what’s happening after a 40-second delay. This
gives time to censor embarrassing details before they drift into the media or
blogosphere.
But there's a
limit to how much public fear can be stoked by the continued arrests of
peaceniks, animal rights activists, and Palestinian charity organizers. Sooner
or later, if citizens are going to support further wars and impingements on
their own civil liberties, they need red meat.
This is the FBI's
job. It tries to keep up a drumbeat of foiled terrorist plots to demonstrate
the constant danger to our airplanes, subways, and public squares. Otherwise,
Congress might chafe at imposing still more limitations on our personal
freedoms. Not to mention that a reduction in the public perception of danger
could be followed by a reduction in the FBI's budget.
Hence, we witness
a steady parade of alleged underwear bombers, shoe bombers, car bombers, dirty
bombers, Jihad Janers, and other miscellaneous prospective murderers — many of
whom, curiously, seem to have been egged on and supported by the FBI until
their arrests. The media, starving for excitement, reports these stories to the
hilt.
One poisonous
result of this manufactured anxiety landed in the National Defense
Authorization Act. Besides authorizing massive military waste, this legislation
empowered our own armed forces to arrest Americans, even on U.S. soil, for
almost anything, and to hold them without charge. A federal judge has
temporarily intervened, but the tension between counterterrorism and
constitutional protections looks like it's shaping up as one of America’s next
big civil rights battles.
OtherWords columnist
William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of
Norwalk, Connecticut. otherwords.org