Today brings us two stark examples of what happens when you react to terrorism in the manner Bush & Co insisted upon. There are many more successful examples of combatting terrorism we could have followed–the UK, for instance, dealt with many years of IRA terrorism as a law enforcement issue. And in that case, only an accent could tell you someone was even from Northern Ireland. They continue to do the same for the most part with fundamentalist Muslim terrorism. Nothing is 100 percent successful, clearly. But addressing the issues that cause people to resort to the tactic of terrorism could improve the odds. Too bad that's not as sexy as high-tech solutions.
Of course, Bush and his pals mocked the notion of combatting terrorism with law enforcement or examining what causes the problem, insisting it's a military issue and stacking up ever more invasive technological solutions for an impossibly assymetrical threat. It's mostly good for those who sell the technology, since the real problem isn't being addressed, in perpetuity. And that brings us to example one:
A Government Accountability Office investigator smuggled live bomb components into a federal building in just 27 seconds, then assembled a bomb in a restroom and ventured throughout the building without being detected, a leaked tape revealed Wednesday.
In addition, congressional investigators were able to penetrate every single federal building they probed without any difficulty — 10 in all.
Our abandoning of civil rights hasn't exactly changed the assymetrical nature of the terrorism threat. All the technology in the world won't make us safe enough. Only addressing what causes terrorism can do that. Will we ever actually try that? Seems unlikely. But Connecticut Joe is shocked:
A shocked Senate Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-CT) went off on the news in an article Wednesday by ABC News. “It’s stunning. It’s shocking,” Lieberman quipped. “It just says that basically some people have forgotten the lessons of 9/11.”
Which is exactly the problem: We've mostly never comprehended "the lessons of 9/11." Much of the conventional wisdoms says that attack should teach us that we have to be afraid and give up our liberties to gain safety. But that won't ever work. Still, a lot of bullheaded folks insist that we just haven't given up enough, or spent enough money on new technologies, and they admonish anyone who isn't sufficiently afraid. This is a problem best addressed with a lack of fear. But it's easier to be afraid–the brain is wired for that.
Until we look at terrorism with a sober, fearless eye and understand that it is a tactic, not an invisible army, we'll keep right on being terribly vulnerable.
And then there's problem number two: when you ignore the law, you end up with people who have been acquitted of wrongdoing, but whom you wish to detain indefinitely anyway. If they are a threat, you should be able to prove it. (If you can't, how do you know they're a threat, Alice?)
The answer, apparently, is that you just kind of know:
The Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission.
Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision that officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.
Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration argues that the legal basis for indefinite detention of aliens it considers dangerous is separate from war-crimes prosecutions. Officials say that the laws of war allow indefinite detention to prevent aliens from committing warlike acts in future, while prosecution by military commission aims to punish them for war crimes committed in the past.
Philip K. Dick's Minority Report, anyone? It's a fine mess we've created with Guantanamo. And it's a shame that Obama is continuing the muddled thinking, even if he's promising to abandon the physical locale. If we approached these matters in the forum built into our system to deal with it, the judicial system, we wouldn't be struggling to come up with new ways to avoid our own laws. It is, of course, impossible to determine that someone is "a future threat." If we think these folks are likely to become a problem, then keep track of them. That's part of what spooks and expensive technology are actually meant to do, last I checked.
