Looks at Ashcroft's Lack of Faith in Democracy
Hausknecht, Murray
It is very dangerous to teach religion in the wrong way. In order to achieve progress, you have to teach religion in its proper form. —Mehmet Nuri Yilmaz, head of Turkey's Religious Affairs...
...If our system of justice can be an unnerving experience, so can democracy itself...
...The premise that ends justify means can only be accepted without debate in totalitarian and authoritarian societies where the security of the regime is always the prime objective...
...Among the many methods he cites that the police have relied upon are "paid informants ...wiretaps...the infiltration of suspect organizations, random searches...the 'profiling' of likely suspects on the basis of ethnic or racial identity or national origin, compulsory drug tests, and other intrusive methods that put pressure on civil liberties...
...attorney general, defending the proposed military tribunals Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said that if terrorists were brought back to the United States, "we'd have the potential for a repeat of the 0. J. Simpson trial, complete with grandstanding by defense lawyers...
...whether the focus is on beliefs and values or actual behavior, individuals are constantly challenged by others with different ideas and ways of living...
...So therefore we prefer to appoint and to choose, but within certain specifications and the rules...
...Challenges to certainty and the serenity of mind it brings are inevitable consequences of democracy...
...In any event, regardless of whether an issue attracts large or relatively small numbers to antidemocratic causes, these movements are and have been endemic in our society since its beginnings— we are a nation marked by strong beliefs in democratic institutions intertwined with anxieties and fears of some of their consequences...
...And when the political leaders of a democracy lose their nerve, its institutions may be at serious risk...
...It is difficult to remain indifferent to or detached from a matter of civic concern when there is widespread discussion of children's relatively easy access to pornography via the Internet...
...The war on terrorism is a metaphorical war, and almost by definition an endless war...
...The O. J. Simpson trial, of which McConnell is so contemptuous, is an example of an American institution in practice...
...Some have argued that the latter can provoke hostage-taking and that, at the very least, the trials should not be held until after the war is over or terrorist networks seriously weakened...
...The failure of nerve it illustrates is perhaps more apparent in the "invitation" to persons of Middle East descent to "volunteer" for interviews with police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation...
...DISSENT / Spring 2002 n 39...
...Sometimes curtailments of liberty in wartime are shrugged off as necessary evils that will disappear at war's end when the status quo ante will be restored...
...THE CONSEQUENCES for liberty of the war against drugs have been admirably described by the distinguished conservative jurist Richard A. Posner in the December 2001 Atlantic...
...our officials are unhappy because juries can return wrong verdicts or provide occasions for the spread of wrong ideas...
...Although some restrictions are accepted as rational responses to real dangers—it would be unreasonable to object to luggage inspections in face of airplane highjackings and planted bombs—other regulations are more problematic and represent a form of collateral damage that war wreaks on institutions...
...the status quo ante may never reappear...
...The new rule gains public support because a heightened sense of patriotism strengthens an everpresent xenophobia...
...Similarly, the rule suspending the right of confidentiality between lawyers and jailed clients accused of terrorism is roughly comparable to Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus...
...When issues involve salient interests, a widespread failure of nerve generates support for restrictions on civil liberties...
...it should demonstrate an active concern with preserving liberty as well as security...
...their certainties are under attack...
...John Ashcroft, U.S...
...A responsible leadership must be alert to the dangers of committing similar violations in trying to safeguard the nation and reinforcing resolve...
...provide a worldtkde platform from which propaganda can be developed...
...In wartime, especially now when even oceans do not shield civilian populations, limitations on liberty receive wider and quicker assent from the public...
...Very few people would normally approve the monitoring of conversations between lawyers and jailed clients, but now it is permissible in cases of alleged terrorists...
...The formal justification for the rule—that suspects may transmit coded information to other terrorists through their lawyers—is not an example of a leader struggling with the admittedly difficult task of preserving the proper balance between liberty and security...
...To fear for one's life in the aftermath of terrorist attacks and to expect that the government will take steps to increase security is normal and rational...
...The courage of people more committed to democracy than McConnell and Ashcroft seems to falter or fail altogether when confronted with some of the actual consequences of democratic institutions—commitment does not ensure against a failure of nerve...
...There was small likelihood that the interviews would yield important information...
...To be sure, in the course of everyday life practically no one is upset because neighbors believe in different truths, or worries about the weird ideas their kids may pick up in school...
...Freedom of religion, for example, means that the truths proclaimed by a religion must be defended, if only implicitly, against the truths others preach...
...all seem to express a lack of commitment to democratic institutions...
...Responsible leaders must respond to those fears and expectations...
...Terrorism" is an abstraction, and abstractions cannot sue for peace and surrender...
...Academic freedom means that parents will find their offspring returning from college with strange ideas—not exactly what the parents had in mind when they sent them off...
...Many of these measures bear more than a passing resemblance to those instituted at the start of the war on terrorism...
...To try Osama bin Laden with all constitutional guarantees in place requires a kind of courage somewhat morally akin to the physical courage of a firefighter entering a burning building...
...Few people would want an O. J. Simpson trial to become the norm, but public trials are inherently vulnerable to becoming mere public spectacles laced with appeals to prejudice...
...Thus, when election rhetoric centers on Roe v. Wade, both pro-choice and right-to-life advocates must contend with the other's arguments...
...Among the current pressures on liberty is the proposal to try accused terrorists by military tribunals rather than holding the usual public criminal trials...
...Yilmaz worries that incorrect religious ideas may be taught...
...al-Jubeir doesn't like democratic elections because the wrong people might be elected...
...This is a reasonable expectation only if the war on terrorism is a war as the term is customarily understood: an armed conflict between nations that ends when one party sues for peace and accepts the conditions for surrender...
...The views of the Turkish and Saudi officials are hardly surprising, because one was raised in a nation where the defense of secularism has been a prime objective of regimes since early in the last century and the other was born into a society that has never known democracy...
...Certainty is not easily achieved or maintained in a democratic society...
...The answer, then, to John Ashcroft's question is, yes, the criminals responsible for the murders on September 11 must be tried the same way other criminals in our society are tried...
...yet to forgo them would involve some risk of overlooking potential terrorists...
...Of the American instances, though, something more must be said...
...The unilateral imposition of the security rules without congressional debate or consultation is another indication of a fear of democratic processes...
...In the past, during the U.S...
...It seems, rather, to be a case of a leader too ready to sacrifice liberty on the altar of security...
...In his testimony last December before a Senate committee, he said critics "only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve...
...Similarly, economic and political conditions, particularly those in the Middle East and Asia that make people susceptible to the attractions of terrorist ideologies, will not disappear soon— the war on terrorism is destined to become another war without end...
...Trouble begins when a potential source of disquiet can no longer be easily ignored...
...Because terrorism is a salient threat to all, we can legitimately expect that the war on terrorism will put an even stronger pressure on civil liberties...
...The war on drugs, another metaphorical war, has gone on for decades without an end in sight, because new recruits to the illegal traffic in drugs constantly replace those busted by the police...
...In his defense of military tribunals, George W. Bush provided the formal excuse for subordinating liberty to security: "...we must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself...
...The unwillingness of the administration to run this risk, even as it insisted that the war on terrorism is not a war on Muslims, is a sign that it lacks the courage required of democratic leaders...
...Mehmet Nuri Yilmaz, head of Turkey's Religious Affairs Administration In our opinion the people who would elect the members (of the Saudi Consultative Council] would not choose the right people...
...Relatively few people are so disturbed by the sorcery Harry Potter and his friends practice that they wish to ban the books from the local library, although probably more would like to drop Huckleberry Finn from school curriculums...
...Ashcroft's defense of the administration's antiterrorism proposals dramatically illustrated a lack of such concern...
...On the other hand, there was a greater probability that the invitations would feed racial and ethnic prejudices...
...Civil War and two world wars, fear and the need for physical and psychological security led to violations of civil liberties...
...These fears make democracies fragile structures, and at no time are they subject to greater stress than in times of war...
...Ashcroft and McConnell are examples of a failure of nerve that now pervades all branches of government and large sections of the American public...
...In democracies, dedicated to main38 n DISSENT / Spring 2002 AFTERSHOCKS taining both order and freedom, whether the end of security deserves to trump liberty always requires public discussion...
...The prosecution of an African-American celebrity accused of murdering his white ex-wife and her boyfriend stimulated an outpouring of tabloid journalism that reveled in the spectacle of a brilliant black defense attorney who ultimately played the "race DISSENT / Spring 2002 n 37 AFTERSHOCKS card" in dueling with a prosecution team of a white woman and a black man...
...Some issues, of course, are salient only for narrow segments of the public...
...New York Times account of a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, November 18, 2001 AT FIRST GLANCE there appears to be no difference between the American, Saudi, and Turkish officials...
...But if the war is interminable— and who will make the judgment about the strength of the networks?—the presumed risks of public trials will always be present, and the period for which prisoners can be detained may stretch to unconscionable lengths...
...But leadership in a democratic society requires more than new security measures and speeches strengthening the nation's "resolve" to defeat its enemies...
...Anything else would be a betrayal of democracy • MURRAY HAUSKNECHT is a sociologist writing from New York...
...Sheik Muhammad al-Jubeir, Chairman of the Saudi Consultative Council Are we supposed to read them the Miranda rights, hire a flamboyant defense lawyer, bring them back to the United States to create a new cable network of Osama TV...
Vol. 49 • April 2002 • No. 2
