The Specter of Terrorism
EDITORIAL The Specter of Terrorism "Our biggest problem is we have people we think are terrorists. They are supporters of al Qaeda. . . . They may have sworn jihad, they may be here in the United...
...And what do we do for the next five years...
...Ameena Jandali of the Islamic Networks Group, with a grotesquely inappropriate Holocaust analogy heard round the world: "What's going to be next...
...The ACLU says that under the new guidelines, "Any time you write a check, use a credit card, buy something on credit, make department store purchases, surf the web, use an E-Z pass to buy gasoline, or pay a toll, the FBI may be permitted . . . to purchase this information to build a profile on you...
...The New York Times editorial page reports that federal agents have now been given "unbridled power" to, for example, "show up at the doors of people who order politically unpopular books on Amazon.com...
...we have a right to expect as much, at minimum...
...Theoretically at least, it's a perfectly sensible, legally uncomplicated program that hardly represents a dramatic break with past practice...
...Somewhere in the vast expanse of reality between the president's domestic security proposals and the hysterical juvenilia those proposals have occasioned lies the best possible solution to the terrorism crisis this country now faces...
...But no, reaction has been of a different character entirely...
...Here again, of course, exactly how, to what extent, and with what authority the Bureau should conduct its domestic terrorism investigations seems to us a legitimate and wide open question that could not help but profit from rigorous national debate...
...You'd think, with a war on and all, that these people would try just a little bit harder to sound smarter than the average college sophomore at a campus sit-in, wouldn't you...
...Which is similarly false...
...We also have a right to be disgusted that so many purportedly serious voices in our politics have repeatedly granted themselves leave to suggest the answer might be yes—and have thereby gone AWOL from their duty to make a substantive contribution to democratic deliberations about a national emergency...
...We are troubled by Sen...
...I'm troubled by this...
...Which means we need to discuss them intelligently and thoroughly...
...You'd think, for example, when the Justice Department releases a 24-page, single-spaced revision of its guidelines for FBI terrorism investigators, that a person would want to read the damn thing before ventilating about it to the newspapers...
...Specter's assertion that he is troubled...
...Shouldn't someone be looking for it...
...Sen...
...We need to be sure those steps are proper ones...
...Do we surveil them...
...Sen...
...Some action has to be taken...
...We are troubled, too...
...residents carrying green cards be forced to register with the INS, as still they are, when the likes of Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard Reid are not...
...Arlen Specter, questioning Mueller at an oversight hearing the same day So Arlen Specter, our four-term, senior senator from Pennsylvania, thinks foreigners visiting the United States shouldn't be kept under surveillance unless there's a "really good reason" for it, and thus is "troubled" to learn that the FBI is now tailing people on the flimsiest of pretexts—like that they're "supporters of al Qaeda" who have "sworn jihad" and the Bureau thinks they're "terrorists...
...Also false...
...And yet, time and again, whether the particular initiative or reform at issue is truly fraught with significance or plainly a no-brainer, a huge chunk of otherwise articulate America has proved itself unwilling or unable to engage the conversation on grownup terms...
...They need—and should want—some real, detailed criticism of their ideas...
...Registrants will be fingerprinted and photographed at ports of entry, and required to notify the INS of any change of address they might make while here...
...Surely we can't afford to overlook that solution...
...They may have sworn jihad, they may be here in the United States legitimately, and they have committed no crime...
...In this respect: Three thousand people are dead, the movement that killed them fully intends to do it again, and the president and his Justice Department have proposed or undertaken myriad steps to deter such a renewed attack...
...The ubiquitous James Zogby of the Arab American Institute: "The message it sends is that we're becoming like the Soviet Union, with people registering at police stations...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...Dick Durbin of Illinois: "It's going to reach a tipping point if we're not careful...
...They are manifestly not receiving it...
...So maybe the plan, which promises to be an administrative nightmare in any case, should be targeted somewhat differently...
...What the ACLU says is false—unless, perhaps, the FBI has demonstrable reason to believe that "you" are someone who plans to fly a jetliner into the side of a skyscraper...
...But the Bush administration is so far conducting that debate pretty much all by itself—while the rest of the world plays imaginary French resistance to an equally imaginary Justice Department gestapo...
...More "troublesome" still is the fact that Sen...
...In fact, the INS is supposed to be registering all non-citizens this way already—according to a law first enacted in 1952 and routinely enforced without controversy until the mid-1980s, when the Service decided it could no longer handle the logistical burden and quietly gave up tracking people visiting on temporary visas...
...But you'd be wrong...
...The president and his aides do not have a monopoly on wisdom about how best to prevent the next World Trade Center atrocity...
...and end up sacrificing many of the values of our country...
...FBI Director Robert Mueller, quoted in the Washington Post, June 6 "You are quoted here as saying, 'Our biggest problem is we have people we think are terrorists...
...They are supporters of al Qaeda'— and you're keeping them under surveillance...
...IJt's troublesome to have surveillance unless there's a really good reason for doing so...
...It should little relieve us that the correct answer is no, after all...
...Are all Muslims going to have to wear a yellow or green crescent or something...
...Last week Attorney General Ashcroft announced that the Immigration and Naturalization Service would soon implement a formal registration system for temporary foreign visitors traveling to America on passports issued by certain Middle Eastern countries known to export terrorism...
...Instead, we get such as Arlen Specter's upside-down Martin Niemoller routine: First they came for Osama bin Laden's second-strike foot soldiers, and I said nothing...
...This is fatuous and it will not do...
...James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, warns that the Justice Department is preparing to "throw respect for civil liberties into the trash heap" and return to "the bad old days when the FBI was spying on people like Martin Luther King...
...Specter's expression of concern for the civil liberties of visiting Islamic jihadist terror suspects is actually quite typical of the current debate about America's near-term homeland defense requirements...
...On the other hand, Ashcroft's new system won't actually capture the likes of Moussaoui and Reid, who came here on French and British passports, not on Middle Eastern ones...
...And not just because the specific worry he raises here is altogether bizarre—though it is certainly that...
...This is the kind of question that fairly begs for extended and exhaustive public analysis...
...Really, now: Why should permanent U.S...
...There are other, vastly more important and productive questions to be asked about the post-September 11 performance of George W. Bush's executive branch than "Does this mean we're living in a police state...
Vol. 7 • June 2002 • No. 39
