Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Terrorists In Our Backyards!

Anonymous comments on Peter's last post that Cheney's opposition to prosecuting "enemy combatants" here in the United States isn't about the ability of prisons to contain them, but rather about their fate here were they to be exonerated.

I think this is a fair characterization (although I am not sure this is true of Congressional Republicans, reprehensibly spineless Congressional Democrats, and huge chunks of the public, and Cheney has clearly crafted his message to garner the support of these misguided people). But Peter's larger point stands.

Let’s draw a clearer picture of the kind of person that would be “freed” by US legal proceedings. First off, practically speaking, I don’t believe we’d let any of these guys, even if they were exonerated, out onto the streets. As the only brown people we hate more than illegal immigrants, I have trouble believing they’d get better treatment. We'd at least try to extradite them, and if their nations of origin refuse them, then that’s something to be sorted out. And that might resemble what we’re doing to them now – locking them up and throwing away the key - but the resemblance would be only superficial. They would have determinate status, with a clear way out.

But let’s say they are suddenly walking the streets of Philadelphia, having been exonerated because of flawed, insufficient, or nonexistent evidence. Cheney and Anonymous worry that they’ve expressed a determination to attack Americans, and that they now will. First, and this ties in to the hysteria Peter referenced in his post, the popular depiction of terrorists endows them with powers verging on comic-booky. Clearly, pulling off a terrorist attack is no simple matter. Ostensibly there are lots of people trying, but it’s logistically challenging and we have been able to interdict them. And that lead to the second point - it's not preemptive prison or nothing. We can still police them. Seems like we’d have probable cause in spades.

Harder, yes, and riskier, yes, although not to the extent Cheney would have us believe. But rule of law, which always costs effort and risk, would be intact, and to me that’s worth it. Sure, there are times to throw away this crowning achievement of human civilization, but those times are when society is completely dysfunctional – not what’s happening here – and then for only as long as you have to. Supposing, however, you don’t believe there is a moral dimension/metaphysical good to upholding the rule of law, I’d submit that tossing it out in this case is, practically speaking, bad decision making. It elevates and legitimizes hysteria as a rationale (oxymoronically), and it promotes it to the top of our values scale, and we'd be sure to make bigger, stupider decisions down the road.

1 comment:

Peter said...

Luvh, you rock. You beat me to the punch. Below is my rebuttal to anonymous. It covers some of the same ground you do, and is therefore a bit redundant. But here it is, anyway.

Dear Anonymous,

Thanks for bringing some spirited debate to The Pickle comments section!

You are right that my above statement implies that Cheney is worried about the height of the prison walls. This implication, admittedly, is not self-evident given what Cheney said in his speech.

But let’s not make a mountain out of a mole-hill.

Cheney is still a coward. And your defense of him helps further prove that point.

If Cheney is truly worried, as you say he is, about the possibility of our legal system ultimately requiring the release of terrorists onto the streets, then he should have been brave enough to make that specific argument in his speech. But he did not make that case—perhaps because he was afraid that it would highlight his role in authorizing the use of illegal torture on many detainees, making prosecution in court more difficult.

But let’s say you are right, and that, reading between the lines, Cheney’s true “concern” is that these detainees will one day end up living freely among us. Even then, he could still be rightly accused of acting cowardly. Of overstating the danger in order to make us all afraid.

You write: “If you assume approximately 200 detainees remaining, and a published recidivism rate of 1/7…you're looking at releasing 30 people intent on destroying the United States, with all the tools and training needed to hit us again. They'll be able to buy guns and bomb-making materials. They'll be able to re-establish contact with their terrorist networks. They'll be able to teach and train others to kill American citizens.”

Sounds pretty scary. But, like Cheney, you grossly exaggerate the actual threat we would face if we were to release a few Guantanamo inmates into the United States. First off, the 1/ 7 statistic that you (and Cheney) reference is bogus and pumped up. For a full accounting of why, read “Inflating the Guantanamo Threat” op-ed in the NYTimes on May 28. Second, your characterization of the released detainees’ ability to harm Americans is overblown. You speak as if there is no FBI, watching every move they make, ready to arrest them if they so much as sneeze in the wrong direction. You paint a disturbing, but purely speculative, picture of who these detainees are: you hype their “tools and training,” and suggest without reference that they have strong connections to established terrorist networks.

And the phrases you use (“hit us again,” “destroy the United States”) are needlessly sensational. Why say the detainees are “intent on destroying the United States,” when true “destruction” of the United States can only be accomplished with numerous nuclear weapons? Their intent to destroy is a lot less scary when you realize their capacity to destroy is, in fact, quite limited. “Intent to attack the United States” would have sounded less like fear-mongering and would have served your argument just fine.

You and Cheney are either needlessly terrified, or you are cynically trying to terrify everyone else into thinking we are far more helpless and vulnerable than we really are. Releasing a few detainees into our communities would be an action with some risk, yes. But it would certainly not be the dire threat you make it out to be.

And one last note. I don’t mean this to sound nasty, but I can’t resist suggesting: next time you write something that accuses another person of “cowardice” I recommend you use a different pseudonym, other than “anonymous.” Just saying.