[Infowarrior] - OpEd: Terrorism Derangement Syndrome

[Richard Forno]

Terrorism Derangement Syndrome
The GOP's scare tactics work so well because the public is terrified  
already.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010, at 6:41 PM ET

http://www.slate.com/id/2243429
America has slid back again into its own special brand of terrorism- 
derangement syndrome. Each time this condition recurs, it presents  
with more acute and puzzling symptoms. It's almost impossible to  
identify the cause, and it's doubtful there's a cure. The entire  
forensic team from House would need a full season to unravel the  
mystery of what it is about the American brain that renders us more  
terrified of terrorists today than we were five years ago and less  
trusting of government policies to protect us.

The real problem is that too many people tend to follow GOP cues about  
how hopelessly unsafe America is, and they've yet again convinced  
themselves that we are mere seconds away from an attack. Moreover,  
each time Republicans go to their terrorism crazy-place, they go just  
a little bit farther than they did the last time, so that things that  
made us feel safe last year make us feel vulnerable today.

Policies and practices that were perfectly acceptable just after 9/11,  
or when deployed by the Bush administration, are now decried as  
dangerous and reckless. The same prominent Republicans who once  
celebrated open civilian trials for Zacarias Moussaoui and Richard  
Reid, the so-called "shoe bomber," now claim that open civilian trials  
endanger Americans (some Republicans have now even gone so far as to  
try to defund such trials). Republicans who once supported closing  
Guantanamo are now fighting to keep it open. And one GOP senator, who  
like all members of Congress must take an oath to uphold the  
Constitution, has voiced his concern that the Christmas bomber really  
needed to be "properly interrogated" instead of being allowed to ask  
for a lawyer.

In short, what was once tough on terror is now soft on terror. And  
each time the Republicans move their own crazy-place goal posts, the  
Obama administration moves right along with them.

It's hard to explain why this keeps happening. There hasn't been a  
successful terror attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. The terrorists who  
were tried in criminal proceedings since 9/11 are rotting in jail. The  
Christmas Day terror attack was both amateurish and unsuccessful. The  
Christmas bomber is evidently cooperating with intelligence officials  
without the need to resort to thumbscrews. In a rational universe, one  
might conclude that all this is actually good news. But in the  
Republican crazy-place, there is no good news. There's only good luck.  
Tick tock. And the longer they are lucky, the more terrified Americans  
have become.

This week Glenn Greenwald summarized how far the goal posts of normal  
have moved when he pointed out that "merely advocating what Ronald  
Reagan explicitly adopted as his policy—'to use democracy's most  
potent tool, the rule of law against' terrorists—is now the exclusive  
province of civil liberties extremists." Upon being elected to the U.  
S. Senate last month, Scott Brown declared: "Our Constitution and laws  
exist to protect this nation—they do not grant rights and privileges  
to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars  
should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them." As  
Adam Serwer observed, "This is the new normal for Republicans: You can  
be denied rights not through due process of law but merely based on  
the nature of the crime you are suspected of committing. Brown's  
rhetorical framing, that jettisoning the legal system we've had for  
200-plus years represents 'tradition' while granting suspected  
criminals the right to legal counsel represents liberalism gone mad is  
new, and I suspect we'll hear it again."

I have read several good explanations for why the GOP leadership has  
decided to make the case that processes that worked in the Bush  
administration (like civilian trials) won't work under Obama, and why  
policies that failed in the Bush administration (like torture or  
military tribunals) must be reinstated. Maybe it's simple  
obstructionism. Josh Gerstein points out that for Republicans seeking  
to capitalize on Obama's missteps, his feints and pivots on national  
security have proved fertile ground. And Greenwald concludes that "our  
establishment craves Bush/Cheney policies because it is as radical as  
they are."

But it's not just the establishment that opposes closing Guantanamo,  
trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, or reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab  
his Miranda rights. Polls show most Americans want Abdulmutallab tried  
by military commission, want Gitmo to remain open, and want KSM tried  
in a military commission, too. For those of us who are horrified by  
the latest Republican assault on basic legal principles, it's time to  
reckon with the fact that the American people are terrified enough to  
go along.

We're terrified when a terror attack happens, and we're also terrified  
when it's thwarted. We're terrified when we give terrorists trials,  
and we're terrified when we warehouse them at Guantanamo without  
trials. If a terrorist cooperates without being tortured we complain  
about how much more he would have cooperated if he hadn't been read  
his rights. No matter how tough we've been on terror, we will never  
feel safe enough to ask for fewer safeguards.

Now I grant that it's awfully hard to feel safe when the New York  
Times is publishing stories about a possible terrorist attack by July.  
So long as there are young men in the world willing to stick a bomb in  
their pants, we will never be perfectly safe. And what that means is  
that every time there's an attack, or a near-attack, or a new Bin  
Laden tape, or a new episode of 24, we'll always be willing to go one  
notch more beyond the rules than we were willing to go last time.

Some of the very worst excesses of the Bush years can be laid squarely  
at the doorstep of a fictional construct: The "ticking time bomb  
scenario." Within minutes, any debate about terrorists and the law  
arrives at the question of what we'd be willing to do to a terrorist  
if we thought he had knowledge of an imminent terror plot that would  
kill hundreds of innocent citizens. The ticking time bomb metaphor is  
the reason we get bluster like this from Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine,  
complaining that "5-6 weeks of 'time-sensitive information' was lost"  
because Abdulmutallab wasn't interrogated against his will upon capture.

But here's the paradox: It's not a terrorist's time bomb that's  
ticking. It's us. Since 9/11, we have become ever more willing to  
suspend basic protections and more contemptuous of American traditions  
and institutions. The failed Christmas bombing and its political  
aftermath have revealed that the terrorists have changed very little  
in the eight-plus years since the World Trade Center fell. What's  
changing—what's slowly ticking its way down to zero—is our own  
certainty that we can never be safe enough and our own confidence in  
the rule of law.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2243429/