September 11, 2011 without a doubt slashed a lasting scar on
Americans. The sight of Boeing 757s and 767s penetrating America's skyscrapers and pride bewildered, maimed, and frightened us. In the aftermath of September 11, Islam, a
previously little known religion in the West was thrust in the
spotlight, mostly in an unfairly negative light. Disoriented and distraught,
America grasped for a group to blame and hastily fashioned security policies
to prevent further attacks. Such
security policies, though, came at the expense of civil liberties, most
pertinently the right to privacy and freedom of speech. While civil liberties
are enshrined in the Constitution and have, in fact, been intertwined with what
it means to be American, the fear that pervaded post 9/11 America allowed
lawmakers to sign the Patriot Act on October 26 of the same year, a relatively
short time period, especially for the notoriously stagnant Congress. The Bush administration broadened intelligence gathering and strengthened the military's numbers (maybe
not it's prowess though), and the Obama administration largely continued this policy of expanding
presidential power and intelligence gathering. The government now possesses
unprecedented capabilities to spy on its own citizens, infringing on the right
to privacy, while drones also expand the military's capability to frightening levels.
These measures in the past have been accepted by Americans wary of another 9/11, but these measures are currently under increased scrutiny due to
the growing awareness of Americans that their civil liberties may be at risk.
The essential question, then, is to what extent Americans are willing to
sacrifice civil liberties for the sake of intelligence, counterterrorism, or
whatever other reason expressed (or contrived, depending on your view) by the
government.
Historically, the U.S. government has
expanded executive authority in times of crisis, and Americans have generally
allowed this change to happen. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeus corpus, right to a trial, during the Civil War, while
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously interned Japanese of the West Coast in the
interest of national security. Such expansions of power were all preceded by
significant events that were simultaneously tragic and jarring. At the time,
the Civil War instilled fear in America, as did Pearl Harbor and September 11.
This fear was very real and lends some credence to the defense of the
subsequent actions taken by the government. With the benefit of hindsight one
can rather easily denounce the internment of the Japanese, yet the palpable
fear affecting Americans at that time must be taken to account. Similarly,
post-September 11 "islamaphobia", while mostly tainted by prejudice
and outright racism, is understandable, given the preceding events. After all,
September 11 was the beginning of a sequence of disturbing and outrageous acts
of violence against Americans. Nick Berg, an American businessman, was abducted
in Iraq and beheaded, with the video posted online. Such egregious acts of
violence coupled with the media's incessant focus on extremist Islam perpetuated America's
fear, and at one point "war", with Islam. Fear and tragedy often
precede the taking away of civil liberties. The context of instances where
civil liberties were infringed upon must be taken into account. However, the
justifiability of taking away civil liberties is shaky, at best.
Post-September 11, Americans saw many
civil liberties taken away in the interest of security. The Patriot Act remains
partly intact; Guantanamo Bay, perhaps the most heinous use of the Patriot Act,
remains open; drones, whose pilots sit at an office desk in the Nevadan Desert kill "insurgents" (just another day at the office) and are beginning to spread in the U.S.
Yet, the pushback against these infringements on liberty is palpable. A recent
Senate debate on drone strikes particularly focused on the president's
authority to kill American citizens remotely. It is dangerous to bestow such
ultimate power on anyone, especially the president. How can a nation founded on
freedoms and civil liberties in the same swoop also kill its own citizens so
long as they are seen as a "threat"? Yet, at the same time, America
faces many perils overseas, and it would be a shame if the opportunity to
preemptively murder the next Hitler, killer, or madman was wasted. Some
Americans clamor for protection of civil liberties, while others clamor for
more vigorous protection of the country's security itself. Both groups share a
common interest in America's future but identify contrasting threats to this
future. As such, degradations of the other group as not patriotic are foolish,
for they must remember another key tenet of America: the right to passionate, while sometimes ungainly debate. Just in fact how much danger America is in remains a contentious issue.
Pundits point out that no major terrorist attacks have occurred since September
11, of course, exempting the recent Boston bombings and previous scares.
However, terrorist groups seem to keep on cropping up, even as Al Qaeda is
dismantled. People's views may be significantly altered if the danger to
America could be accurately quantified. Unfortunately, this is a nearly impossible
proposition. However, the motives behind these acts of terror must be
remembered.
As its name denotes, terrorism relies
on invoking fear in a large population by violently attacking a handful of the
population. Reacting to terrorist attacks by taking away civil liberties is
playing into the terrorist hands and fulfilling the goals they wanted to
achieve. Terrorists want America to respond with fear and panic, which is all
too often how we respond. In the absence of a fearful response, terrorist
attacks would lose their effectiveness. Some would argue that without security
procedures put in place, America would see an increase in both the intensity
and occurrence of terrorism, but, for a variety of reasons, terrorist acts are
extremely difficult to follow through on. Planning an attack, gathering
materials, and executing a working plan is much more difficult than CSI or
other crime shows portray. Moreover, the world--and America--is not in as much
peril as the media claims. Terrorism is impossible to eradicate, for a few will
always resent America to the point that they are willing to commit acts of
terror. While this does not mean that we completely concede defeat and allow
ourselves to be attacked, it does mean that we should focus on improving
emergency response to such crises, rather than pelting another Tora Bora with
literally hundreds of missiles in pursuit of just a handful of terrorists or
entering Iraq to "take the fight to the terrorists." Certainly
terrorism should be countered and terrorists subdued, but not to the extent
where we have to sacrifice civil liberties. As Bruce Schneier of The Atlantic
wrote, "when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the
face of terror, the terrorists fail, even if their attacks succeed."
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