HOMELAND SECURITY: THE THREAT

For the past couple weeks, I have been having a running argument with one of the most prominent and respected intellectuals on the Left. I had sent him a copy of the article I am trying to publish, "Torture and the Emerging Totalitarianism", and he praised it. Therefore I naturally assumed that he would agree with me that the threat to liberty and human rights that we are facing today is worse than anything that this nation has faced in the past. But to my dismay, he did not. Indeed, he seemed positively complacent about the vast new powers our government is now assuming. As he said in one of his e-mails, he had encountered far worse repression in the past, specifically in 1968, when he had "faced a probable long prison sentence until the trials were called off after the Tet Offensive." I could scarcely believe his naiveté. If the trials he was referring to had taken place, and he had indeed been sentenced to prison, he would have, like Socrates (see the previous blog) been a victim of the injustice of his fellow men, not the laws. What he called "repression" is in fact something that defenders of liberty have been fighting for since Magna Carta. As he plainly stated, he was to be tried, apparently in a courtroom whose proceedings would have been relatively open. He would have been defended by a lawyer of his own choosing, and his supporters would have known what was going on, and been able to demonstrate in his favor. If he was sentenced, it would have been to a specific number of years in prison, and he could have appealed. His case might indeed have become a cause célèbre on the Left, with signs popping up everywhere demanding "Free__________!" (remember "Free Angela"?) This is because our leaders were at that time merely trying to misuse the law to persecute him and people like him. They were not trying to gut the Constitution. Today everything is different, and far, far worse.

Under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, for the first time, a person like my debating opponent could be declared an "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" (hereafter referred to as a UEC) at the mere whim of the Executive. Although the act speaks only of alien UECs being tried by Military Commissions, there can be no doubt that any American can be labelled a UEC under this law. If anything, American UECs have fewer rights under the MCA than alien ones: for at least aliens get some sort of trial, if not exactly a fair and open one, whereas nothing is said about what will happen to American UECs. What does this mean? When my debating opponent was charged with a crime-- whatever that was (he was not specific), he became a criminal suspect. The status of "criminal suspect" carries with it certain rights, which have been enshrined in both American and English law for hundreds of years-- the right to demand a writ of habeas corpus if one is imprisoned, the right to have a lawyer, the right to be tried fairly and openly, and if convicted, to be sentenced, if the charge is not a capital one, to a fixed number of years in prison. Also the types of abuses he could have suffered in prison were limited by the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. All this is not to say that his sentence would have been just or that he would not have suffered, only that things are incomparably worse today. For under the Military Commissions Act, the status of such a person would be one which carries with it no rights whatsoever. The MCA does not state explicitly that habeas rights would be denied to American UECs, only alien ones. But it does not have to. In fact, by making them UECs rather than criminal suspects, it removes all the time-hallowed rights my opponent would have enjoyed in 1968. Nor would he have been able to claim the protection of the Geneva Conventions, for the term "unlawful" is designed to deny him that right, as they only apply to lawful combatants.

My debating opponent said that he agrees with me where the MCA is concerned, "but fortunately it has not deterred many people". This proves that he does not understand its implications. The MCA is not there simply to deter, but to be used. And when it is fully implemented, as it has not yet been, it will transform our country from a democracy to a totalitarian state. What form will that state take? Three years before the signing of the MCA into law, Douglas Valentine, author of a scholarly tome on the Phoenix program in Vietnam, foresaw its implications in the very structure of Homeland Security. In an essay entitled, "Homeland Security: When the Phoenix Comes Home to Roost," he says, "Homeland Security is the Trojan horse through which Bush will unleash his ideological storm troopers on America... Creating the Homeland Security apparatus is the largest re-organization of the U.S. government in fifty years. According to Lawrence Korb, one of the nation's leading national security experts, it might even 'bankrupt' the country. Which may be another of its unstated purposes, for Bush will need a series of national emergencies, a depression as well as pre-ordained terrorist attacks, to perpetrate his de facto military dictatorship." He quotes former CIA director William Colby as asserting concerning the Phoenix program, "The implication or latent threat of terror was sufficient to ensure that people would comply." Likewise, with Homeland Security, "terror is the organizing principle of society." As an American state is equivalent to a Vietnamese province, it is significant that equivalents of the Provincial Interrogation Centers which were so notorious during the Phoenix program are being prepared in 56 localities, the supernumerary ones probably destined for the most potentially troublesome states, such as New York and California. Under Homeland Security as under Phoenix, "Innocent people who found their names... on the blacklist could be killed, kidnapped and tortured indefinitely on the false accusation of on anonymous informant... no specific charge will be required: a Homeland Security cadre will simply accuse his neighbor, the one whose dog poops on his lawn, of disturbing the public order. And off the unlucky fellow goes to the local Guantánamo."

Concrete evidence that he is right surfaced on February 4, 2006, when the New York Times announced that the Army Corps of Engineers had awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary "immigration" detention centers to Kellogg, Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's old company Halliburton. "KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster, or for new programs which require additional detention space." Each detention center could hold up to 5,000 people. Challenged by an advocate for immigrants, the spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement Jamie Zuieback reassured her that the contract was not actually intended for the detention and removal of illegal immigrants. "It's not part of day-to-day law enforcement," she said. She added that she could not provide additional information about the company's statement that the contract was also meant to support the "rapid development of new programs." By now, there is a new U.S. Command for the Continental United States, CINC-NORTHCOM, which would permit U.S. military forces to operate in the streets of U.S. cities. Then-defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called the creation of the new command "the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1948." Daniel Ellsberg, of Pentagon Papers fame, says, "Almost certainly this is a preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for mid-Easterners, Muslims, and probably dissenters."

So if all we do is wait for the next staged terrorist attack, we will be swept away. What we can do to deter this threat is something I cannot say with certainty, but what is certain is that complacency will get us nowhere. If people such as my debating opponent, who is one of the most courageous and perceptive intellectuals in America today, will not face the extreme danger we are in, then fascism will win without a struggle. And who will be left to liberate the inmates of our concentration camps as we liberated those of the Nazis?