The flap over the release of data about NSA spying has divided the nation in ways that defy traditional political lines. There are those on both the left and right who defend the massive amount of data collecting and domestic spying being done by the NSA and other government agencies as being necessary in the “war on terror.”
On the other hand, there are also a large number of people who are very concerned about the level of intrusiveness into our private lives and who see this as a very dangerous path that could be abused by officials in Washington.
This debate is rooted in decision made a decade ago by the Bush Administration in response to 9/11. In the aftermath of that day, President Bush declared a “war on terror” which in turn led to putting troops into Iraq and Afghanistan and to the Patriot Act laws that allow internal snooping by the NSA.
That declaration of “war,” however, was misnamed. In framing the fight with Islamic fundamentalists as a “war,” President Bush gave cover to almost any action the U.S. wants to take both internally and externally that could stifle freedoms.
Government leaders in every country have long used the excuse of “we’re at war” to justify the suppression of basic freedoms. During times of war, people generally accept certain limitations on freedoms in order to defeat an enemy.
That’s been true in this country dating back to 1798 when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed as the nation prepared for war with France. Those acts suppressed freedom of speech and of the press in the U.S., but were allowed to expire after a large backlash two years later.
During the Civil War, President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in Maryland in 1861. In the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis suspended habeas corpus and imposed martial law in the South.
Late in WWI, the U.S. enacted the Sedition Act of 1918 that sought to suppress free speech. Indeed, several people were convicted under the act and served time in prison for speaking out against government policies.
And in WWII, our nation rounded up people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast and put them in camps. None of those people had been disloyal to the U.S., but the fear that they might become a “5th column” was used to justify the government imprisoning them.
There were major abuses of citizens’ civil rights in all of those examples, but given that they took place in a time of war, many people thought they were justified. Humans crave security and will quickly trade personal freedoms for what they perceive as security — at least for a while.
In the same way, in the weeks after 9/11, many people thought the actions taken by President Bush and Congress with the Patriot Act were also justified. “We are at war,” was again the justification for adopting laws that in some ways trampled on traditional freedoms.
The question today, however, is are we really “at war?”
On 9/11, we were attacked by a group of Islamic fundamentalists — criminals who were backed by an amorphous group of like-minded radicals scattered across the Middle East. Their goal was to terrorize U.S. citizens and force the nation to overreact, which it did.
Is that “war?” There was no nation-state involved in the attacks of 9/11. Congress has not declared “war” on any nation as a result of 9/11, although we did intervene in Iraq and Afghanistan using the term “war on terror.”
The problem here is that governments often abuse the excuse of being at “war” as justification for any policies they wish to enforce, including the quelling of domestic dissent.
In the decades after WWII, the Soviet Union often used the excuse of being at “war” (the Cold War) with the West as justification for all kinds of domestic polices designed to suppress its own people and the people of its satellite nations in Eastern Europe. By magnifying the idea of an external threat, the Soviets enforced restrictive internal policies on speech, travel and the media.
Today, we see the same kind of overreaching rhetoric in our own nation being used to justify domestic snooping into our phone call patterns and emails. By saying we’re “at war” with terrorism, the U.S. can justify any policy it wishes to use, even if those policies infringe on our right to privacy.
But no nation can forever exist in a state of “war.” While we will always have people and nations who don’t like us and who might act violently against us, that doesn’t mean we have to always be on a war footing. Governments always seek to get more power, bigger budgets, more personnel and to expand their footprint into every aspect of our lives.
It is a misnomer, however, to say we are currently in a state of “war” with terrorism. Terrorism is a strategy used by radicals to intimidate their perceived enemies by creating fear. But if we are at “war,” it is with the ideology of Islamic fundamentalists who have chosen to use terrorism as a tool to manipulate the West. We have confused the issue by focusing on the terrorism without focusing on the ideology that is driving it. (And indeed, we are loath to even admit the underlying force behind this terrorism comes from radical religious fanatics; that view is not politically correct and thus, we use the term “war on terrorism” rather than “war on radical Islam.”)
Unfortunately, our own government has become a pawn in that manipulation by exaggerating the threat of terrorism and then by adopting policies that undermine the long-term survival of our nation as a free democratic state.
We need to get away from the idea that we are at “war” and instead think of our fight against terrorism just like we think of our fight against any organized criminal activity. Just because we have crime in our neighborhoods doesn’t mean we restrict the fundamental rights of citizens in their homes.
Even so, the real long-term threat to the U.S. isn’t terrorism or radical Islamist theology. The real threat is our own overreaction that allows the U.S. government to expand the breadth and depth of its power into our daily lives. That is much more of a danger to our long-term interest than any Islamic radical.
Our government shouldn’t use the veneer of being at “war” as an excuse for creating a massive police state, a state that tracks our every move and makes every citizen a suspect. Doing so makes us no better than our enemies.
As my 18-year-old son said recently about the spying issue, “I never dreamed in my lifetime we would fall to the level of becoming the United States of Socialist Republics.”
From the mouths of kids.
Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspapers. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
