American media can be amazingly myopic. Since the September 11 attacks, the media has pretended that the U.S. is the only democracy that had to ask itself fundamental questions about fighting terrorists.
In reality, European, Anti-Podean and Asian democracies have been asking hard questions about freedom and safety since the 1970s. Can a non-citizen (or even a citizen) be held on the mere suspicion that he is involved in terrorism? For how long? Can the phone calls of terrorists be intercepted without a warrant? And so on.
In the media’s zeal to pretend that Bush has a tyrant in the making, journalists have largely overlooked what other advanced democracies have done in their wars on terror. In general, they have taken a harder line against terrorists without being overly fussy about the “privacy rights” of people with the top terrorists’ cell phone number.
Take Spain’s headline-making capture of ETA commander of its “commando” (i.e. terrorist) units. No word yet on exactly how the Spanish police were able to capture this elusive villian. But Spain’s laws and its lead counter-terrorism prosecuting judge have been known to aggresively use wiretaps and detention without immediate habeus corpus to break terror cells. Some terrorists have even been sent to Arab nations where they would face almost certain torture…
Perhaps President-elect Obama should study the European, Australian, and Japanese examples. Governing is a lot more difficult than campaigning. He can start by asking how many advanced democracies give terror suspects full-blown civilian trials?
After all, Obama should not be unilateral is his approach to fighting terror.
I read an article (I believe it was in Foreign Affairs) a few years ago about the French method of investigating and prosecuting terrorists. The main tenet was that we should perhaps use it as a model to strengthen our own ant-terror efforts. Of course had Bush even hinted at doing this, the ACLU and Human Rights Watch would have had lead articles in every major paper in the world about America’s turn to tyranny.
This is one of the few areas that the EU has done something that I would (might) be willing to adopt. Now that the One is in charge those laws and techniques will be passed without a sound from the MSM or ACLU.
On a different point, the is only one War on Terror, there are many fronts, just as there were many fronts in WW2, but only one war. The MSM has done a very good job at making each point of contact with the enemy into a “different war”. The enemy does not see the borders, only points of contact in a very fluid environment, they are indifferent to the Westphalian model of nations and use those constructs only when it plays to their advantage. This is still the biggest (self-imposed) handicap that the West faces and the “law enforcement model” of fighting terrorism raises that handicap to an act of self-mutilation.
We are fighting vicious animals, the best way to do that is to go to their holes and kill them there, not to wait until they have stealthily slipped in amongst the flock and are killing the sheep. The law enforcement model (with or without Constitutional limitations) surrenders the initiative to the enemy, nobody even won a boxing match by leaving their guard down and letting the other guy always hit first. The feeling of moral righteousness is cold comfort to the families of the victims.
Bush was unfortunately an extremely flawed President in the essential task of communicating and leading on issues. He would not take the time to sit down and explain policy, on Iraq, on counterterror.
After 2004, he essentially said “F**k you” and stopped trying what little use he made of the bully pulpit and thus allowed himself, and Republicans loyal to him – to be defined by partisan enemies, opposition media, Euroweenies and progressive Jewish “human rights” fronts.
Had he defended Abu Ghraib and GITMO with more adroitness, had he said he was building on existing counterterror policing and legal models established by European and Asian countries – he would have been better off. Had he not overexaggerated the terror threat as America one breath away from doomsday by “evil masterminds” numbering around 15,000 in strength…he would have been better served as the years went by and people saw the threat as far less than the late 2001 early 2002 hysteria warranted.
Had Bush been less about Axis of Evil, nutty Neocon proclaimations, silly Sharansky-Wilsonian Democracy, less about ultimatums and “my way or the highway” with Russia and our allies – we would have been far better off. If we had not had the fixation with Israel, Iraq, and ME terrorism, and had paid more, and proper attention to Latin America, East Asia, Pakistan-India, Afghanistan, Russia other than as a target of hostile actions, and European issues – America would strategically have been better off.
It got worse in 2005, following Katrina, and the Terri Schaivo and Harriet Miers fiascos as Bush lost his connection to the voters and quit trying, running Iraq, his WOT on inertia, still spouting his soporifics like “Religion of Peace”.
Now it is the Progressive’s mess…and many of their beliefs and solutions – like massive legal rights for terrorists remain to be played out. I suspect they will have their own set of miserable failures. But by 2006, now in 2008 – fed up American people rightly rejected “more of the same stuff and style of leadership that Bush started.”
There definitely seems to have been a much broader commercialization of terrorism since the Sept 11th attacks. I think that part of the issue here is the scale and coordination of these acts. If let’s say, for example, they occurred in another major European city, I think that their profundity would still be propounded through the local media as it did in the US.
Evan
http://www.beyondrace.com