SovereignLife for Offshore Banking and Asset Protection
Homeland Security
The following is another essay I wrote for a communications class. Its purpose is to outline why the so-called "War on Terror" has gone too far, and to suggest alternative actions we as citizens can take to protect our civil liberties and fight terror at the same time. I hope you gain something positive from this paper, and please e-mail your responses or post them in our forums.Foreign and Domestic Threats
“Homeland Security!” This phrase, more than almost any other, arouses a plethora of emotional responses among people, especially amongst Americans today. For some, it instills a sense of protection and patriotism. For others, complete and utter apathy, and for still others, such as myself, get a mild sick feeling in the pit of the stomach. In this paper, I shall attempt to demonstrate exactly what qualms I have about today's “War on Terror”, and why it is not simply an isolated event, but rather a phenomenon that can have a direct effect on anyone at any time, potentially anywhere.In April 1996, Timothy McVeigh detonated a rented moving van in front of the Oklahoma City, OK Federal Building, killing almost 170 workers and bystanders. As a response to this disaster and other mass murders abroad, the United States Congress and President Bill Clinton approved a new national security bill in an attempt to make it easier for domestic law enforcement officials investigate and apprehend such criminals before mass damage was done.
At the time, a majority of Americans and those on Capitol Hill lauded the measure, although some very intelligent leaders, many of them Republican Congresspeople, disapproved. They argued that it would lead to a more repressive society, which seems to have become the reality over time. Since 1996, numerous governmental and independent studies have shown little to no effect on high crimes in the United states, suggesting that such measures rarely have a significant effect on preventing crime and apprehending perpetrators.
During Clinton's second term as President, America's collective attention turned toward foreign relations and domestic equality project, effectively putting foreign terrorism awareness and legislation on the back burner for the next half-decade. Then a small group of hell-bent foreign terrorists, mostly from Iran, decided to hijack three passenger airliners and mercilessly crash them into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, which ironically was under remodeling at the time.
In the days and weeks following this unfortunate event, Congress and President Bush hastily and thoughtlessly signed into law a huge and excruciatingly complex omnibus bill referred to as the “Uniting and Strengthening America By Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”, or the USAPATRIOT Act for short. This new law, enacted in late 2001, was passed by only the small proportion of legislators who were present in Washington DC at the time, and even some of these men and women were in opposition, mainly because the bill was pushed through before anyone bothered to read more than a few pages of it.
Today, we now know that the two “evil twins” of fear and frustration gripping the Capitol in early October, 2001 resulted in the ratifying of a set of laws that have proven to be no more effective than the 1996 law, and are also highly illegal, according to existing Constitutional law. In fact, USAPATRIOT and its 2003 cousin, the Security Enhancement Act violate not just one or two, but several sections of our nation's Constitution.
For starters, the term “terrorist” and “terrorist activities” are extremely broadly defined. As a result, federal and local law enforcement agencies have little guidance or restriction when it comes to deciding if an act or opinion is potential “terrorist act” or not. Clearly, this ambiguity impedes on the freedoms of speech and expression protected by the 1st Amendment. Additionally, ethnic and religious profiling, particularly towards Arabs and Muslims would constitute an abridgment of freedom of conscience. Additionally, the law provides for the breaching of the 4th Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure. Prior to the USAPATRIOT, civilian related searches and seizures of property could only legally take place when requested under oath and approved by a judge. Today, law enforcement officials have the ability to essentially write their own warrants without judicial oversight, or even ignore the procedures completely.
Much room for abuse can come from this, as a result of a mistake, or because of enemies in the public or law enforcement itself. Unlike the “good old days”, an accusation of any kind can be “good enough” for action, even if one's story lacks credibility. Law enforcement agents' restrictions on communications interception and surveillance have been loosened, resulting in less privacy for Americans. Once one is incarcerated for an alleged offense, the new provisions of the PATRIOT Act make it possible for you, even as a civilian and US citizen, to be tried by a military-style tribunal in which you are guilty until proven innocent, and may be compelled to testify against yourself, issues which are clearly addressed by the 5th Amendment to the Constitution.
Furthermore, such trials do not require the accused to have a lawyer or a jury of peers to decide his fate, as is mandated by the 6th Amendment. After the trial, “cruel and unusual punishment”, aka torture and/or execution by any methods may be imposed, all without the general public or the accused's family or friends from ever knowing that he or she was ever on trial in the first place! Clearly, this is something that must be addressed and dealt with before such methods become widespread. As widely reported by the media, unfair and inhumane tactics like those described above were used at the Abu Grabe prison in Iraq, and the Guantanamo Bay Navy/Marine base “holding facilities”. Executing such actions are a clear violation of the 8th Amendment, which was put in place in order to prevent such unjustified abuse.
The Bill of Rights and civil liberties issues notwithstanding, the establishment of the Homeland Security Department and the ratification of USAPATRIOT and Security Enhancement Acts also present a problem in terms of the size and gravity of government's role in the lives of everyday Americans. As with individuals, governmental organizations tend to become less effective in their tasks when they try to take on too many responsibilities at once.
The effects of “government overload”, as it were, can be seen across many different facets of the American existence. For starters, lets look at the effects “war on terror” bloated bureaucracy has on the national economy. When President Bush took office in early 2001, the national economy was in good shape, and there was even a financial surplus for the federal government. However, September 11th changed all this.
Since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and military engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq in response to 9/11, our national debt is now in the trillions of dollars, and in progressively devaluing dollars at that. Granted, some military and home front countermeasures were required, some of them quite expensive. This is not to say, however, that the federal government of the United States hasn't gone way overboard in the process. After all, America is the land where bigger is usually considered better, regardless of the context. Because of this folly, many national departments, including the new Department of Homeland Security have grown to horrendous sizes, even huger than they were already.
“But what's so bad about that,” you may ask. The reality of government, or any large organization is that it is slow, resource hogging, and dysfunctional. As report after Government Accountability Office (GAO) report shows year after year, such institutions tend to develop cultures over time in which higher level managers concern themselves with personal gain rather than the mission of the department. In a similar way, lower paid peon workers (accountants, secretaries, etc.) often become disgruntled and cease to care about doing quality work. As a result, we get things like the local DMV location that we all know and hate. But don't feel guilty, the person behind the counter probably hates you just as much as you hate them, so it's even! Seriously though, these problems are real, and are critically detrimental to any bureaucracy, especially one that is charged with a task as important as protecting against terrorist acts.
To be most effective, the DHS should be small and efficient, perhaps only existing as a “security warehouse” of sorts for other existing intelligence, law enforcement, and civil emergency organizations. By this I mean that it should act as a sort of centralized collection center for intelligence information and a forum for coordination and collaboration between governmental organizations. Typically, this kind of centralized planning and infrastructure would be considered unorthodox at best, and flat out Communist at worst. I understand these points of view, but I think that from a utilitarian standpoint, it is much better (and cheaper!) to have a more tightly organized government that is effective in the few things it does do, rather than a huge and disorganized one that does all its many tasks poorly.
Additionally, it would likely behoove the United States Military (both full time and guard/reserves) to adapt similar tactics for their own purposes. The entire Iraq intel (intelligence, not the chip company) issue notwithstanding, the lack of a sufficient US troop presence in Afghanistan, the original and verified home of Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups needs to be solved as soon as possible.
Many Americans worry that a draft might be required to handle both military campaigns at once, but this scare does not take into account the thousands of US military personnel stationed in nonthreatening countries around the world. For example, every nation on the European continent has some degree of US presence. In Asia, the narrow North-South Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) is called home to as many as 50,000 servicemen and women! Surely, if dangerous Communist aggressors were going to suddenly invade the South, they would have already done so at some point during the 52 years since the end of the Korean War (which they have not). All told, Pyongyang is probably too busy starving its civilian population and squandering UN and other foreign aid materials to worry about much of anything else.
If the majority of these essentially useless troops were moved to Afghanistan, for example, international terrorists would have a very hard time avoiding capture. Americans' tax dollars would be put to good use for the first time in a good half-century, and no one would need to stay awake nights worrying about an impending draft, a move that has proven over the years to produce poor troops that often don't want to be there, let alone perform their missions accurately.
Now that the contemporary and controversial “War on Terror” situation has been laid out, is important to articulate what we as citizens, and university community members can do to correct the problems that exist and draw attention to any meritorious programs and people involved. The first, and easiest thing one can do to “clean house” in terms of the “War on Terror” is to vote for candidates that support civil liberties and a reduced, higher efficiency national government. Among the ranks of the two current dominating parties, aka the Republicans and Democrats, there are a few (albeit unfortunately not many) members of the House and Senate who support such a constructive agenda. One figure who stands out is Ron Paul, a Republican House representative from Texas During his tenure, Congressman Paul has consistently supported civil liberties, and opposed needless government mettling in American's daily lives. Alternately, there are many good candidates from the Libertarian party, whose mission in fact focuses on these issues, among others. An example of this in the last election was Federal Circuit Judge Jim Gray, who ran for Senator of California. Although he unfortunately did not garner enough votes to obtain a plurality, he did beat out many other candidates, demonstrating that citizens all over America want real change.
In a similar vein, an effective way to sway the vote of existing legislators is to write, e-mail, or call them at their district or state/national capitol office. If enough people make their concerns known, chances are that your representatives will act in your behalf. I have experience working in a Congressional district office, and know that even a few (perhaps thirty to fifty constituents) can make a real difference. Nationwide studies conducted over the years support this claim as well. Many websites exist that make it easy to look up and contact your state and Congressional leaders, and some even provide ready-made petition forms in which you need only fill out a few lines and click “send”.
Finally, you can protect yourself and close family/friends by practicing a few simple steps to insure your privacy, especially in light of the recent laws previously mentioned. As you may recall, many kinds of information about citizens can now legally be traced, such as the books one checks out from the public library, any credit card purchases you make, and almost anything you do on the Internet. To protect yourself, never use a credit or debit card when you can easily use cash. Always make sure you know what your local library's privacy policies are before you check out a book, and finally, take some time to do a bit of research into Internet privacy practices. Easy-to-follow information can be found on a number of websites, including that of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (http://www.eff.org/).
In conclusion, government actions (both legal and military) taken in the name of protecting Americans and fighting the so-called “War on Terror” have, in general, been put into being too rapidly and without proper rationality, as emotional responses to a series of very tragic events. In order to bring criminals as murderous as the 9/11 hijackers to justice, while at the same time protecting civil liberties, we must engage in a national discussion to evaluate which tactics really work, and which ones are inherently flawed, or to too far too fast. Only when lawmakers, the military, and the public sit down to hash out these details, will the vicious cycle of action and emotional reaction cease.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions about this article, please e-mail me at powerpenguin@webwonders.org. We value your feedback, so please e-mail or visit the forums.