I notice four major threads:
1.) Fear
Not only is the citizenry fearful and therefore accepting of deep encroachments into civil liberties, I believe the state infrastructure that's supposed to be tracking and apprehending terrorist is also fearful. Notice how the "raids" on the homes of immigrants who are suspected terrorists are always conducted with an overkill of force - as if these were supermen who might eat bullets and tear walls down with their savage hands.
2.) Incompetence.
Notice that out of thousands of people detained and deported less than five, according to the CSMonitor, were found to have any sort of links to terrorist organizations. The state's spin is that this proves a powerful net is sweeping the country. A less bone-headed interpretation is that the criteria for being suspected is broad to the point of uselessness. An even more accurate way of stating it is saying that the people in charge are incompetent. There are probably knowledgable professionals within the FBI and even the CIA. Their bosses issuing the marching orders are apparently dumb as wood.
3.) Malice
The racist abuse detained immigrants endure cannot be explained simply as the natural reaction of a "wounded nation." It is old fashioned KKK-ism pure and simple.
Years ago, long before 9/11, several Arab friends told me that they felt outside of the racial cauldron America can be at times. I warned them to simply wait for an OJ case or, god forbid, a terrorist act like McVeigh performed and then come back to me. You'll see the snake, I said. Unfortunately, I was right.
4.) Vainglory
Like Pee Wee Herman who, in the film "Pee Wee's Big Adventure" stumbled over a bike, got up and while dusting himself off declared "I meant to do that" our glorious imperial leaders proclaim every misstep as part of a carefully calculated plan worked out through a uniquely American combination of high tech, steely eyed determination and almost supernatural wisdom. The American people, fed a steady diet of movies about sleek agencies tracking swarthy evil doers is willing to accept this - for a time anyway.
One Bonaparte was enough for the world. An entire staff of them is quite an extraordinary wind tunnel of hot air.
DRM
..........
Has post-9/11 dragnet gone too far?
As White House pushes to expand domestic terror laws, critics worry limits on civil liberties will become permanent.
By Warren Richey and Linda Feldmann | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor
MIAMI AND WASHINGTON - When they came for Adham Hassoun, America's counterterrorism forces took no chances. Federal agents and sheriff's deputies circled his car in a quiet residential area not far from his home in Sunrise, Fla., and whisked him into custody.
"It was like a movie, with helicopters above me," Mr. Hassoun recalls in a telephone interview from Miami's Krome Detention Center. "They thought I was somebody important.... They thought they hit the jackpot."
Now, 15 months later, Hassoun has yet to be charged with a violation of any US law. Nonetheless, he remains behind bars - and fears he is about to lose everything he has ever loved and worked for during 13 years in America.
Hassoun's experience is not unlike that of other immigrants of Middle Eastern or Islamic heritage swept up in a post-Sept. 11 dragnet aimed at disabling terrorists before they strike again. It is a nationwide antiterror campaign with
tactics including preventive detention, coercive interrogation, and secret deportation hearings, targeting a community of noncitizens in America now living in silent dread of a knock at the door.
"By my count, based on government-released figures, they've detained over 5,000 foreign nationals in antiterrorism-related initiatives," says David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and author of the forthcoming book "Enemy Aliens." "The government has treated thousands of people as suspected terrorists who turned out to have nothing to do with terrorism.
[...]
full at
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0912/p01s04-uspo.htm
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