« Rebutting the Ignorant One Man at a Time | Main | Isn't "Conservative National Energy Policy" an Oxymoron? »

February 09, 2006

The Circular Firing Squad Effect of Federal Anti-Terror Programs

The immediate post-911 Arab/Muslim round-up by the feds went largely unreported by the mainstream media and has certainly gone down the memory hole of the American public some five years later. However Americans of Arab descent or of the Muslim religion sure haven’t forgotten those times.

I know I haven’t. The FBI, apparently peeved that I blew off two phone calls that they made to my home requesting that I present myself at their downtown Detroit HQ for an “informational interview” (sic), sent two agents to my then employer’s office to “remind” me of their desire for this interview. I have to say my anger, fear, and lingering paranoia at this sort of thuggish behavior on their part has never fully diminished even some five years later either.

And now it seems that professional libertarian gadfly James Brovard has decided to remind the public of those days. Writing an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times he seeks to revive our fading memories of the post-911 round-ups.

“In the mass roundup of more than 1,200 people shortly after 9/11, for example,” says Brovard, “it took very little for a Muslim or Arab illegal immigrant to be considered a ‘suspected terrorist,’ according to a 2003 report by the Justice Department's inspector general. Arab students were locked up as suspected terrorists for working at pizza parlors (in violation of their student visas); a Pakistani immigrant was jailed after attracting attention because he and his Queens housemates let their grass grow long and hung their underwear out to dry on the fence; and one Muslim was arrested because ‘he had taken a roll of film to be developed and the film had multiple pictures of the World Trade Center on it but no other Manhattan sites,’ the inspector general noted. Some FBI agents were even instructed to look in phone books to find Arab- or Muslim-sounding names, according to Newsweek columnist Steven Brill.”

Oh and by the way; the 1,200 or so people detained that Brovard refers to above was only in the Los Angeles area. The whole number nation-wide was in the thousands. How many people Leviathan’s minions rounded up, imprisoned, tortured, exiled, ”disappeared”, or killed outside the USA’s borders will likely never be known.

So when the neo-con talking heads attempt to explain away President Bush’s illegal and intrusive spying campaign as a “terrorist surveillance program” consider that these days nearly any undefined or vaguely suspicious behavior, notion, or idea on some fed’s part can land one in a detention cell as an “enemy combatant”.

“When Americans hear Bush say ‘terrorism surveillance program,’ says Brovard “they should recognize that the crosshairs may very well be on them. The more expansive and arbitrary the definition of ‘suspected terrorist,’ the more of our rights the feds can violate. Invoking the word ‘terrorism’ must not raze all limits on the government's power to target citizens who pose no threat to public safety.”

And anyone can be denounced by anyone else because no one is above suspicion. Ever. So it seems that the more people start pointing fingers at one another, the more feds ask for people to be pointed out as suspects. In other words a “circular firing squad”.

Posted by Ali Massoud at February 9, 2006 12:26 PM

Comments

Post a comment