November 14, 2007
"Law Enforcement Is Looking Ahead to the Next Terror Attack with a Menu and a Map."
UPDATE: Grr. It looks like the Bee might put its content behind a registration wall. Here's the text of the op-ed:
Law enforcement is looking ahead to the next domestic terrorist attack with a menu and a map.This month, reports have surfaced about two controversial counterterrorism initiatives in California. In one, Congressional Quarterly's national security editor reported that the FBI had mined data from San Francisco grocery stores to look for spikes in sales of Middle Eastern food that, together with other data, might imply the presence of extremists. In the other, the Los Angeles Police Department is using census and other demographic data to map Muslim communities in order to pinpoint the neighborhoods of potential extremists.
These might look like two new methods for identifying the enemy within, but they are nothing new, and they are not likely to do much but inflame the communities they affect.
The first of them – I suppose we could call it "tahini tracking" – is just a disturbing replay of a 60-year-old mistake.
As I explain in my new book "American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II," the federal government created a secret system of tribunals in 1943 to decide which of the tens of thousands of Japanese Americans behind barbed wire were "loyal" and which were "disloyal."
Things never got much more sophisticated for these tribunals than the food Japanese Americans ate. Religious and cultural affiliations with Japan scored negative loyalty points; "American" affiliations produced positive ones. Little League baseball coaches got positive points; judo teachers got negative points. Members of Japanese-named organizations got negative points; members of the Rotary Club got positive points. If you were a Buddhist, you got negative points; if you were a Christian, positive.
The system did not deduct points for sushi consumption, but it came awfully close. It equated the most basic components of Japanese religious and cultural identity with danger to national security. Applying this system, bureaucrats condemned more than one out of every four American citizens of Japanese ancestry as disloyal and potentially dangerous. The consequences were prolonged detention behind barbed wire, ineligibility for jobs in war production and, even as the war reached its end, continued exclusion from the West Coast.
The second method, neighborhood mapping, also bears a resemblance to some of the flawed methods of 60 years ago. In the months before Pearl Harbor, the FBI compiled its so-called "ABC lists" of thousands of Japanese aliens identified for arrest in the event of outbreak of war. Many of the men populating those lists were the business, religious and cultural leaders of the Japanese neighborhoods and communities of the West Coast's cities.
To be sure, the Los Angeles Police Department maintains that it is mapping Muslim neighborhoods to help their residents, not arrest them. The idea is to identify hot spots of discontent where extremism might grow, and then to increase social services to those neighborhoods in order to combat radicalization.
In principle, this strategy is sensible. But the residents of these neighborhoods have already seen six years of suspicion and scrutiny, and they are not likely to appreciate the principle. They're likely to see the mapping project as a prelude not to assistance but to repression.
And if some Americans are having a hard time telling bombs from baba ghanouj, who can blame them?
Posted by Eric at 7:54 AM
September 11, 2007
9/11: Recent History
Posted by Eric at 8:18 AM
July 11, 2007
The Bad Idea In Katyal's and Goldsmith's Otherwise Intriguing Proposal
Preventive detention of U.S. citizens on the basis of nothing more than membership in a group is a really, really bad idea. It was a bad idea when the group was a Shinto sect, and it was a bad idea when the group was the Communist Party. It's a bad idea now.
I'm surprised to see lawyers and scholars of their abilities promoting it.
Posted by Eric at 9:06 PM
December 15, 2006
Judge Sarokin on Maher Arar's Bivens Action Against U.S. Officials
Check it out.
Posted by Eric at 10:23 AM | Comments (1)
December 5, 2006
A Brilliant But Bungled Radio Ploy
A DC-area talk radio host used his hour-long call-in program on the Sunday after Thanksgiving to argue that all Muslims in the United States should be forced to wear an identifying symbol -- a crescent -- so that we could more easily identify the enemy within.
It was really just a ploy; he was trying to see whether he'd draw support for such an outrageous and historically chilling idea. (Audio of the hour-long show is available here.)
Here's the thing, though. To make something like this really work, you've got to take a whole bunch of calls. You can find a crazy or two who'll call in to a radio program to support just about any damn thing. For a ploy like this to really work, you've got to line up quite a few callers who are willing to support the craziness you're spouting.
But the host took only four calls in the entire hour. And two of the callers excoriated him for making the suggestion in the first place. The other two supported the idea.
Don't get me wrong: it's certainly scary that even two people would voice support for making American Muslims wear a crescent. (Nowhere near as scary, though, as the recent Gallup poll of 1,007 adults that revealed that forty percent believe American Muslims support al Qaeda.) But two callers out of four were just not enough to create the effect that the radio host was shooting for. This is especially so because talk radio shows have call screeners, and I have to wonder whether the two callers out of four who made it through the screeners accurately represented the listening audience's reaction. The host kept saying that the phones were ringing off the walls, and that every line was full. Yet he took only four calls.
I'd love to see a radio host do this the right way: float the proposal for ten minutes or so, and then really open the phone lines to get a broad sampling of reaction. That would be much more revealing, and more useful, than what the DC host did.
Props to the DC guy for trying it out; it took guts. But unfortunately, I just don't think he taught us too much.
Posted by Eric at 8:42 AM | Comments (3)
October 20, 2006
"And Always -- Always -- Wrong."
Posted by Eric at 4:28 PM | Comments (2)
October 18, 2006
White Armbands?
Posted by Eric at 8:56 PM
October 8, 2006
Francis Fukuyama: "Trust But Verify."
Even if we do not at this juncture know the full scope of the threat we face from jihadist terrorism, it is certainly large enough to justify many changes in the way we conduct our lives, both at home and abroad. But the American government does have a track record in dealing with similar problems in the past, one suggesting that all American institutions — Congress, the courts, the news media — need to do their jobs in scrutinizing official behavior, and not take the easy way out of deferring to the executive. Past experience also suggests that the government would do far better to make public what it knows, as well as the limits of that knowledge, if we are to arrive at a balanced view of the challenges we face today.
Posted by Eric at 12:35 PM
September 27, 2006
The NIE "Key Judgments" Fiasco Proves the Bankruptcy of Our Document Classification System
Then somebody leaked a passage from it to the New York Times.
Then, miraculously, the entire NIE "Key Judgments" document became safe for the public to see.
If this grotesque dance is not evidence that the whole concept of government document secrecy is corrupt and in need of overhaul, I don't know what is.
Please note that this is not a comment on, or criticism of, the leak or the President's decision to declassify the document. It is a comment on (and criticism of) our current rules for document "classification," and the ways in which we allow our "representatives" to decide what we are and are not allowed to know.
Posted by Eric at 8:32 AM | Comments (3)
September 12, 2006
What Stands Out from "What Stands Out."
Two readers included in their otherwise accessible (to me, that is) accounts a sort of comment that caused me to recoil a bit -- to slip off of the common ground that it felt like we were standing on. They were these two:
I was hard at work in my cubicle, and got up to go around the corner to ask a coworker about some code. He happened to be walking in the door from the hallway outside, and told me that he had just come from the canteen and heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC.And:I immediately thought of the Empire State Building getting hit in a fog many, many years ago, and assumed it was the same thing. He said that no, it was perfectly clear up there. I then thought that it had to have been a light plane. It wasn't the first time that something like that had happened, heck, somebody crashed on the White House lawn a few years ago. It had to be a lone nut at worst, in a cessna. But in the back of my head, I started to worry. Surely not. But could it? There had been that Egyptian copilot who crashed his airliner into the ocean...
I asked my question and went back to work. But just a few minutes later, he came back and told me that a second plane had flown into the other tower.
There never was any question after that. Things just solidified. We were under attack. I started getting angry.
I walked to the canteen, and watched the replays on the TVs overhead. I didn't get to see the second one live, but I've seen the clips, the stunned reactions from broadcasters on the air so many times that it feels like I have. I just stood there in anger, muttering "We're at war. We are at war." Thoughts of Pearl Harbor began to pop into my mind, especially when I came back to check again and the Pentagon had been hit. There were reports of bombs, and snipers, and it looked like an all-out decapitation strike might be underway. I couldn't understand why the Capitol hadn't been hit; that would have hurt our psyche far worse as a nation, but I eventually came to understand that our foes didn't really get that, and their one shot was taken down in America's first counterattack.
Perhaps the worst part was when I went to see my manager about something around lunchtime. I asked her how she was holding up, and by her cheery voice I realized that she had been inside her office all morning and didn't even know. I had to stand there... and tell her that it looked like 50,000 innocent people had just died, and that we were at war. Fortunately, they hit us too early in the day, to high up the buildings, and the evacuations worked relatively well. We could have lost ten times as many as we did, rather easily.
I sit here and wonder, five years later, how so many can simply forget or dismiss the cruelty or the evil of the attack.
I will never forget the sound of my father's voice screaming over the phone that the tower was collapsing. I worked rotating shifts then and was actually watching a movie. I had a TV, but no cable. My phone rang and it was my father, in Erie, PA, calling to tell me to turn on the TV. He was frantic. I think he only wanted to make sure that his sons were still alive, even though there was no possibility that either of us were anywhere near NYC or (later) DC. As he was trying to explain what was going on, one of the towers collapsed. I remember him saying that one had collapsed already and OH MY GOD THE OTHER TOWER IS FALLING!What nags at me about these two posts is not that they somehow deviated from the invitation to share memories of 9/11/2001 and veered toward commentary about what followed. Others who wrote did that -- sharing, for example, their disbelief at the way the Administration frittered away the feeling of national and even international unity that welled up after the attacks -- and that did not bother me. So maybe the only difference between the commentary that bothered me and the commentary that didn't is that the stuff that didn't was stuff I agreed with. I concede that possibility.I’ve heard my father afraid. I’ve heard him angry, even furious. I’ve never before, nor since heard him horrified. I’d prefer never to hear him that way again.
I carried the phone downstairs and knocked on my new neighbor's door. We had not yet met and here I was waking them up (they had evening shifts that day) wearing only short pants, no shirt, no shoes, trying to convince them to turn on their TV. I was sure that it wasn't possible that my father was correct. I was sure that as soon as I could get the TV on I would see something else. Maybe some sort of War of the Worlds thing. We became friends, my neighbors and I. not because of that incident, but for others.
The video of the attacks and the collapses I have seen several times, always recorded. I was doing something else when it was playing live. The collapses were shown over and over again in the typical TV fashion, played until you are almost sick of them and then they stopped, like they were swept into a memory hole. It was as if the TV stations imagined themselves our parents and suddenly tried to cover our eyes, to prevent us from seeing the horror that had occurred. It was as if they suddenly realized we were angry about it and were seriously considering retaliation, revenge, a reckoning. It as if we suddenly woke up from a dream where we had imagined that the world was safe, but now we knew better. Now we knew that we had to act. The images suddenly disappeared; our intellectual betters decided that they wanted no part of this. They stopped showing the pictures, hoping that we would stop demanding the blood of our enemies. They had successfully paper[ed] over all the previous wounds, but they were astonished to find that they could not paper over this one. America got its wake-up call. For me, the sound of America waking up will always be the sound of my father, screaming in horror, over the telephone.
But maybe it's something else. These two readers see in the post-9/11 world an American forgetfulness about the horror of that day -- and a media-sung lullaby to calm our anger and our fear -- that I just don't even begin to see or hear. Surely it is possible for all Americans to continue to feel the shared sadness, anger, and fear at the attacks of September 11, and at the same time disagree about how to respond.
Isn't it?
Posted by Eric at 8:36 AM | Comments (3)
September 11, 2006
What stands out?
Hearing on a country music station, as I stepped into the shower, that a small plane had accidentally hit the WTC.
Turning on the TV 10 minutes later and seeing that it was no small plane, and no accident.
Hearing about the Pentagon as I pulled out of my driveway. The radio guy said, "America is under attack."
Going into a classroom of riveted and disbelieving law students, glued to a TV that someone had rolled in, to announce that the dean had cancelled all classes.
Using Martindale-Hubble to try to figure out which law firms had offices at the WTC, and whether I knew anyone.
Getting an eery business phone call from a very strange New Yorker who wanted to talk to me about a business matter as though it were any normal Tuesday.
A dazed numbness that set in and did not quit until the following Sunday, when, looking at the first profiles of the victims in the NYT, the tears finally broke through.
What stands out in your memory? Leave a comment, and I'll post excerpts of your memories here as well.
A reader writes:
Sitting in my office, working, hearing that "something" had happened, getting frustrated with the web news sites and running out and buying a little black and white TV because it was actually cheaper than buying a radio.Another reader:What doesn't stand out - After hearing so many details about the events of that day, I can no longer tell what I actually learned as it happened what I learned later - everything has melded together such that my brain tells me I saw the planes hit - even though I know that's not possible.
We had a funding review for my graduate research group in Albany that week. We were scheduled to fly from Orlando to Albany around 11am that morning. We were gathering in our lab, surfing the internet when the news came. I was married less than 3 months earlier, and I was thinking about things that most newlyweds don't and shouldn't.Another:
Prof. Muller:Another:I was in your Crim Law class on 9/11 (or, at least, I would have been). What stood out to me was the feeling that civilization--the very basis of the law--was under attack, and the realization that lawyers and lawyering are only possible because the police, firefighters and soldiers do the heavy lifting of preserving it.
I was in the seventh grade, and I remember that I had just been transferred to advanced classes that Monday. I had pulled on my backpack and was leaving through the front door for school when I noticed my mother sitting on the couch and just staring at the TV. I stopped, because my mom had the strangest expression on her face and I was worried about her. I stepped over into the next room and said, "Mom, what's wrong?" And she told me that someone had crashed a plane into the WTC.Another:I didn't understand what she meant, but I could watch the TV and see that something bad had happened. I still had to go to school, though, so I left, closing the door behind me. It didn't seem to really impinge on my classmates - I lived in El Paso, then, and NYC was two hours ahead of us - but by lunch, everyone was talking about it.
After school, I was walking home when my dad drove up and dragged him into the car. That was when I started getting scared, because my father never came and picked me up.
And the last thing I remember about that day was sitting in the gigantic line to get on Fort Bliss while my father told me that someone - they didn't know who - had probably killed tens of thousands of people that morning.
The look on my wife's face as I came into the living room.Another reader:The first sight of the towers burning - both had been hit - as I turned to look at the TV.
My 5-year old son's confusion. All he seems to have known was that his parents were - wrong. He had never seen grief before.
The sight of the first tower collapsing.
The hushed talking of the people in line outside the blood center. Waiting to give blood in a small Texas town, the line was at least 500 feet long, and probably more, when I got there, and kept growing through the afternoon. We all spoke of what we had seen and heard, and some people had radios and were passing along news updates. A special edition paper came out, and someone brought a few dozen copies to the people waiting in line. We read them over each others' shoulders, then passed them along. Even though we were under the DFW flight path, there were no planes. We all kept looking up, watching for them.
The first planes I saw were when I was driving home from the blood center. A pair of F-16s were orbiting North of Fort Worth.
The (false) reports of a car bomb at the State Department. That made me think that this was a more than one-dimensional attack, and that was when I first got scared, which was enough to let the rage break through. I'm still furious.
Watching the President's address that night, where he stated the first half of what would become the Bush Doctrine: we will treat nations that harbor terrorists the same way we treat the terrorists.
The feeling, as I went to bed, that the world tomorrow and the world yesterday were almost disconnected from each other, almost two different realities.
Going down to vote in a local primary election at about 9:30 am central time, already aware of the attacks, and being told by another voter that a plane had also hit the Sears Tower.Another:
My kids first day of pre-school. We went right in and they had their first day because no one knew what was going on.Another:It's a day you'd think you'd remember a long time, but I really will remember it forever because of the combined memory.
I was just starting my third year of law school and had started working at the coffee place down the block from my apartment.... I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and my law school was in Brooklyn.Another:I arrived at work at 6:30am and opened the coffee place. The weather was wonderful, the regulars coming in and out. My coworker showed up and how later as we busily hummed along. The CD player pumped out The Beatles as we bopped along.
At around 8:50 one of the guys who worked in the real estate office across the street ran in asking if we had a TV. We did not. "Turn on the radio!" He yelled, "A Plane hit the World Trade Center!"
My co-worker went to the radio to change it from CD to RADIO while I scoffed, "Aw hell, they'll give any drunk a pilot's license these days."
The information was sketchy at first and then we heard at 9:03 as the second plane hit the tower. Silence fell in our little coffee place. I suddenly found I couldn't stand and went to sit on the floor. That second plane meant it wasn't just some drunk guy. I found myself shaking.
And then they announced the pentagon.
And then they announced flight 93
And then they announced a fire on the National Mall (which, it turned out, was nothing, but we didn't know that at the time).
My mother had retired from her Wall Street job six month before. She still went down there in the mornings to go to the gym. I called her. She had stayed home because of a bad head cold. My father had left to go to the social security office. He originally was going to go to the office down by city hall, but had decided to go to the one near Times Square instead. My husband had flown in from being out of town on a project on September 10th. He was asleep when it happened, in our bed.
As we always say the weather was spectacular, one of those glorious fall days that only happen a few times a year here in New York. The humidity just right. The temperature 74. A cool breeze blew towards the east. It was surreal. It was as if nothing bad had happened seven and a half miles downtown.
Until about 2pm when the walking wounded arrived.
They were covered with white stuff. Some had masks, some had scarves, some had blood on their faces. The looked shell shocked. We gave them water and hoped it was enough.
School was cancelled until Friday, but I didn't even go then. I couldn't. I used to joke that I didn't understand why people in Israel stayed. That the moment they started to bomb New York, I was out of there.
Well I'm still here and I get it a little more now. This is my home and I love it here and I'll be damned if I'll leave because some asshole starts bombing. That opinion is subject to change however.
I was teaching an Urban Studies course at the time and was in such a state of denial that I was perfectly prepared to go and teach my class that afternoon. I was ready to walk in, tell my students that it had been "a very weird day," and then proceed, however implausibly, with a lecture on 19th century minstrel shows. Thank goodness the University of Minnesota decided to cancel classes that day.
Another reader: I was an active duty Marine at the time and, strangely, not horrified since I knew I'd play a small part in our response to the attack. It's only now, as a civilian, that I feel the full horror of that day.Another reader:Also, my then-future wife, while she was travelling in Europe, tracked me down to see if I was okay. Tomorrow is her birthday, and we will be married 4 years come October.
I was at my home-office in upper Manhattan, working on a project for a company in Hoboken. I called my contact there to go over a few details. We talked briefly about the project, but he was distracted. From his office window, he'd just seen a plane hit one of the WTC towers. It didn't strike me as particularly important -- small planes seemed to crash into things all the time -- and I was even a little surprised when he said it was on TV. His mind wasn't on the project though, so I hung up and turned on the news. Almost immediately, the second plane hit, and soon after, the towers, and reality, crumbled.Says another:I sat glued to the TV for hours until restlessness overcame me and I wandered outside in a state of semi-shock. I don't remember whether there was any traffic or if there were more people out than on a normal weekday afternoon. There was no mistaking it for a normal afternoon, though. Those who were out were standing in small, muted groups, or, like me, walking aimlessly around the neighborhood. It was the sort of day when a complete stranger would fall into step beside you and without out a word of greeting, the two of you would talk quietly and intensely for a few blocks and then separate without a word of farewell. There was no need for introductions or explanations. We were all reeling from the same blow.
Sometime later a tide of blank-faced, silent people washed through the neighborhood. In my memory, they look like refugees, but -- as I discovered later -- they were just commuters, returning on foot to their homes in Queens or the Bronx. I wanted to speak to one of them, but it would have been like interrupting a funeral procession. On any other day, such a sight would have demanded immediate explanation, but on that day there didn't seem to be much point in trying to make sense of anything.
I was in Washington for a deposition. I had stayed at a hotel immediately behind (north of) the White House.My cousin Ruth:I did not turn on the TV in my room as I showered and dressed that morning. I did not hear the impact of the plane hitting the Pentagon. I had no clue that anything unusual had happened. Until I reached the hotel lobby.
That's where I saw a crowd of people, unusual for its size and rapt attention to the TV at such an early hour, watching the TV's in the hotel lobby bar. I looked over as I walked through the lobby and saw a tall building in flames. Not realizing what building it was or why it was in flames, I continued onward, thinking to myself that there must have been a tragic explosion or fire in a skyscraper somewhere.
Then I stepped out of the hotel onto the street, with a view to the back of the White House. I immediately noticed two things that made me realize that something was very different.
First, everyone was on a cell phone. I know that Washingtonians are busy people and that cell phone use is frequent. But I mean EVERYONE. So many people had phones to their ears that it caught my attention.
Second, there were people on top of the White House holding weapons that I had never seen before. I had been to Washington many times and had seen the White House many times. I know there are always sharpshooters up there, but I had never noticed anyone with THIS type of weapon. I am no military expert, but I believe they were ground-to-air missile launchers. The kind of thing you might use if you expected to have to shoot down an airplane. At any rate, they were HUGE -- clearly not ordinary rifles or machine guns.
At that point I knew something very strange had happened. But I still didn't know what. So I -- like everyone else I saw -- pulled out my cellphone and called my wife. Except that I couldn't get through. The circuits were all busy. So I continued along to the deposition site, unsuccessfully trying to place my call. When I reached the deposition site, I found the deponent panicking and the staff in the office running around going crazy.
It was only then that I learned what had happened: two jets had crashed into the World Trade Center and another jet had crashed into the Pentagon. (We did not yet know about United 93.) Rumors abounded of other threats -- a car bomb on Capitol Hill, other hijacked airplanes headed to the White House and the Capitol, and on and on.
We immediately cancelled the deposition and I let the grateful deponent try to go home to her family. The office closed, and everyone congregated around the TV for news updates. United 93 crashed in Pennsylvania -- where had it been headed? One Twin Tower collapsed -- how could that possibly happen? The other tower collapsed -- utterly unthinkable.
The rest of the day was consumed with trying to escape Washington. It was surreal, bizarre, and unforgettable in its own way -- especially the part where I walked right past the burning Pentagon as they were evacuating the day care. But the part that stays with me was the incremental and stunning process of learning what had happened, and trying to come to grips with each successively incredible revelation -- coordinated plane crashes, then the collapse of two of our most famous buildings....it was unthinkable then, and hasn't gotten much better in the intervening five years.
It took hours to learn what had happened, but it took days for it to sink in.
And to know that the culprit responsible for it all remains free five years later and isn't even being seriously hunted anymore? Well, that might be the most unthinkable thing of all.
Being dragged out of bed a few minutes after six by a flurry of calls on my cell phone.Another reader:Listening to the message on the cell phone -- a wrong number -- about someone being late for a meeting because a plane hit the World Trade Center and it's on fire and things are falling and she doesn't know where anyone is.
Telling my lover about the crazy person on the phone and then turning on the radio and finding out she wasn't crazy.
Getting to work and deciding it was okay to keep the TV in the classroom on.
The kids cheering when school was cancelled for the day.
My student teacher's horror that the kids were cheering, and my horror at my lack of surprise that the kids were cheering.
Walking the streets of downtown San Francisco, and finding them eerily empty.
Finding a parking space, finding lots of parking places, in Union Square.
Beginning to cry when I heard the first Muslim-bashing.
Walking up the middle of a still, silent, empty Fifth Avenue on a sunny September 12th afternoon.Another:Being furious that the one other person I saw was carrying a shopping bag: what could be so important that you had to go buy it today? Is that how it's going to be? We pretend nothing happened, we ignore it like we ignore everything anyone does to us, us the Great Satan whose fault it all is? Turning into a cross street in disgust, heading down 6th Ave. Seeing some workmen up on ladders in front of a building. You too, it's just business as usual today for you too? --And then getting closer, and realizing what they were doing: fastening an enormous American flag across the facade.
Oh.
I will never forget the sound of my father's voice screaming over the phone that the tower was collapsing. I worked rotating shifts then and was actually watching a movie. I had a TV, but no cable. My phone rang and it was my father, in Erie, PA, calling to tell me to turn on the TV. He was frantic. I think he only wanted to make sure that his sons were still alive, even though there was no possibility that either of us were anywhere near NYC or (later) DC. As he was trying to explain what was going on, one of the towers collapsed. I remember him saying that one had collapsed already and OH MY GOD THE OTHER TOWER IS FALLING!Another reader:I’ve heard my father afraid. I’ve heard him angry, even furious. I’ve never before, nor since heard him horrified. I’d prefer never to hear him that way again.
I carried the phone downstairs and knocked on my new neighbor's door. We had not yet met and here I was waking them up (they had evening shifts that day) wearing only short pants, no shirt, no shoes, trying to convince them to turn on their TV. I was sure that it wasn't possible that my father was correct. I was sure that as soon as I could get the TV on I would see something else. Maybe some sort of War of the Worlds thing. We became friends, my neighbors and I. not because of that incident, but for others.
The video of the attacks and the collapses I have seen several times, always recorded. I was doing something else when it was playing live. The collapses were shown over and over again in the typical TV fashion, played until you are almost sick of them and then they stopped, like they were swept into a memory hole. It was as if the TV stations imagined themselves our parents and suddenly tried to cover our eyes, to prevent us from seeing the horror that had occurred. It was as if they suddenly realized we were angry about it and were seriously considering retaliation, revenge, a reckoning. It as if we suddenly woke up from a dream where we had imagined that the world was safe, but now we knew better. Now we knew that we had to act. The images suddenly disappeared; our intellectual betters decided that they wanted no part of this. They stopped showing the pictures, hoping that we would stop demanding the blood of our enemies. They had successfully paper over all the previous wounds, but they were astonished to find that they could not paper over this one. America got its wake-up call. For me, the sound of America waking up will always be the sound of my father, screaming in horror, over the telephone.
I was hard at work in my cubicle, and got up to go around the corner to ask a coworker about some code. He happened to be walking in the door from the hallway outside, and told me that he had just come from the canteen and heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC.Another:I immediately thought of the Empire State Building getting hit in a fog many, many years ago, and assumed it was the same thing. He said that no, it was perfectly clear up there. I then thought that it had to have been a light plane. It wasn't the first time that something like that had happened, heck, somebody crashed on the White House lawn a few years ago. It had to be a lone nut at worst, in a cessna. But in the back of my head, I started to worry. Surely not. But could it? There had been that Egyptian copilot who crashed his airliner into the ocean...
I asked my question and went back to work. But just a few minutes later, he came back and told me that a second plane had flown into the other tower.
There never was any question after that. Things just solidified. We were under attack. I started getting angry.
I walked to the canteen, and watched the replays on the TVs overhead. I didn't get to see the second one live, but I've seen the clips, the stunned reactions from broadcasters on the air so many times that it feels like I have. I just stood there in anger, muttering "We're at war. We are at war." Thoughts of Pearl Harbor began to pop into my mind, especially when I came back to check again and the Pentagon had been hit. There were reports of bombs, and snipers, and it looked like an all-out decapitation strike might be underway. I couldn't understand why the Capitol hadn't been hit; that would have hurt our psyche far worse as a nation, but I eventually came to understand that our foes didn't really get that, and their one shot was taken down in America's first counterattack.
Perhaps the worst part was when I went to see my manager about something around lunchtime. I asked her how she was holding up, and by her cheery voice I realized that she had been inside her office all morning and didn't even know. I had to stand there... and tell her that it looked like 50,000 innocent people had just died, and that we were at war. Fortunately, they hit us too early in the day, to high up the buildings, and the evacuations worked relatively well. We could have lost ten times as many as we did, rather easily.
I sit here and wonder, five years later, how so many can simply forget or dismiss the cruelty or the evil of the attack.
The utterly spectacular weather.Another reader:The feeling when I walked into my office in midtown Manhattan and saw
a colleague leaving, in an obvious and panicked hurry. He said, "what
with the two planes that hit the Towers, I am getting out of a tall
building." I said, "wait, I thought it was only one plane." His
response to me has been seared into my memory: "John, do you have any
idea what is going on here?"Walking, with a vast mass of dazed New Yorkers, "uptown" towards
Central Park, to get away from the Times Square area where I worked,
due to the fear that "Times Square could be next." We didn't know
where we were going, just that we needed to get away from big
buildings.The sinking feeling, during that strange walk uptown in the sunshine,
when I overhead a man with a hand held radio say, "Jesus, they just
hit the Pentagon."Watching CNN in a bar on 85th Street from noon to about 4 pm, with
probably 100 frightened people gathered around the lone television
set.Walking home that night, emotionally devasted, and having to show my
ID to a National Guardsman with a Machine Gun to get into my
neighborhood, since I lived south of 14th Street.Calling Mom and Dad that night, and letting the tears come out.
Falling asleep that night to the sound of sirens, which seemed to
incessantly ring in the air for 48 hours after that day.Sept 12:
The line of people outside my apartment, which stretched from St.
Vincent's to my place at 11th Street and 5th Avenue. They were
waiting to meet with a rep from the hospital to learn the whereabouts
of their loved ones-- thinking (at the time) that they still might be
somewhere in that ER.The heartwrenching fliers they handed me as I walked to get a cup of
coffee, the faces, and the direct questions: "have you seen my
husband?"Reading 3 full newspapers on the 12th: the only time in my life I
have read the Times, the Post, and Daily News all cover to cover.The photos of the jumpers, God, the jumpers.
The large number of people who wore surgical masks as they walked
around the neighborhood, running errands, exploring the setting, so as
to avoid inhaling the smoke-- which had turned Northward on the 12th
and made the air smell like burnt rubber. Seeing all those people
wearing surgical masks only added to the sense that NY was a total
warzone.The UA Union Square Movie Theatre at Union Square and 14th, which was
showing all of its movies for free, all day, and the sign out front:
"Come in and see a movie for free; we know you have had a rough day,
come in and take your mind off things. Free popcorn and soda too."The massive refrigerated meatlocker trucks that stretched all the way
up the West Side Highway from my wife's apartment to 23rd street.
They sat there waiting to find the remains of those lost, and wound up
finding so much less than they had expected to find.The Sunday newspaper's list of final words, final phone calls, final
emails, which, like Eric, prompted me to break down and cry
uncontrollably.
Growing up in Israel, you are used to massive tragedies. Still, viewing the planes hit the World Trade Center on TV is still awful, frightening and way too concrete. I had two sons at NYU in lower Manhattan. You are worried to no end. The cell phones rang busy. Finally, email worked and my kids were together and fine.Another:For people who grow up here, life has changed. For people used to strife - Africans, Central Americans, Israelis – it’s deja vu; welcome to the club. The world didn't change; America came down towards the average.
We arrived in Canada for a month of fishing on September 9, 2001.An old friend writes:On 9/11, we were in a campground making breakfast and a small group of Germans walked past our campsite and asked if we were American. We said yes and they said "God bless you and we are standing with you today."
I had no idea what they were talking about. So I just kind of nodded and said "Thank you" or something and just chalked it up to some strange cultural difference.
Later that morning we turned on the radio and heard what had happened.
Throughout the rest of our stay there, I can't tell you how many Canadians (and tourists from other countries) went out of their way to say a kind word to us, tell us that we were in their prayers, and so on.
When I look back on that incredible outpouring of support and solidarity and see the way our government has pissed it all away - it is just tragic.
Sitting alone in a 25 person conference room with a big plasma screen watching replays of the second plane and the collapse of both towers ... sure that my meeting was cancelled, but not quite sure what to do next.The line at the cash machine of people making emergency withdrawals in case the banking system collapsed.
Returning home to hug my wife (who was fully aware of how our world had changed) and our kids (who were blissfully unaware, but will never really know the same childhood as we did).
The eerie silence of no commercial planes (only military) for the rest of the week.
Walks through our small community that afternoon, with adults sharing knowing, reassuring looks, and several weeks later when all screens were tuned to CNN showing the beginnings of the Afghani invasion.
Another:
California, late morning, sleeping.Warm, lazy. My mother in law calls back on the intercom, "Terry might want to get up and put on his funny clothes (my uniform, National Guard). The World Trade Center just blew up."
I thought about it and went back to sleep; if they needed me, they'd call, and NY was a long way away.
Maia got up, and when she came back to bed she asked why a plane hitting the WTC would make it fall down. I said I didn't know. As I drifted back to sleep I thought, "damn, that means the Windows on the World wine cellar is gone."
When I woke up, and went to watch the TV I was stunned. Angry, sad, horrified, numb.
The world, as we recall, stopped. The LA County Fair was running, and Maia and I were working at the Dairy display (a 24 hour a day operation, even though the fair is only open during the day). We dicided to go in, even though we weren't scheduled (being up until something like 3 the previous morning, looking after cows was why we slept until 10:00).
The cows would need milking, no matter waht else was going on in the world. We were among a very small number to show up (the milker, and us) so we washed cows, and loaded them up, and the cell phone rang, telling me to come to the Armory.
So I did. A time of strangeness. Things were going to be different (recall that at this point the smallest estimate of the dead was 10,000) Someone called to report something suspicious, down the block, and we went to check it out (civilian clothes, no weapons. Just a look see, if it had been an attack we were toast).
Maia called to say she was going to be helping with the evening milking. Around 9 p.m. I got a call that she was on her way to the hospital, because a pipe had broken on the pasteuriser and clobbered her in the head.
So I went to pick her up. Tired, frantic, confused, sad, angry still.
The next day I read an account by a friend, he had been in the area (his office was in Seven WTC, or some such).
He was angry, and terrified, and cool headed, with fury I'd known he had, but rarely seen; and said the song he was hearing in his head was "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", which I sang to myself with a new understanding; hearing it with the devotion of Puritan New England. Sung as an actual song of battle it's something to make the blood run cold, and the knees weak.
On the radio, that afternoon, I heard Wynton Marsalis performing the third movement of Haydn's trumpet Concerto (perhaps my favorite piece of classical music). The lilting rise and fall of the solo, the glorious ascent to the heavens it makes.
It made me remember, for just a moment, the sublime nature man can attain. It, to quote the psalm, restored my soul.
All those things are in my mind, the fall (and that prosaic moment when something I wanted to visit went away,and made it real, before I knew just what it was) the cows; who needed milking, no matter what tragedies the world was suffering, the chill of anger, hate and purpose, (as told in the hymn) and the quiet glory that Hayden brought back to me.
In twenty four hours I was taken through every single aspect of the human condition, with memories to make them all concrete.
And I'd give that understanding up in a moment.
Posted by Eric at 8:03 AM | Comments (21)
September 10, 2006
Al Qaeda Blue
Posted by Eric at 10:54 PM | Comments (3)
September 8, 2006
The ABC's of Libel?
Yeah. What about that?
Posted by Eric at 10:57 AM
September 7, 2006
You Can Never Be Too Prepared.
Posted by Eric at 11:15 PM
August 26, 2006
I don't have anything to hide. Do I?
Thanks to the expansion of the definitions of “terrorist” and “terrorist sympathizer” under the Patriot Act and other post-9-11 statutes and thanks to the exponential growth of the means that government agencies like the Pentagon can spy on Americans, the number of people who can be spied on has grown dramatically.
The release of the surveillance memos makes me wonder not if but how, the FBI and the Pentagon are spying on those who have joined in the massive immigration marches. Just last week, documents released by the Pentagon revealed that it had been spying on gay and lesbian groups opposed to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Millions marching for immigrants’ rights must be among the more than 200 million whose phone records were given to the NSA by AT&T, Bell South and Verizon.
It’s especially disturbing to hear these ongoing exposés just before Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who spends most of the $45 billion authorized by Congress for intelligence on the greatest expansion of the Pentagon’s foreign and domestic spying capabilities in history, said last Thursday, “I’m not in the intelligence business,” in response to questions asked by protester and former CIA agent, Ray McGovern.
Posted by Peter at 3:59 PM
August 15, 2006
The Reality-based community strikes back.
Posted by Peter at 3:31 PM
August 11, 2006
Isn't the fight against "Islamic Fascists" police work?
Posted by Peter at 9:04 AM | Comments (4)
July 29, 2006
The Special Danger of Blaming Minority "Subcultures"
"With Tim McVeigh they were happy to generalize guilt, all the way from the NRA to Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich. Here, the 'climate of opinion' in subcultures producing terrorists seems to get less attention, or to be processed in more of a 'why do they hate us?' fashion. I wonder why?"I suspect that well-grounded fears of ignorant and violent backlash against innocent members of vilified and vulnerable minority groups might have something to do with it.
Maybe I'm just forgetful, but I don't recall a post-Oklahoma City wave of drive-by shootings of white guys with crewcuts. I do, on the other hand, remember assaults against innocent Arabs, Muslims, and even Sikhs after 9/11, and I'm told there was something of an overreaction to the Pearl Harbor attack as well.
This is not to say that it was right or fair to call Timothy McVeigh a product of the NRA, if in fact the mainstream media did that at the time. It is, however, to say that there's probably a big difference in risk to innocent lives between loose talk blaming the American political right for Timothy McVeigh and loose talk blaming American Muslims for Naveed Afzal Haq.
Posted by Eric at 2:32 PM | Comments (30) | TrackBack
June 3, 2006
Dites-Moi: Voyez-Vous, à la Lumière Matinale, ...
Ahem. I said: THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER IN FRENCH!
FRENCH!!!
OK, go to it, Michelle.
Posted by Eric at 4:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 17, 2006
Howard Coble's Antiterrorism Dreamscape
I mention this so that you'll appreciate the significance of what follows.
And what follows is a frightening glimpse into how deeply into the minds of the Congress's Republican leadership the lies and obfuscations of the Bush Administration have penetrated.
Yesterday morning, Coble appeared on the Brad & Britt Show on Greensboro's WZTK-FM talk radio station. He was asked about the recently disclosed allegations of NSA data mining from the telephone records of ordinary Americans and their entirely domestic telephone calls.
Consider his response, and the exhange that followed. (You can listen to the mp3 here.)
Britt (one of the show's hosts): Before we let you run, I wanted to get your opinion on this NSA story about the data mining. The story that came out last week in USA Today where Bellsouth and Verizon and AT&T have handed over records to the National Security Agency…As confusion and nonsense go, this is a thing of beauty.Brad (the show's other host): Bellsouth denies that they've been cooperating, by the way.
Britt: It took them a few days to do that, but they finally got out there. What do you think about this story, sir?
Coble: Well, gentlemen, I'm not upset about the wiretapping issue. I mean, we are, after all, at war, and we're dealing with people who, Brad and Britt, would like to kill each of you and me, and they're willing to kill themselves. So I'm not troubled by any of that.
Brad: But, the argument would be, none of us want to get killed, and none of us want to restrict the President or the National Security Agency from doing the job to protect us, but weren't there laws that were skirted, laws that were ignored here? And that's what the argument is over. Or maybe we don't have to abide by the law when we're in a time of war, and everybody should just shut up.
Coble: (laughing) Well, I don't know that I would finalize it that brutally, Brad, but I do think we're going to have to be willing to compromise some of our – I hate to even say this – some of our liberties in view of the enemy that we confront, because we've never known an enemy like this. People who want to kill us, and are eager to kill themselves to make the point. And I think we may have to back off a little bit, become a little more flexible.
Brad: I'm kind of surprised to hear you say that, Congressman Coble, only because of the next President being, maybe, a Democrat. Would you be saying the exact same thing if the President were of another party?
Coble: Well, I think I would. I'm a partisan, but I've never been fiercely partisan, and I think I would.
Britt: But this is the difficult part, Congressman, is that we don't know when this war is going to be over.
Coble: I know.
Britt: There was a VJ Day, there was a VE Day. There probably will not be a VT Day.
Coble: I hope there will be.
Brad: "Victory over Terrorism."
Coble: Yeah.
Britt: So indeed, if we give up some of these liberties, are flexible about some of these liberties until the War on Terror is over, when are we going to know when the war's over?
Coble: Well, I'm the eternal optimist, Britt, who always sees the glass half-filled, and I think this war will ultimately be over, and I don't think it's going to be an eternity, uh, it may not be tomorrow, but I hope it will certainly be within the next few months, to certainly no more than … well, I won't put a timetable because I really don't know. But once they can get a government together over there, given that you have four or five sects that don't like each other, and who don't like us, it's going to be a difficult case to make, but I believe it can be done.
Notice first the categorical statement that on the issue of "wiretapping," Coble -- the man in the House responsible for oversight of this very area -- is just "not troubled by any of that."
Period. End of story.
You'd think maybe he'd say something about needing to learn something about the program before making a judgment.
Nope. He's just "not troubled" by reports of government data mining from millions of records of domestic phone calls by American citizens. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Notice next Coble's absurd, reality-suspending "optimism" about the "war on terror." This "flexibility" about civil liberties is just a temporary "wartime" measure, so don't you worry: it'll all be over soon, you see. A few months. Victory is right around the corner.
But then notice what to my eye is the most troubling thing of all. Coble is asked about the likely duration of the war on terror -- the war against al Qaeda, who attacked us on 9/11 -- and without missing a beat, Coble responds with pie-in-the-sky predictions about the likely duration of the war in Iraq.
No worries about domestic intelligence-gathering by the executive branch. We have to surrender our freedoms to win the war on terror. Victory in the war on terror is just around the corner. And the war on terror is the war in Iraq.
All this from the man who sets the agenda for the Judiciary Committee's oversight of surveillance and homeland security.
Posted by Eric at 7:39 PM | Comments (10)
May 16, 2006
Mission Accomplished! Again!
I kid you not.
(The artwork is Roger Shimomura's Justified Internment (2003). You can read more about the painting here (halfway down the page.))
Posted by Eric at 12:53 PM | Comments (3)
May 3, 2006
Michael Froomkin Declines Role In Security Theater
Posted by Eric at 4:17 PM
April 17, 2006
"Attempts to cash in on legitimate concerns about terrorism to stoke anti-immigrant hysteria.'
Posted by Eric at 2:09 PM
April 12, 2006
Kevin Cosgrove, RIP
Tough, brutal stuff. My heart goes out to Cosgrove, Doi, and all of the other innocents killed that horrible, horrible day.
Posted by Eric at 9:05 AM | Comments (3)
April 11, 2006
Melissa Doi, RIP
It will rip you up. Be warned.
Posted by Eric at 1:37 PM
March 28, 2006
Or French Toast. Whatever.
Posted by Eric at 8:00 AM
March 16, 2006
NC Muslims on Muhammed Taheri-azar
Posted by Eric at 8:45 AM | Comments (1)
March 10, 2006
Defending This Community's Response to Last Week's Assault
I tried to make the points I made on this blog earlier this week: yes, the assault was an act of terrorism, but there are good reasons for us to try to be careful with a word like that rather than jumping up and down and screaming it from the top of every dormitory. "Terrorist" is our enemy-demonization-word-du-jour; we've had them in the past ("Hun," "Jap," "Communist," and they've never worked out particularly well for us domestically. One way to be careful about a word like "terrorist" is to talk about it when we use it -- to open up discussion about the word and its connotations. Yet it is precisely that reflective effort by this university community that seems so annoying to many people. Isn't this what a university community should be doing?
And more to the point, when a victimized university tries to react thoughtfully to an assault, shouldn't there be a little respect for the victim -- for its ways of dealing with being attacked?
Posted by Eric at 9:11 AM | Comments (6)
March 8, 2006
In Defense of Worrying About The Word "Terrorist"
So to me, what Mohammed Taheri-azar did on my campus last Friday was an act of terrorism. There's no other word for it. (I concede the possibility that he was not responsible for his actions due to mental illness, but on the basis of the facts thus far disclosed, this seems quite unlikely.)
However ...
I admire my community for engaging in a debate about whether to label the act with the word "terrorism." Because right now that word carries social meanings far larger than any dictionary can capture. That word carries the connotation of "German" in World War I and "Jap" in World War II and "Communist" at the height of the Cold War. It carries the connotation of "other"--a faceless, less-than-human horde that we can treat as we will, rather than by the rules and standards that we usually accord to citizens.
As UNC professor Christopher Browning has written, "war, a struggle between 'our people' and 'the enemy,' creates a polarized world in which 'the enemy' is easily objectified and removed from the community of human obligation. War is the most conducive environment in which governments can adopt 'atrocity by policy' and encounter few difficulties in implementing it." It should give us little comfort to realize that these words appear in the concluding chapter of Browning's outstanding book "Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland."
"Terrorists" are people we "hunt down and kill." They are people we can spy on, can subject to interrogation methods just a whisker short of "organ failure or death," and can "disappear" into secret and unreviewable detention. (And that's just what we know about so far.)
So this question of what to call Mohammed Taheri-azar is not an easy one. Yes, what he did was, on my view, "terrorism." But I do not wish to join those clamoring for the deployment of the word. I want to use the word deliberately, carefully, without shearing from it its very worrying connotations. That is what I see this community doing as it debates what to call this frightening young man, and I applaud the community for it.
Posted by Eric at 8:01 AM | Comments (14)
March 7, 2006
"Terrorism?" Or Not?
College Republicans yesterday demonstrated on campus, demanding that the act be labelled as a terrorist act.
In this thread on a local left-of-center political blog, especially toward the bottom, some people seem eager to avoid the "terrorism" label and instead attribute the act to mental illness.
I'll post my own view on why the question matters later in the day; right now I've got a class to prepare for. But it's an interesting and important thing to think about and to discuss.
Posted by Eric at 8:03 AM | Comments (14)
March 6, 2006
Profile of UNC Assailant
Posted by Eric at 8:39 AM
March 4, 2006
Jeep Assault at UNC - Chapel Hill
The spot the assailant chose was the very center of the campus -- a pedestrian zone that sits between the main campus store, the main campus dining hall, the main library, and a couple of other buildings. In the noon hour it's just mobbed with students, faculty, and staff. Not infrequently I'm over there in the noon hour myself; there's a Jamba Juice in the dining hall where I like to get smoothies.
At the time of the attack, I was at the law school, listening to a presentation on the Fourth Amendment by GWU professor (and Volokh Conspiracy blogger) Orin Kerr. We had no idea that any of this was happening, because the law school sits on a different part of campus.
We will know, in time, whether the initial reports of a terrorist motivation are accurate, and how mentally stable the driver is.
For now, I'm mostly just thankful that so few people were injured, and that none of the injuries is life-threatening. I wish all of the injured students a speedy recovery.
Posted by Eric at 8:36 AM | Comments (6)
February 23, 2006
Watching Our Language on the Ports Question
But that doesn't mean that these groups are wrong: The rhetoric from everywhere on the political spectrum has seethed with suspicion of all Arabs. (One very small example: a caller to a local middle-of-the-road talk morning talk radio program yesterday went on at length about "the camel jockeys" who are taking over our ports, and the middle-of-the-road hosts said ... not a word, except to agree with the caller's concerns.)
Quite frightening -- and I'm not even Arab. I can't even imagine what it must feel like to be an Arab American right about now.
UPDATE: Commenter marietta makes the following point, which I think is not only right, but so right it's worth quoting here:
Bush/Cheney/Rove are now reaping the harvest of the reflexively scarred American psyche they've worked so hard to sow since 9/11. They've so hyped the terror threat against America, what the hell did they expect. Bush and Cheney toss around mushrooom-cloud images like popcorn at a kid's movie. And Rove stands up a month ago to say, "terror, terror, terror . . . we can win another election if we just scare the daylights out of America by saying terrorists are everywhere and only George Bush can save us." It seems this administration has justified almost all of their absolutely awful policy decisions by tying them clearly to terror. (The Medicare Drug program is an exception; they just lied about the cost to get that through.) Now, these folks get to see how successful they've been at so weakening America's will.
Posted by Eric at 12:25 PM | Comments (8)
February 21, 2006
An Apt Description.
"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter."To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it ... unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity than most of us ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted,' that, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic person' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head."
The book I read is "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45" by Milton Mayer (U. of Chicago Press 1955).
It is truly a remarkable book. The chapter from which I quoted (with a slight alteration) is available in its entirety at the website of the University of Chicago Press.
Very heartily recommended.
Posted by Eric at 7:03 PM | Comments (7)
February 18, 2006
Terminal Degree
Posted by Eric at 11:29 PM | Comments (2)
January 9, 2006
Looking for Audio/Video of Ashcroft's Finest Hour
Does anyone know where I might find this?
Posted by Eric at 3:02 PM | Comments (1)
January 4, 2006
I Like Best Westerns, not Best Easterns!
Today, I got an email from them with the subject line "Help Fellow Travelers: Review Your Hotel."
Although it is an entirely domestic correspondence, I am concerned it may have been routed through an overseas server. So in an abundance of caution, let me say publicly that I do not now and never have sympathized with the objectives of the Communist Party.
Posted by Eric at 10:04 AM | Comments (2)
December 19, 2005
Another Lie from Dick Cheney
What I'm about to say is a bit laden with lawyerly technical jargon, but stay with me:
ARGHHHH!!!! $%$#(**&^%$#%^#_)(* GRRRR!!!!
The Administration did have this capability before 9/11, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. All they needed to do was seek and obtain a warrant from a special intelligence court. This court issued warrants in every one of the many cases presented to it, except a couple of times in 2003.
Liar.
Posted by Eric at 7:26 AM | Comments (4)
December 16, 2005
Legality Is, Like, So September 10th
Then, if you've managed to maintain your meditative calm, head on over to Jackboot Central and read the Stasi talking points.
Posted by Eric at 8:21 PM | Comments (32)
December 9, 2005
The Signs of Danger
So consider this billboard that will soon begin to appear in Raleigh, North Carolina, which is part of a campaign calling for the state to tighten its driver's licensing rules:
(It's a bit hard to see here, but that's Arabic writing scrawled across the top.)
Could there possibly be a more blatant equation of Arabs and Muslims with terrorist danger?
If this country ever again goes after its own citizens in the ways that it did sixty years ago, will later generations see a billboard like this one the way we now see the below newspaper advertisement from the Seattle newspaper in March 1942, as the mechanics of curfew, exclusion, and internment were being designed?
(Image borrowed from David Neiwert.)
Posted by Eric at 8:21 AM | Comments (12)
December 1, 2005
Neither is Hercule Poirot to Be Trusted.
(Hat tip: Chris Bray.)
Posted by Eric at 8:47 AM | Comments (4)
October 18, 2005
The Terrorism Wish
Posted by Eric at 7:24 PM | Comments (1)
September 16, 2005
Sometimes A Cigar Is ...
"Who Is Mahmoud Maawad?" asks internment advocate Michelle Malkin.
Read the "disturbing details" in the story linked on Malkin's site, and you learn that Mahmoud Maawad is ... an Arab guy who is into airplanes:
Since June, Maawad ordered $3,300 of merchandise over the Internet from Speedy’s Pilot Shop in San Diego, including a private pilot course, flight simulator software, a flight gear bag, several DVDs, a $239 Navy leather flight jacket, a $19.95 DVD on “How an Airline Captain Should Look and Act,” and instructional programs on “airplane talk.” His email address was pilot747_200@hotmail.comIsn't it just like those sneaky Arab terrorists to be so obvious? After all, wasn't Mohammed Atta's email address "9_11_WTC_kaboom@hotmail.com?"
It wasn't?
UPDATE: It is just the oddest thing. Michellemalkin.com just will not register a trackback to this blog. Hmm. Why would that be?
Posted by Eric at 3:08 PM | Comments (4)
September 15, 2005
I Propose The Government Maintain a List of Everyone Who Eats Baba Ghanouj
Naturally, the Boston Globe article reporting on this charming proposal casts those alarmed by the proposal as "civil libertarians" and "immigrants' rights advocates."
Have we really reached the point where it's just "civil libertarians" who get nervous when powerful politicians propose the suspicionless wiretapping of houses of worship?
Posted by Eric at 10:48 AM | Comments (5)
September 10, 2005
On Padilla, and Remembering Ex parte Endo
I think the court is mistaken, primarily because it misreads the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 243 (1944), the case that held unlawful the detention of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Padilla: the Background
If you've not been following this case, here's the scoop, very briefly:
A week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Congress passed a resolution that read as follows:
[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
You'll notice that the resolution says nothing specifically about the power to detain, let alone to detain American citizens.
The question before the Fourth Circuit (and, probably, soon back before the Supreme Court) is whether the language of the congressional resolution should be read to have conferred on the President a power indefinitely to detain a person he believes to be an illegal enemy combatant, without charging him with any sort of crime in the civilian justice system,where that person is a U.S. citizen and is apprehended in the United States.
The Supreme Court recently held that the resolution authorized the detention of Yaser Hamdi, a U.S. citizen who was an alleged illegal enemy combatant and was captured overseas.
The crucial distinction in the Padilla case, obviously, is the place of arrest: Padilla was arrested at O'Hare Airport.
The Relevance of the Japanese American Internment and Ex parte Endo
Think now, for a moment, about precedents: when in U.S. history has the executive asserted an authority to arrest and indefinitely detain U.S. citizens on American soil without charging them with any sort of crime?
This is what the government did to some 70,000 American citizens of Japanese ancestry in WWII. The theory was, of course, not that Japanese Americans were "illegal enemy combatants"; the theory was, in a sense, that they had the potential to be such—subversives for a foreign enemy, on U.S. soil.
In Ex parte Endo, 323 U.S. 283 (1944), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously** held that Executive Order 9066, authorizing the evacuation of Japanese Americans from the West Coast, and the legislation Congress passed to enforce that Order, could not be read to confer on the War Relocation Authority ("WRA") a power indefinitely to detain Mitsuye Endo, an American citizen of Japanese ancestry in one of the WRA's Japanese American camps.
The problem in Endo was not that Endo's detention violated her constitutional rights. The Court didn't need to address that question, because it found that the WRA had no power to detain her at all.
But the Endo Court didn't see Endo's constitutional rights as irrelevant to the case. Quite the contrary. It began its analysis this way:
Broad powers frequently granted to the President or other executive officers by Congress so that they may deal with the exigencies of war time problems have been sustained. And the Constitution when it committed to the Executive and to Congress the exercise of the war power necessarily gave them wide scope for the exercise of judgment and discretion so that war might be waged effectively and successfully. Kiyoshi Hirabayashi v. United States, supra, 320 U.S. at page 93, 63 S.Ct. at page 1382. At the same time, however, the Constitution is as specific in its enumeration of many of the civil rights of the individual as it is in its enumeration of the powers of his government. Thus it has prescribed procedural safeguards surrounding the arrest, detention and conviction of individuals. Some of these are contained in the Sixth Amendment, compliance with which is essential if convictions are to be sustained. Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 63 S.Ct. 1241. And the Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall be deprived of liberty (as well as life or property) without due process of law. Moreover, as a further safeguard against invasion of the basic civil rights of the individual it is provided in Art. I, Sec. 9 of the Constitution that 'The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.' See Ex parte Milligan, supra.We mention these constitutional provisions not to stir the constitutional issues which have been argued at the bar but to indicate the approach which we think should be made to an Act of Congress or an order of the Chief Executive that touches the sensitive area of rights specifically guaranteed by the Constitution.
The Court continued:
This Court has quite consistently given a narrower scope for the operation of the presumption of constitutionality when legislation appeared on its face to violate a specific prohibition of the Constitution. We have likewise favored that interpretation of legislation which gives it the greater chance of surviving the test of constitutionality. Those analogies are suggestive here. We must assume that the Chief Executive and members of Congress, as well as the courts, are sensitive to and respectful of the liberties of the citizen. In interpreting a war-time measure we must assume that their purpose was to allow for the greatest possible accommodation between those liberties and the exigencies of war.
The Fourth Circuit's Misapplication of Endo
In Padilla, Judge Luttig made short work of Endo. Luttig assumed that the important language in Endo was the language that directly followed what I just quoted, when the Court said, "We must assume, when asked to find implied powers in a grant of legislative or executive authority, that the law makers intended to place no greater restraint on the citizen than was clearly and unmistakably indicated by the language they used." This would seem on its face to doom the claim of executive power in Padilla: surely language of the congressional resolution after 9/11 did not "clearly and unmistakably indicate" a power to detain U.S. citizens arrested on American soil.
And yet Judge Luttig brushes this language aside, seizing upon a different sentence in the Endo opinion: "The fact that the Act and the [executive] orders are silent on detention does not of course mean that any power to detain is lacking. Some such power might indeed be necessary to the successful operation of the evacuation program." This language seems to negate what went before, in a way quite helpful to the government in Padilla. The fact that the congressional resolution was silent on the President's power to detain U.S. citizens does not mean, under Endo, that it did not give the President such a power.
Fair enough.
But the language Luttig seizes upon decidedly does not negate the Endo Court's assertion that "in interpreting a wartime measure we must assume that [Congress's] purpose was to allow for the greatest possible accommodation between [an individual's] liberties and the exigencies of war."
And how is the Court to give force to that assumption?
Here the Endo Court is quite explicit – and tellingly, Judge Luttig does not even cite the Court's language. The unanimous Endo opinion said that "[i]f there is to be the greatest possible accommodation of the liberties of the citizen with this war measure, any such implied power must be narrowly confined to the precise purpose of the evacuation program.
This language should look familiar to any student of constitutional law: it is the rudiments of what we call "strict scrutiny"—a requirement that a law serve its purpose as narrowly and carefully as possible in order to survive judicial review. Typically we see strict scrutiny deployed as a test of a law's constitutionality; in Endo the Court uses it as a way of construing the language of an Executive Order and its implementing statute to avoid directly confronting constitutional problems.
The U.S. District Court Judge in this case held back in February that Padilla's indefinite detention was unlawful. He reasoned that the ready availability of the civilian criminal courts made Padilla's indefinite detention unnecessary:
"Petitioner in this action was captured in the United States. His alleged terrorist plans were thwarted at the time of his arrest. There were no impediments whatsoever to the Government bringing charges against him for any one or all of the array of heinous crimes that he has been effectively accused of committing. Also at the Government's disposal was the material witness warrant. In fact, the issuance of a material witness warrant was the tool that the law enforcement officers used to thwart Petitioner's alleged terrorist plans. Therefore, since Petitioner's alleged terrorist plans were thwarted when he was arrested on the material witness warrant, the Court finds that the President's subsequent decision to detain Petitioner as an enemy combatant was neither necessary nor appropriate.""[W]hereas it may be a necessary and appropriate use of force to detain a United States citizen who is captured on the battlefield, this Court cannot find, in narrow circumstances presented in this case, that the same is true when a United States citizen is arrested in a civilian setting such as an United States airport."
Judge Luttig in the Fourth Circuit dismissed the district court's holding:
"[W]e believe that the district court ultimately accorded insufficient deference to [the President's] determination [that Padilla should be indefinitely detained as an enemy combatant], effectively imposing upon the President the equivalent of a least-restrictive-means test. To subject to such exacting scrutiny the President’s determination that criminal prosecution would not adequately protect the Nation’s security at a very minimum fails to accord the President the deference that is his when he acts pursuant to a broad delegation of authority from Congress, such as the [resolution Congress passed after 9/11].
But Endo makes plain that a least-restrictive-means test is precisely what a court should use in a situation like this.
Does the President's order in Padilla pass such a test? Surely it does not. At Balkinization, Marty Lederman demonstrates powerfully that over the course of the litigation, purported purpose of Padilla's detention has switched from a theory of preventing him from pursuing his alleged plans here in the United States to a theory of preventing him from "returning to the battlefield" in Afghanistan. The latter theory, as Marty shows, is an invention of Judge Luttig's; and the change of theories mid-stream tends strongly to undermine the notion that the government really has a crucial purpose at all. (Think, for a moment, of how the government followed its dire claims about the peril posed by Yaser Hamdi with a decision to free him and send him to Saudi Arabia with the warning that he should be a good boy from now on.)
In addition, the government does not explain why preventive steps well short of indefinite military detention—criminal prosecution, for example—would fail to protect the nation.
It is difficult to overstate the significance of Judge Luttig's ruling. With nothing more than congressional silence to go on, Judge Luttig endorses the proposition that a President may single out an American citizen, grab him on American soil, and do something close to making him "disappear."
A couple of years back, Professor Pat Gudridge of the University of Miami urged us to "Remember Endo" in an essay (with that title) in the Harvard Law Review. This would be an especially good moment for the Supreme Court to heed Gudridge's advice.
**As a commenter notes, "unanimously" is slightly misleading. All nine Justices agreed that the government lacked the power to detain Endo under Executive Order 9066 and its impementing legislation. Eight Justices joined Justice Douglas's Opinion for the Court, which held that the government lacked the power to detain because no law had authorized it. Justice Roberts concurred in the result, but reached the conclusion that the government lacked the power to detain because the Constitution forbade it.
(post updated slightly to describe Marty Lederman's point more accurately.)
Posted by Eric at 9:45 PM | Comments (9)
Why Does the National Park Service Hate 9/11 Victims?
And while we're at it, why is the National Park Service--intentionally or unintentionally--mocking the victims of Flight 93 by making their memorial in the shape of Raggedy Ann's hair?
Seeing is believing.
Posted by Eric at 11:37 AM | Comments (4)
Maybe IsThatLegal Should Apply for a 9/11 Loan?
the Wieben Chiropractic Clinic in Cheyenne, Wyoming,
Wild Horizons Expeditions, an outfitter in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,
Kistler Tent and Awning Co., an equipment rental place in Casper, Wyoming,
and Fantastic Sam's, a hair salon in Rock Springs, Wyoming,
all have in common (apart from all being in Wyoming)?
Answer: They all got Small Business Administaton loans earmarked for businesses adversely affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Which they weren't.
Posted by Eric at 9:09 AM
August 14, 2005
Be Vewwy Vewwy Quiet. They'we Hunting Witches.
First Eugene called for people to compile a handy-dandy little list of "Western commentators who defend the Iraqi insurgents, or at least justify their actions as being a supposed campaign for self-determination, allegedly justifiable rage at Western misbehavior, and so on."
Nobody could really name anyone other than Michael Moore.
Orin Kerr then suggested, ever so delicately, that Eugene's call for a list of insurgency supporters "might be generating more heat than light," and offered a template to explain why. (The template is helpful, but to my eye doesn't fully capture the most important point, which is that there's a big difference between saying you understand why some people in Iraq might be fighting to rid the country of an American occupying force and saying that you hope they succeed or that their tactics are justified. Eugene's post completely elides this crucial difference between perceiving or understanding something, on the one hand, and justifying it.)
But Orin's peacemaking efforts were in vain, because now David Kopel steps in, picks up the grenade Eugene tossed, and throws it a good bit further. Apparently frustrated that the search for "respectable" (that's David's word) Western insurgency-lovers was coming up dry, David does a search on Yahoo and adds several names: James Petras, an emeritus sociology professor from SUNY-Binghamton, the Indian novelist Arundhati Roy, comedian and radio personality Janeane Garofalo, and Virginia Rodino, who was apparently a Green Party congressional candidate in the 2004 election.
And, says David, they're just the tip of the traitorous iceberg: "This is obviously not a comprehensive list," he says, "just what was easy to find in a few minutes."
(Just a sec ... I want to jump over to Yahoo to compile a list of ball players who have hit more than 700 home runs. Let's see ... Hank Aaron. Ummm, Babe Ruth. Uhh .... Barry Bonds. OK, I'll stop there in the interest of time, but obviously, that's not a comprehensive list. It's just what was easy to find in a few minutes.)
If you follow David's links, you discover that Arundhati Roy supports not the violent Iraqi insurgency, but "a pristine Iraqi resistance [that] must conduct [a] secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle." But Eugene was looking for Western commentators (query: is an Indian novelist a "Western" commentator?) "who defend the Iraqi insurgents, or at least justify their actions as being a supposed campaign for self-determination, allegedly justifiable rage at Western misbehavior, and so on." Roy doesn't even come close to fitting Eugene's profile.
You also discover that David's evidence for Janeane Garofalo's supposedly treasonous defense of the Iraqi insurgency is the following hearsay recollection of a person whose name I can't even find:
"As Janeane Garofalo and I talked about on Air America last week, it’s a fairly simple thought experiment: It’s 2030. The Chinese and Russians team up and invade the U.S. after manufacturing a non-existant threat. Would you be a collaborator or would you fight back, Red Dawn style?"Notice that from this source we don't even know what Garofalo said; we know only that she "talked about" that "thought experiment."
This, folks, is turning into a witch hunt.
(For what it's worth, I'll give David this James Petras character and the Green Party candidate who scored a whopping two percent of the vote in her congressional race to represent the City of Baltimore, though it's hard for me to believe that a retired SUNY sociologist and a fringe congressional candidate are who OpinionJournal had in mind in the piece that Eugene quoted.)
UPDATE: Eugene Volokh defends his inquiry with some hypotheticals about abortion and Nazis. But let's stay on-topic. If I were to say that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq looks to some in the Arab world as the most recent episode in a thousand-year-old series of non-Muslim efforts to assert control over Muslim lands--much, incidentally, as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan did--would that make me a "bad guy?"
FINAL UPDATE: Eugene has replied a few more times, but I'll concern myself here only with one of them. He says--I'm not sure if it's directed at me--that he has been "criticized" and "insulted." I certainly have criticized his effort to generate a list of Western insurgency-supporters, but I never meant to insult him. If anything I wrote came off as insulting, Eugene, I'm very, very sorry about that.
Posted by Eric at 5:43 PM | Comments (40)
August 1, 2005
Who Would Have Imagined?
In other news, a team of astrophysicists have announced that the sun will set this evening.
Posted by Eric at 8:31 AM
July 27, 2005
The JAG Memos -- Essential Reading
And read the memos, too. Incredible. This may be the only time that you'll get to see, up-close, the spectacle of military officers objecting to the bloodthirsty aggressiveness of civilians.
Posted by Eric at 9:47 PM
June 29, 2005
Two Priceless Minutes of National Television
"When you go to war, it's very important that you kill the right people."
Posted by Eric at 8:28 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
May 31, 2005
Recipe for a Civil Liberties Disaster
2. Mix in the memory of this similar story about American citizens.
3. Sift with the memory of this similar story about American citizens.
4. Add some sort of terrorist attack on U.S. soil.
5. Wait about 24 hours. No need to bake. It will heat itself.
Posted by Eric at 8:18 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack