I bailed on the earlier discussion of abuses by the US Government
because it had turned into a political discussion, and I hate those.
The next major terrorist attack on the USA will have a number of
causes. Instead of learning about those causes and working to correct
them, it is my firm belief that some will say it was caused by idiot
Republicans doing the wrong thing, and some will say it was caused by
idiot Democrats interfering with the Republicans' efforts to keep us
all safe. Neither group will actually *care* about the security
failures which made the attack possible: they will only care about how
to spin it to their own short-term political advantage.
So here are some articles about things which aren't directly about
the US government, and I hope that distance will help defuse some of
the knee-jerk defensiveness among my fellow Americans.
*
The UK has a "Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act" (RIPA), which
was sold as a means to tackle terrorism. When police groups are trying
to get a law passed, they invoke the scariest criminals they can:
terrorists, kidnappers, child ****ographers, and so on. But once they
get the law they want, they start using it for all sorts of mundane
things that don't justify the breaches of civil rights.
RIPA became law in the UK on 1 October 2007. The first people who had
the law used against them, barely a month later, were animal rights
activists:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7102180.stm
RIPA has also been used to spy on families to see if they really live in
the places they registered their kids for school:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/dorset/7341179.stm
What happened to the terrorists? If the animal rights people have done
some violence, then they could have been prosecuted under the old laws.
If those people lied about where they lived to get into a better school,
that could have been discovered under the old laws. This expansion of
police power was sold as a way to stop dangerous criminals: people were
to give up some of their rights because their safety was at issue. But
instead the power is being used to spy on innocent people over matters
of school registration.
Now, maybe you say "I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear."
The animal rights activists had their computers seized in May. The
police held on to them for six months because they had to wait for the
law to take effect.
Do you have anything to fear from the government seizing your property
and holding it for six months? Suppose they get some names out of that
computer, and they seize the computers of everyone whose name turns up.
Is anybody going to join the group after that? If it turns out that
they did nothing wrong, is that going to make any difference?
Laws like RIPA can be used by the police to destroy any group they don't
like, regardless of whether any crime was ever committed. Just harass
all members until they quit the group, problem solved.
When they campaigned for RIPA, and people pointed out this problem, the
police said "We're the good guys, you can trust us." But you can't
trust ANYONE who has insufficient supervision. The more power someone
has, the more strictly supervised they have to be.
*
My second subject is in the USA, but the events chronicled were not done
by the government. In 1972, Phil Zimbardo ran a study at Stanford
University about prison. They set up a mock prison in a basement, and
arranged for a two-week functional simulation of a prison (that is,
they would mimic the power structure and psychological aspects of a
prison, but not a real physical prison). Volunteers were selected for
their maturity and emotional stability. 10 were assigned as prisoners,
and the rest were guards. The guards were told only to maintain "law
and order", but given no specific instructions.
On the second day, the prisoners staged a surprise revolt. After
quelling the uprising by hitting (or threatening to hit) the prisoners
with billy clubs and fire extinguishers, the guards went nuts. They
were both arbitrary and harsh, making up petty rules and demanding
obedience. The inmates had to perform degrading menial chores. The
guards repeatedly subjected the prisoners to ridicule. Five of the
prisoners had to be released from the experiment, and the other five
were so messed up that Zimbardo cancelled the entire thing after only
six days.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/maverick-academic-philip-zimbardo-says-we-are-all-capable-of-evil-is-he-right-789161.html
(Warning: some language.)
Zimbardo later defended a soldier accused of abuse at Abu Ghraib, given
what he had seen in his experiment.
*
In the current climate, many people have rightly attacked various
immoral, unConstitutional, and useless moves by the Bush Administration.
The unstated assumption of most such claims is that a different person
in office at the time would have done different things. While the exact
details would have varied, I don't believe that the outcome would have
been very different, and as evidence I suggest the time factor.
As noted before, the USA PATRIOT Act was before Congress within weeks
of 9/11. They didn't sit down and write 300 pages of revisions to tens
of thousands of pages of laws in 3 weeks: those changes had been things
they wanted all along. But 9/11 occurred only 7 1/2 months into Bush's
Presidency, and I doubt he told people to get ready writing all those
changes in hopes something bad would happen. The stuff in the USA
PATRIOT Act had been written *years* earlier. Mid-level bureaucrats
had written that stuff and had it shot down by Justice Department
lawyers in the years and decades before 9/11, under presidents from
both parties. In the panic after 9/11, they bundled it all up and sent
it to Congress, saying "No time for debate! Pass it now!"
I don't believe that Bush read the whole thing, and I certainly don't
imagine for a moment that they had any in-depth debates about it in any
cabinet meetings. The stupidity of the USA PATRIOT Act has Bush's
signature on it, but it was an *institutional* screwup. Bush no more
runs the government than an aircraft carrier runs the Pacific Ocean: he
may be on top, and he may be the most powerful single person, but the
thing he's on top of runs itself. People are right to complain about
Bush's failures -- but if that's where the complaints stop, they're
doing nobody any favors.
OTOH, we have people insisting that there's nothing to complain about.
The President of the USA says he has the right to deny native-born
citizens a trial, and that's nothing to complain about? Yes, people
have been stripped of citizen****p, mostly former Nazis who lied about
being Nazis when they came to this country. It was the lies that got
them stripped of their citizen****p, and always AFTER A TRIAL. The
cases people are complaining about now are cases of native-born
American citizens, and the President felt he had the authority to rule
that the Constitutional protection of citizens shouldn't apply to
them.
To be clear: I don't believe Bush thought that up on his own. It was
mid-level bureaucrats (the memos have become public) asserting such
evil claims about executive power. He asked his legal advisors, and
believed what they said. Stupidly, but most people believe what their
legal advisors say.
In "Marbury vs. Madison" (1803), the Chief Justice Marshall wrote that
the Constitution was written down so its "limits may not be mistaken or
forgotten". Ignoring the limits the Constitution sets down would reduce
"to nothing what we have deemed the greatest improvement on political
institutions -- a written constitution".
I do believe Bush is greatly at fault for failing at the only specific
element of his job description ("preserve, protect, and defend the
Constitution of the United States"). He's relied, in my view, on too
many people who think alike. If the President can say which
Constitutional rights citizens are allowed to have, then what was the
point of getting rid of the King in 1776? One of the charges against
George3 in the Declaration of Independence is that he denied trial by
jury, and thus was a tyrant who could no longer be tolerated. By
that standard, Bush doesn't look too good.
But it's not only Bush's fault. I believe more serious people would
have been more amenable to changing course as the outrages were made
public -- but I don't believe that would necessarily have stopped the
initial outrages.
Abu Ghraib happened because the people in charge of the prison failed
to take steps to stop it -- steps they should have known to take, given
what was learned in the Stanford experiment. But GWB didn't go there
and tell them what to do: he appointed people he trusted to run the
different parts of the government. He appointed incompetent people,
and has done a lousy job of managing them, for which he deserves all the
blame he gets. But the institutions *themselves* are predisposed to
extend their power and to dehumanise anyone not a member. They'll do
that no matter who is in charge, unless the people in charge go to great
lengths to keep them reined in.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, people were afraid and their
judgement was suspect. That would have happened no matter who was
President, and lots of members of Congress from both parties passed
the USA PATRIOT Act. The problem isn't that one must be a fool to make
such a mistake: mistakes get made. The problem is that one does have
to be a fool to STICK with a mistake, instead of admitting error and
changing course.
*
Finally, I am going to say something specific about US citizens
suffering. Even if you don't regard being stripped of one's rights
under the Constitution as suffering, there is that whole "brotherhood
of all mankind" thing. It dismayed me somewhat that the earlier thread
was going on during the anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr
assassination, given his quote that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere".
Darren Provine ! kilroy@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
! http://www.rowan.edu/~kilroy
"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us." -- 1 John 1:8
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