TERRORISM DERANGEMENT SYNDROME
The GOP's scare tactics work so well because the public is terrified already.
By Dahlia Lithwick
Posted on Slate
Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010, at 6:41 PM ET
_http://www.slate.com/id/2243429/pagenum/all/
The real problem is that too many people tend to follow GOP cues about how hopelessly unsafe America is, and they've yet again convinced themselves that we are mere seconds away from an attack. Moreover, each time Republicans go to their terrorism crazy-place, they go just a little bit farther than they did the last time, so that things that made us feel safe last year make us feel vulnerable today.
America has slid back again into its own special brand of terrorism-derangement syndrome. Each time this condition recurs, it presents with more acute and puzzling symptoms.
In short, what was once tough on terror is now soft on terror. And each time the Republicans move their own crazy-place goal posts, the Obama administration moves right along with them.
This week Glenn Greenwald summarized how far the goal posts of normal have moved when he pointed out that "merely advocating what Ronald Reagan explicitly adopted as his policy—'to use democracy's most potent tool, the rule of law against' terrorists—is now the exclusive province of civil liberties extremists."…And Greenwald concludes that "our establishment craves Bush/Cheney policies because it is as radical as they are."
For those of us who are horrified by the latest Republican assault on basic legal principles, it's time to reckon with the fact that the American people are terrified enough to go along.
We're terrified when a terror attack happens, and we're also terrified when it's thwarted. We're terrified when we give terrorists trials, and we're terrified when we warehouse them at Guantanamo without trials. If a terrorist cooperates without being tortured we complain about how much more he would have cooperated if he hadn't been read his rights. No matter how tough we've been on terror, we will never feel safe enough to ask for fewer safeguards.
Now I grant that it's awfully hard to feel safe when the New York Times is publishing stories about a possible terrorist attack by July. So long as there are young men in the world willing to stick a bomb in their pants, we will never be perfectly safe. And what that means is that every time there's an attack, or a near-attack, or a new Bin Laden tape, or a new episode of 24, we'll always be willing to go one notch more beyond the rules than we were willing to go last time.
Some of the very worst excesses of the Bush years can be laid squarely at the doorstep of a fictional construct: The "ticking time bomb scenario."
But here's the paradox: It's not a terrorist's time bomb that's ticking. It's us. Since 9/11, we have become ever more willing to suspend basic protections and more contemptuous of American traditions and institutions.
