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Getting to the bottom of it
Jun. 13th, 2009 02:13 pmI have said that I'm frustrated with the double standard that we don't take domestic terrorism as seriously as -- um -- imported terrorism, and that we don't take Christian-grounded, pro-life, and white supremacist domestic terrorism as seriously as Islamic-grounded, pro-environment, and black power domestic terrorism. The evidence that I cited in the above article was based on the inequity of the charges filed against two different guys, and it was compounded later when James von Brunn was charged, like Scott Roeder and unlike Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, based strictly on what he did and not on the emotional effects his actions had on the wider population.
What I said is true, but it might be that the formal charges are not the biggest part of the story. Both von Brunn and Roeder will be imprisoned for the rest of their lives if convicted, and von Brunn might even score the death penalty. On the flip side, terrorism charges against Roeder would probably be pretty futile since it requires finding twelve people in Kansas who all agree that placing abortionists on the defensive is intolerable. And hate crime charges against von Brunn might be hard to prove; if an Anti-Semetic white supremacist goes to a Jewish place and shoots the guy who held the door open for him, can you prove that Stephen Johns died because he was an African-American? That might be tough, and it's not quite like an assault or vandalism case where a hate crime conviction will increase the penalty. I suppose that District Attorneys are better than I at the cost-benefit analysis of the charges they can deliver, and perhaps I owe them a degree of deference.
But there does seem to be a problem in our will to suppress those terrorists that some of us agree with. I'm seeing a lot of articles on Google News about how powerless we are to confront "lone wolf" terrorists. This article from Fox News is typical of the "aw-shucks what can you do" school of thought. And everyone who has been paying attention for the past eight years knows that it's bullshit. We CAN investigate everyone who has ever donated money to an Islamic charity. We CAN add a byzantine layer of bureaucracy onto airport security that detains people based on their names and forces all of us to not travel with liquids just because this one time we sorta heard that terrorists were figuring out how to MacGuyver a bomb from innocent-looking ingredients. And we CAN aggressively interrogate suspects to learn about their plans and education and colleagues and their plans, even when we know we've disabled an entire "cell". I know that we CAN do these things because we HAVE done these things, and I don't even have reason to believe that we've stopped yet. What we lack is the will to apply the methods that have paralyzed Al-Qaeda for the past eight years to decentralized extremist coalitions that continue to kill Americans with impunity. Personally, I think that we should find a happy medium between the barbarism of extraordinary rendition and the coddling of allowing a prisoner the platform to continue to spread unsubstantiated fearM like he was Osama bin Laden himself, a happy medium that treats all prisoners and all potential victims of terror equally under the law.
What I said is true, but it might be that the formal charges are not the biggest part of the story. Both von Brunn and Roeder will be imprisoned for the rest of their lives if convicted, and von Brunn might even score the death penalty. On the flip side, terrorism charges against Roeder would probably be pretty futile since it requires finding twelve people in Kansas who all agree that placing abortionists on the defensive is intolerable. And hate crime charges against von Brunn might be hard to prove; if an Anti-Semetic white supremacist goes to a Jewish place and shoots the guy who held the door open for him, can you prove that Stephen Johns died because he was an African-American? That might be tough, and it's not quite like an assault or vandalism case where a hate crime conviction will increase the penalty. I suppose that District Attorneys are better than I at the cost-benefit analysis of the charges they can deliver, and perhaps I owe them a degree of deference.
But there does seem to be a problem in our will to suppress those terrorists that some of us agree with. I'm seeing a lot of articles on Google News about how powerless we are to confront "lone wolf" terrorists. This article from Fox News is typical of the "aw-shucks what can you do" school of thought. And everyone who has been paying attention for the past eight years knows that it's bullshit. We CAN investigate everyone who has ever donated money to an Islamic charity. We CAN add a byzantine layer of bureaucracy onto airport security that detains people based on their names and forces all of us to not travel with liquids just because this one time we sorta heard that terrorists were figuring out how to MacGuyver a bomb from innocent-looking ingredients. And we CAN aggressively interrogate suspects to learn about their plans and education and colleagues and their plans, even when we know we've disabled an entire "cell". I know that we CAN do these things because we HAVE done these things, and I don't even have reason to believe that we've stopped yet. What we lack is the will to apply the methods that have paralyzed Al-Qaeda for the past eight years to decentralized extremist coalitions that continue to kill Americans with impunity. Personally, I think that we should find a happy medium between the barbarism of extraordinary rendition and the coddling of allowing a prisoner the platform to continue to spread unsubstantiated fearM like he was Osama bin Laden himself, a happy medium that treats all prisoners and all potential victims of terror equally under the law.
