Playing the links

IN THE NEWS
The English language is full of words and phrases that pass without comment, even if they make little sense. My favorite example from politics is on the ground, as in, Troops will soon be on the ground in Bosnia, or, What’s the situation on the ground in Jerusalem? In this case, on the ground is a vestigial phrase, added to make speakers sound more informed than they really are. Troops will soon be in Bosnia—presumably “on the ground,” or else they’ve developed powers of levitation that truly would be exciting news. The person interested in the situation in Jerusalem probably wants to know about whatever’s happening on that patch of terra firma, not somewhere in the ionosphere.

Sometimes, these meaningless phrases, like on the ground, are just plain stupid. In other cases, such as has links to, the phrase’s absurdity masks something quite sinister.

In the last few years, we’ve heard the phrase, So-and-so has links to al Qaeda, countless times. Have you ever wondered what that phrase, has links to, actually means? As an exercise, choose as many items from the following list that would fit the definition, for you, of has links to:

1. You are a terrorist. You knowingly, willfully attack innocents to inspire terror and make a political point.


2. You directly and knowingly support terrorists by giving them money, training, information, safe haven, or other things they need.


3. You give support to terrorists without your knowledge or approval.


4. You went for small arms training at what turned out to be a terrorist base, and you gave the whole effort a big thumbs up when you learned the truth.


5. You went for small arms training at what turned out to be a terrorist base, and as soon as you learned who was running the show, you left in disgust.


6. You know someone who’s a terrorist, and you approve of what they do.


7. You know someone who’s a terrorist, and you don’t approve of what they do.


8. You know someone, but you don’t know that they’re a terrorist.


9. You are the employee of a terrorist, doing a job unrelated to terrorism (chauffeur, cook, etc.), and you know what your boss does for a living.


10. You are the employee of a terrorist, doing a job unrelated to terrorism (chauffeur, cook, etc.), and you don’t know what your boss does for a living.


11. You vote for a party that is the political arm of a terrorist group, and you approve of what the “military arm” does.


12. You vote for a party that is the political arm of a terrorist group, and you don’t approve of what the “military arm” does.


13. You think what a particular terrorist group does is acceptable or necessary.


14. You regularly visit web sites maintained by groups on the US Department of State’s lists of terrorist organizations, or read journals wholly or partially published by these groups.


15. You’ve heard of al Qaeda.


16. You’ve heard of terrorism, but you think “Al Qaeda” is the guy who works behind the counter at your local video store.

I’d guess that you’d choose several, but not all, items in this list. You might want to re-consider your answers, because there may be legal repercussions. For each type of potential link you choose, that represents another group of people who will be subject to criminal prosecution under the PATRIOT Act and other laws. In the case of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners, each type of link means a different set of charges someone might face in front of a military tribunal.

The first tribunals are beginning to meet at Guantanamo Bay. After the US Supreme Court said, “No, you can’t sit on prisoners indefinitely, keeping them out of contact with the outside world, charging them with nothing, and claiming that it’s OK, national security is somehow vaguely involved,” the US military was forced to begin doing something with the “high value” prisoners it was holding. Many have already been released, after the Pentagon finaly admitted they had no “intelligence value.” Theoretically, what’s left are people who are richly deserving of justice, the diehard al Qaeda fighters captured during the invasion of Afghanistan.

One of this first defendants, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, should therefore be practically a household name by now, if he’s as notorious as the Defense Department claims. Don’t feel bad—if you don’t recognize the name, you can probably make an educated guess about why he’s facing the tribunal. Go back to the list of what had links to might mean, and pick whatever you think applies.

No cheating, now.

When you’re ready…

Click this link to a story in The Washington Post for details.

Did you guess correctly? More to the point, are you surprised?

Not exactly the Genghis Khan or Al Capone of global terrorism. Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur, whether he knew what was in the trunk or not, certainly deserves at least as good a trial as, say, Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted by a civilian court for directing the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Hamdan, however, is not so lucky—nor, possibly, as competent to face the tribunal, according to a psychiatrist who examined him.

Since this post is about the importance of language, let’s be precise about where and how Hamdan is facing his accusers. Hamdan is standing before a military tribunal—not a civilian court, such as the one that convicted Rahman and the other 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Nor is he facing a military court martial, which would have more demanding requirements for evidence and legal representation. The tribunal is a legal instrument not seen since World War II, where, as the Washington Post correctly notes, it was reserved for Nazi saboteurs and Japanese war criminals. Immediately after the Civil War, military authorities used it to President Lincoln’s assassins.

What can you expect, as a defendant (if that is even the proper word) facing a military tribunal? Here’s a summary:

• You have been held incommunicado for years. During that time, even if you had been able to guess what the charges would be against you, the witnesses and evidence you needed to muster in your defense may have disappeared.


• During the pre-trial hearings, you received an “advocate,” not a lawyer.


• The prosecution may withhold evidence and witnesses for national security reasons.


• The prosecution can introduce hearsay evidence.


• There is no appeal if you believe the national security claims to be bogus, and in any case, you won’t ever learn what those national security concerns were in the first place.


• Your attorney in the tribunal probably works for the same office as the prosecutor.


• Anything you said during your interrogation can be introduced as evidence.


• Anything you said to your attorney, “advocate,” or anyone else during your detention may be used as evidence. There is no claim of privilege, nor is there an expectation of privacy.


• During earlier, “vigorous” interrogation, you may have admitted to doing things you know you didn’t just to get out of Guantanamo Bay. It's probably now too late to recant these claims.


• The tribunal consists of US military officers who will decide the case.


• The rules of evidence, procedure, and representation are changing daily.

Is this kind of prosecution necessary? Perhaps because, as earlier noted in this blog and elsewhere, the Defense Department has so mishandled the prisoners, physical evidence, and witnesses that it would be impossible for a civilian court to convict the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Before you fall back on the claim that warzones are too messy for fastidious evidence collection and witness interviews, remember how few troops the United States used to invade and occupy Afghanistan. There is a “penny-wise, pound-foolish” problem at work here that parallels the security problems in Iraq. If only the United States had invested more in securing Afghanistan…If only it had depended less on Afghan forces, many of whom had inter-ethnic or inter-clan scores to settle with people who became prisoners, or just didn’t care whom they threw into a cargo container for later hand-over to the Americans…If only the United States had stayed focused on the Taliban and al Qaeda, our foes in Afghanistan, instead of quickly shifting attention to Iraq…If, if, if. It’s too late now to pine for how things might have been different—except if you’re a Guantanamo Bay prisoner.

Flubbing the round-up, investigation, and prosecution of the Afghan prisoners is no reason to drop standard legal procedures for an ad hoc military tribunal. If national security was ever truly at stake, it’s time for the Bush Administration to prove it. Start making public examples of how these high-value prisoners helped the war against al Qaeda. Be specific. Surely, by now, many if not most of the military strikes, arrests, and other operations made possible by the prisoner interrogations are done, so there shouldn’t be much damage to publicizing many of these case studies, should there?

But let’s just forget for the moment how we’re treating these foreign nationals. Instead, let’s talk about how we’re hurting ourselves.

As I argued earlier today, terrorism is a brand of revolutionary warfare. What ignites any revolution is outrage; what directs this force is a clever revolutionary leadership ready to seize power. Therefore, if we want to defeat the leaders of al Qaeda, we’ll have to deny them as much collective outrage against the United States and the West as we can. The more we behave in an unjust fashion, the more this outrage will continue, and the more people there will be who are willing to kill Americans.

At this point, let me anticipate another counter-argument: perhaps Muslims and Arabs will always be furious with the United States. Some of them, like the Taliban, find our mere existence to be an affront to God. Short of ceasing to exist, the war of civilizations will continue.

There’s some truth to that position. However, we don’t have to make a bad situation worse, and it’s definitely getting worse in ways that are largely hidden to Americans in their daily, cloudy view of the rest of the world.

Take, for example, this article about how many Arabs no longer see the United States as the land of opportunity. What’s initially surprising to anyone who has traveled in the Middle East, or who has friends from that region, is how in one breath an Egyptian, Palestinian, or Yemeni can denounce the United States, and in the next, talk about how much they’d like to live, work, or be educated here. These opinions are representative of how many Middle Easterners feel: anger at the US government and the crasser elements of American culture; affection and admiration for the better parts of American society.

Perhaps, as Samuel Huntington and others have argued, we are in the thick of a war of civilizations. If so, here’s a piece of advice for anyone waging that war: you’ll never win it except by force of example. If you want to defeat the other civilization, make yours undeniably more attractive. The more, in the name of expediency, you make your civilization less free, less just, less prosperous, less tolerant, the faster you’ll lose.

When the Soviet empire crumbled, Eastern Europeans looked westwards, as they always did, for the model of the better society they want to build in their own countries. Of course, many Eastern Europeans simply emigrated here, going directly to the source of the peace, prosperity, and justice they were impatient to enjoy. If the war with militant Islamism has replaced the war with communism as our current clash of civilizations, we should remember exactly how the Cold War ended: not with a frightened, less free America, but one whom the newly-liberated Eastern Europeans still admired, and couldn't wait to experience.

Comments

[Steven D]

Excellent points. Kerry should use this in his ads or in the debates.

[Oscar]

Good post and spot on. I don't know that Kerry will want to use it, however, given his equally strained arguments about the links between the SwiftVets and Bush.

This whole post touches on something that bugs me about this campaign. There are a lot of things Bush is doing wrong in the "War on Terror" (I like WW4 better, but that is not important.) The problem is that most of the Dem candidates in the primary seemed to think there was a war (like WW3 - a war of guns AND ideas) going on, except Lieberman, and some days, Kerry. Kerry has always seemed so self serving, that I can't see him as a leader, because he has NO consistent beliefs other than his own advancement. Bush on the other had is consistent in the same was Grant was "I shall continue in this line if it takes all summer." I wish we had someone who was flexible without being a windsock.

Also, I think your tie in with your previous post is a little tenuous: what reaction on the part of POTUS to 9/11 would NOT have increased Arab anomosity? I note that one common thread in the story you quoted was Palestine, so how has this changed? Was Bush really worse than Clinton from their perspective?

[ellroon]

Thanks. Scary and well said. Have sent it on.

[ff14rmt]

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