What’s the difference between a terrorist and a criminal? The men who hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings on September 11th were terrorists. The duo accused of the Washington sniper attacks – John Mohammad and Lee Malvo – are considered criminals. Or are they? We seem to have fallen into a gray area.
For the sake of argument, let’s say a terrorist has a political agenda and a criminal has other motives. On April 19, 1995, the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma City was blown up. Terrorists – Arab terrorists – were immediately suspected. It was two Americans, Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who were arrested and convicted of the bombing. Mr. McVeigh was executed. He and Mr. Nichols had a political agenda, so let’s call them terrorists. The justice system, however, dealt with them as criminals. Their Constitutional rights were preserved. Perhaps we could afford to preserve their rights in the 1990s. Perhaps it was a different era then.
That era ended when the first jet struck the World Trade Center. The rules changed, too. Suddenly, men of Middle-Eastern origin, legal aliens, hundreds of them, were taken into custody with no due process. Some are still in custody, some have been deported. None has been accused of terrorism. When civil libertarians complained of arbitrary incarceration, racial profiling, information blackouts, we were informed that a war on terror required a new set of rules, or perhaps a lack of rules. American citizens, from John Walker Lindh to Yaser Hamdi to Abdullah al-Muhajir to the six men arrested in Western New York, have been accused of being terrorists or consorting with terrorists. Mr. Lindh, the richest and whitest guy in the bunch had some of his rights preserved, the others not so much.
A year after September 11th, someone started shooting people at random in and around Washington, DC. Local and federal authorities, for whatever reason, decided early on that the attacks were the work of criminals, not terrorists. Maybe timing has something to do with it. The anthrax attacks, which have never been solved, were initially treated as terrorism, now police seem to think they are the work of a criminal, but won’t say for sure.
Although the sniper attacks provoked a massive response – roadblocks, spy planes – there was no profiling. Hundreds of men with military sharpshooter experience were not swept off the streets and put into secret detention. I guess the jails were still full of Arabs.
The pendulum is now swinging wildly – citizen/alien, terrorist/criminal, rules/no rules. Earlier this month, a CIA operative, flying a Predator airplane by remote control, launched a Hellfire missile and killed six men in Yemen. The dead men have been declared terrorists and their killing justified as part of the war on terror. One of the dead men – Qaed al-Harthi – was an American citizen, but he was posthumously dubbed an “enemy combatant.”
If the U.S. can locate terrorists – or suspected terrorists – anywhere in the world, we have an obligation to make every effort to arrest them and bring them to trial. Assassinations or “targeted killings” or whatever you want to call them will not bring progress in any war on terror. The Israelis can tell you that. They undermine the legitimacy of a government that should respect the rule of law. Even in the most cynical light, targeted killings create a hydra, with two enemies rising for each cut down. The fact that our own government is killing U.S. citizens on foreign soil makes the act that much more frightening.
Back in America, one of the accused Washington snipers – Lee Malvo – is caught in another gray zone. Mr. Malvo is 17 years old. Is he a juvenile? Is he an adult? Considering Lee Malvo a juvenile, the court appointed a guardian for him, then police hauled Mr. Malvo off for seven hours of interrogation without the guardian. Maybe definitions don’t matter. Terrorist or criminal, citizen or alien, juvenile or adult, whether you did something or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or your parents come from the wrong country, the one constant in the past two years is that civil rights – for all of us – seem to be disappearing.
The Rules of the Game
What’s the difference between a terrorist and a criminal? The men who hijacked airplanes and flew them into buildings on September 11th were terrorists. The duo accused of the Washington sniper attacks – John Mohammad and Lee Malvo – are considered criminals. Or are they? We seem to have fallen into a gray area.
For the sake of argument, let’s say a terrorist has a political agenda and a criminal has other motives. On April 19, 1995, the Alfred Murrah building in Oklahoma City was blown up. Terrorists – Arab terrorists – were immediately suspected. It was two Americans, Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who were arrested and convicted of the bombing. Mr. McVeigh was executed. He and Mr. Nichols had a political agenda, so let’s call them terrorists. The justice system, however, dealt with them as criminals. Their Constitutional rights were preserved. Perhaps we could afford to preserve their rights in the 1990s. Perhaps it was a different era then.
That era ended when the first jet struck the World Trade Center. The rules changed, too. Suddenly, men of Middle-Eastern origin, legal aliens, hundreds of them, were taken into custody with no due process. Some are still in custody, some have been deported. None has been accused of terrorism. When civil libertarians complained of arbitrary incarceration, racial profiling, information blackouts, we were informed that a war on terror required a new set of rules, or perhaps a lack of rules. American citizens, from John Walker Lindh to Yaser Hamdi to Abdullah al-Muhajir to the six men arrested in Western New York, have been accused of being terrorists or consorting with terrorists. Mr. Lindh, the richest and whitest guy in the bunch had some of his rights preserved, the others not so much.
A year after September 11th, someone started shooting people at random in and around Washington, DC. Local and federal authorities, for whatever reason, decided early on that the attacks were the work of criminals, not terrorists. Maybe timing has something to do with it. The anthrax attacks, which have never been solved, were initially treated as terrorism, now police seem to think they are the work of a criminal, but won’t say for sure.
Although the sniper attacks provoked a massive response – roadblocks, spy planes – there was no profiling. Hundreds of men with military sharpshooter experience were not swept off the streets and put into secret detention. I guess the jails were still full of Arabs.
The pendulum is now swinging wildly – citizen/alien, terrorist/criminal, rules/no rules. Earlier this month, a CIA operative, flying a Predator airplane by remote control, launched a Hellfire missile and killed six men in Yemen. The dead men have been declared terrorists and their killing justified as part of the war on terror. One of the dead men – Qaed al-Harthi – was an American citizen, but he was posthumously dubbed an “enemy combatant.”
If the U.S. can locate terrorists – or suspected terrorists – anywhere in the world, we have an obligation to make every effort to arrest them and bring them to trial. Assassinations or “targeted killings” or whatever you want to call them will not bring progress in any war on terror. The Israelis can tell you that. They undermine the legitimacy of a government that should respect the rule of law. Even in the most cynical light, targeted killings create a hydra, with two enemies rising for each cut down. The fact that our own government is killing U.S. citizens on foreign soil makes the act that much more frightening.
Back in America, one of the accused Washington snipers – Lee Malvo – is caught in another gray zone. Mr. Malvo is 17 years old. Is he a juvenile? Is he an adult? Considering Lee Malvo a juvenile, the court appointed a guardian for him, then police hauled Mr. Malvo off for seven hours of interrogation without the guardian. Maybe definitions don’t matter. Terrorist or criminal, citizen or alien, juvenile or adult, whether you did something or just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or your parents come from the wrong country, the one constant in the past two years is that civil rights – for all of us – seem to be disappearing.