The arrest in Miami of seven would-be terrorists planning to blow up Chicago’s Sears Tower, American’s tallest building, should come as a severe jolt to all Americans. Five of the suspects are in fact US citizens with no link at all to Al-Qaeda other than that its barbarities inspired them to make similar attempts. In the avalanche of publicity following the FBI raid on the group’s Miami warehouse headquarters, the authorities were quick to say the threat from the men was “aspirational” rather than “operational.” Nonetheless, the appalling truth is that US citizens should plot such savagery on their own country in the name of a bigoted cause that is in no way their own. The first reaction is that these men are simply criminal thugs, a terrible variation of the brutal gangs that terrorize the streets in the poorer districts of many great American cities.
But it is the deluded motive behind their planned crimes that is so shocking. No doubt their trial lawyers will argue that they are poorly educated, downtrodden, marginalized members of society who felt they owed no loyalty to a society that had rejected them. That sort of defense ought to make Americans sit up and consider how such evil nihilistic intent could happen in the world’s richest country. Even allowing for the fact that every society has its problems, the depraved and violent plans of these thugs are particularly shocking.
In their relief that another potential large-scale bloodletting has been avoided, many Americans may overlook the increasingly draconian security measures being applied in their own backyard as part of the war against terrorism. Will history record that Osama Bin Laden succeeded after all against his real enemies — liberty and freedom? Many Americans fear so. The shock of 9/11 unleashed ugly and uncompromising authoritarian tendencies in Washington which, in normal times would be fiercely resisted by many in “The Land of the Free.” Among 70 new measures just announced by the White House is a new domestic spy service within the FBI. Why should such an organization be necessary in addition to the FBI itself, the communications work of the NSA, the Secret Service, the Justice Department and peripherally, the work of the CIA? It has also emerged that throughout the US, financial dealings are being monitored extensively in the hope of tracking the movement of terrorist funds. It is also thought that e-mail and telephone calls are now being widely tapped. All these very real impingements of the liberties of US citizens may seem justified at the moment but they come with alarming implications for the future. Who can be sure that they will be discarded when Bin Laden is dead and the scourge of Al-Qaeda finally destroyed?
The question is whether the Bush administration can be trusted with such sweeping powers? Riding on the back of popular fury after 9/11, Bush plunged America and its allies into the disastrous Iraqi invasion, when all evidence indicated that Saddam had had nothing whatsoever to do with Al-Qaeda, had abandoned his WMD program.
