THE CRITICISM LEVELED at President Bush’s plan to set a new mega organization in charge of internal US security and counterterrorism strikes an odd note. The accusation is that this an attempt by the White House to deflect attention from the failure of the FBI and the CIA to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks. That the opposition Democrats will grab at anything to throw at the Bush administration is par for the course in US politics. The Republicans did the same to Bill Clinton.
But it is not just the Democrats who are saying that it is a diversionary tactic. A large slice of the US media have made the same comment following President Bush’s Thursday evening announcement on prime time TV. So have several foreign correspondents. The criticism does not add up. Following the disclosure last month that the president had been briefed of possible plans by Osama Bin Laden to hijack some US planes, there has been a growing barrage of claims that the Sept. 11 attacks could have been avoided. Whether that is so will always be one of the great “ifs” of history.
What there can be no doubt about is that the CIA, FBI and other organizations involved in US security totally fouled up and, moreover, continued to do so well after Sept. 11. The approval of visa applications from two of the hijackers by the US Immigration and Naturalization Service a full six months after Sept. 11 shows how stunningly disorganized US security can be. President Bush’s proposed new security organization addresses an issue that clearly needs to be addressed. It does not divert attention from the failures of the CIA and others. On the contrary, it focuses attention on their incompetence and inability to process information —to “connect the dots”, as it is being put in Washington. It is an admission that they are not up to the job. If they were there would be no need for make changes.
The real issue, however, about President Bush’s planned new intelligence organization is not the mythical coverup his opponents allege, but how it will affect and change the US. Will it make it a safer place or just a more isolationist? Visitors to the US already face tough new rules introduced by the immigration service. Those rules are going to get even tougher when the new organization takes over responsibility from the more than 100 existing agencies and coordinates everything from border security and to intelligence processing.
For those of us who are not US citizens but who want to go the US for perfectly legitimate reasons — be it business, pleasure, health care, study or whatever — getting in may very well become quite an unpleasant affair especially if one is an Arab or a Muslim. The US Department of Justice’s shocking new proposal requiring Muslim and Middle Eastern visa holders to register and be fingerprinted and photographed, and new arrivals to be fingerprinted on entry is evidently part of the new security regime. In fact the plan, which would effect more than 100,000 students, workers, researchers, and tourists from designated Muslim and Arab countries already in the US is, fortunately, unlikely to become law. It is blatantly discriminatory and has drawn condemnation from across the American political landscape.
But the damage has already been done. Coming after 1,200 Arabs and Muslims have been detained without due process of law, another 8,000 who are legal visa holders questioned, and thousands of cases of individual discrimination, this ill-thought out, squalid little proposal, which can do nothing to actually improve US security because real terrorists will not register, serves only convince Arabs and Muslims that the US is targeting them.
Washington may deny it but American officialdom now apparently thinks that Muslims and Arabs are genetically predisposed to violence. It will further injure America’s image and interests in the Muslim and Arab world. And for what? There is no doubt that America needs to beef up its security and the new organization should help, but at the cost of discrimination and antagonism? Is that the new security ethos that President Bush really wants?
