Lavrenti Beria, Stalin’s notorious secret police chief, once said, "Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime." The T.S.A. seems to operate on the basis of an adapted maxim: "Show me the security check and I’ll find you the excuse."
Those words are from Roger Cohen's New York Times column today, titled as is this diary The Real Threat to America. He is scathing in his response to the current approach to security imposed just in time for the holidays.
Consider his opening:
LONDON — The full-body scanners and intrusive pat-downs that are fast becoming the norm at U.S. airports — just in time for Thanksgiving! — do at least provide the answer to what should be done with Osama bin Laden if he’s ever captured: Rotate him in perpetuity through this security hell, "groin checks" and all.
In listening to Keith Olbermann, I remember him raising a poing of real security, one which Cohen also offers:
In his stupor, arms raised as his body gets "imaged," arms outstretched through "enhanced" patting, bin Laden might also wonder at just how stupid it is to assemble huge crowds at the Transportation Security Administration’s airport checkpoints, as if hundreds of people on planes were the only hundreds of people who make plausible targets for terrorists.
Cohen also reminds us of the financial benefit of the biggest advocate for the new scanners, former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.
There is no doubt Chertoff is a bright man, having even served as s clerk to former Supreme Court Justice William Brennan. Now, that's ironic, given how much of a civil libertarian Brennan was, especially when we remember that Chertoff was also a principal author of the misnamed USA Patriot Act. As Seccretary of DHS he had unprecedented ability to waive US laws, and was responsible for the building of the atrocity of the fence along our southern border with Mexico (see this NY TImes Editorial for how many laws he was able to waive). It is possible that his willingness to play fast and loose with the protections of the Bill of Rights come from his days in the Justice Department, where he assisted Giuliani in the Southern District of New York, was US Attorney in Newark, and he headed the Criminal Division of Justice under the 2nd President Bush.
Cohen thinks the real threat to America is how willing we are to waive our civil liberties for security. Let me offer two shorter snips that give a sense of his thinking:
The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the T.S.A. represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen.
I would agree, as I would with the words that immediately follow:
America is a nation of openness, boldness and risk-taking. Close this nation, cow it, constrict it and you unravel its magic.
As I said, I would agree with those words, but only to a point. Let me explain. I would not want to see those words used to allow unfettered operation by corporate entities, by financial institutions. We had 8 years of that under the previous administration, and we are still paying the price.
In a sense, what Chertoff has been able to foist upon DHS with the new scanners is another part of the real threat to America, that is, the ability of some people to use positions of power in the government as a basis for creating large fortunes afterwards. In this Chertoff is far from unique. The number of former Congressmen, Senators and key Hill staffers who are lobbyists should be more than troubling. People like the already-mentioned Rudy Giuliani trading on their supposed knowledge of matters of security is another illustration.
But perhaps this can be seen in another fashion. There are certain functions of government and society that should not be matters of private profit. I am not arguing that private companies cannot benefit from developing technology - that has long been a part of our system. But their profit motivation should not be allowed to overwhelm common sense. Nor should they have control of the institutions themselves, be those prisons, public water supplies, schools, or key aspects of the military. It may have been wrong for Truman to order his Secretary of Commerce to seize the steel mills, but it is equally wrong to have the security of the United States dependent upon the likes of Blackwater to provide security for key personnel and institutions, or to become irreplaceable parts of our national intelligence apparatus.
Some are now arguing to privatize TSA. Others will use the current uproar over screening to continue to deny the workers of TSA the right to collectively bargain, despite the fact that by and large they are low-paid, not particularly highly trained for the responsibility we place upon them.
After quoting Franklin's words at the close of the Constitutional Convention, about our having a Republic is we could keep it, Cohen closes like this:
To keep it, push back against enhanced patting, Chertoff’s naked-screening and the sinister drumbeat of fear.
It is in those final words that we finally get to what is the real threat to America: the sinister drumbeat of fear
One need only remember our history. During the Civil War we tried to use military tribunals to try supposed Confederate sympathizers even though civilian courts were open - in 1866 the Supreme Court rejected that idea. During the administration of Woodrow Wilson we got the Espionage Act, still being used against supposed enemies of administration policies. We also got the Palmer Red Raids. And remember, that was supposedly a "progressive" administration (although it reimposed segregation upon Washington, in large part because Wilson was himself a Southerner, born in Virginia but raised in Florida Augusta GA). In World War II we interned US citizens because they were of Japanese origin. In the 1950s we had Joe McCarthy and the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities. Somehow we do not seem to learn that operating from fear gains us little, and undermines the spirit that made this country great.
the sinister drumbeat of fear - it is being used by the likes of those who would destroy this administration for personal and political gain, be they Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and the paid minions of Rupert Murdoch, or the sinister members of the Congressional Republican Caucuses who have as their highest priority the defeat of Barack Obama, not the well-being nor the safety and security of the American people.
I did not plan to write a diary today. I have too much else I must accomplish in the three days before I return to my classroom. But I read Cohen. I realized he would be hard to excerpt, but I also realized that I needed to write in response.
I offer my words in addition to his.
He's right. We need to push back. Against all whittling away of our constitutional freedoms. Against all attempts to cow us by fear.
So what do we do now?