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October 1,
2001
Homeland
Insecurity
By Douglas
Valentine
Under Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge,
the Homeland Security Office will coordinate 46 government agencies
against terrorist suspects in the United States. Ridge will perform
this function in conjunction with Bush's deputy national security
advisor, Army Gen. Wayne Downing.
Bush Administration officials are still working out the "lines
of authority" between the two new positions, but it's clear
that from now on, the military is going to have a central role
in domestic anti-terrorism activities.
The reason for the military's
prominence is simple: Bush wants to establish special, extra-legal
military tribunals that can try suspected terrorists without
the ordinary legal constraints of American justice. These military
tribunals apparently would have the authority to execute terrorists
within 30 days of their conviction.
The Bush Administration denied
considering a national identification card system that would
empower our Big Brothers with the omnipotence required to catch
terrorists before they strike. But you can be sure that some
system will be devised to enable Ridge at Homeland Security,
and Downing on behalf of the Pentagon, to keep track of every
suspects every move."
The problem is that no one
has yet defined "suspect".
The Usual Suspects
During the Vietnam War, under
the CIA's Phoenix Program --which is the model for the Homeland
Security Office -- a terrorist suspect was anyone accused by
one anonymous source. Just one. The suspect was then arrested,
indefinitely detained in a CIA interrogation center, and tortured
until he or she (or in some cases children as young as twelve)
confessed, informed on others, died, or was brought before a
military tribunal (such as Bush is proposing) for disposition.
In thousands of cases, innocent
people were imprisoned and tortured based on the word of an anonymous
informer who had a personal grudge, or was actually a Viet Cong
double agent feeding the names of loyal citizens into the Phoenix
blacklist.
At no point in the process
did suspects have access to due process or lawyers, and thus,
in 1971, four US Congresspersons stated their belief that the
Phoenix Program violated that part of the Geneva Conventions
guaranteeing protection to civilians in time of war. I repeat,
in time of war.
But those sorts of abuses can't
happen here, during Bush's newly declared war on terrorism, right?
Yeah, right.
Symbolically, the terror attacks
of 11 September wiped the psychological slate clean. All the
moral prohibitions on the reactionary right wing have been lifted.
The same thing happened in the Fatherland after the First World
War -- and that is the real threat of anti-terrorism we're facing
in America today.
In the name of anti-terrorism,
all of the nation's pent-up anger and frustration over Vietnam,
and a host of other "cultural" issues, is poised to
be unleashed on the Enemy Within. And the Bush Administration
and its propagandists have already defined the Enemy Within in
very clear terms: "We're all Israelis now," they say,
adding that, "You're with us or you're against us,"
in the declared war against terrorism.
And being "against us"
is a dangerous proposition. As noted, Bush is considerating the
formation of Phoenix-style military tribunals that operate beyond
due
process of law. The system was tested in Vietnam thirty years
ago, and perfected in Israel on the Palestinians, and is ready
for application here and now.
The New
Psywar
As stated twelve years ago in the October 1989, Marine Corps
Gazette (p 22-26a), Bush's New War will be "widely dispersed
and largely undefined; the distinction between war and peace
will be blurred to the vanishing point." There will be no
"definable battlefields or fronts," and the distinction
between "civilian" and "military" will disappear.
"Success will depend heavily on effectiveness in joint operations
(such as Bush proposes between Ridge at Homeland Security and
Downing at the Pentagon) as lines between responsibility and
mission become very blurred."
According to the Gazette article, success in the New War against
undefined suspects will also depend on "psychological operations"
manifest "in the form of media/information intervention."
One must be "adept at manipulating the media to alter domestic
and world opinion...." On the psywar battlefield, "Television
news may become a more powerful operational weapon than armored
divisions."
The TV "hawks" love
to blame the anti-war movement for Americas defeat in Vietnam,
and they assert in these do-or-die times that dissent promotes
terrorism. In terms of the psywar strategy outlined above, this
is exactly how nationalists and even pacifists became equated
with terrorists in Vietnam, and thus subject to indefinite detention
and torture in an interrogation center, and -- in the case of
some 40,000 plus individuals -- assassination under the CIA's
Phoenix Program.
The Bush Administration claims
that a war against terrorism requires different justice. The
strategy is working in Israel, but in Vietnam it turned an entire
population against its government and engendered a tragedy of
epic proportions.
One can only wonder how Americans will react if due process is
abandoned through the Office of Homeland Security, under the
direction of the Pentagon. CP
Douglas Valentine writes frequently for CounterPunch.
He is the author of The
Phoenix Program, the only comprehensive account of the CIA's
torture and assassination operation in Vietnam, as well as TDY a chilling novel
about the CIA and the drug trade.
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