Both Hands Tied

“Muslim Scholars Paid to Aid U.S. !” shouts the headline in the Times this morning.

My goodness, I thought. Headlines shouldn’t shout . They should just Bold themselves. And besides, if you are attempting to fight an implacable foe without using every trick in the book, wouldn’t you be fighting with your hands tied behind your back?

Still, I have to take my hat off to the intrepid Fourth Estate, or would have to take it off if I wore one. The Press has been courageous in bringing forth the controversies inherent in this strange conflict in a strange new century.

Each unpalatable issue has been paraded forth for public scrutiny. Rightly, I suppose; the use of coercive treatment on prisoners held under indefinite sentence is worth some public discourse, as is the surveillance of the national communications system by Government agencies with minimal oversight, and all the rest of it.

It is scary. The problem though is that we need to invent a new lexicon to have the discussion. The meaning of words force us into pre-ordained paths. If we do not start from a common understanding, it is not surprising that we end up in such divergent positions.

I have watched the intense Constitutional debate unfold, well grounded in the Federal Papers and original intent, and it has concentrated on the inherent powers of the Executive Branch.

Good bureaucrats have been so concerned about the Constitutional grounds that they have resigned form the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Others, lacking their pensions, have been calling up the Times, leaking information on “deep background” even if they would not do the right thing and quit their jobs.

So ,the Times prints a story that implies a crime had been committed, and we are into a Constitutional crisis again, just as we were in Vietnam and Iran-Contra and now Iraq and the Global-Whatever-it-Is against terror.

There are challenges even in framing the debate, and it is in the framing, the basic semiotics of it, that forces us into pre-set channels of discussion in that result in what the military calls “branches-and-sequels.”

The first issue, of course, is what are we talking about? In other wartimes, on American soil, Presidents have suspended Habeus Corpus by executive order.

But is what we have now war? There is honest disagreement on even that. Is this actually some sort of criminal conspiracy that we should combat while scrupulously adhering to the rule of law, intending to bring the miscreants to justice? There must be some confusion on that, else why does the CIA recommend that its case officers take out personal liability insurance policies before going overseas?

Doesn’t the vocabulary and precedent in our legal canon refer to activities conducted by and against nation states?

If this is a “war” is it against the Islamic Caliphate as a notional nation? We used to struggle in a cold conflict against a shadowy “global communist conspiracy,” but even then, the rule of law seemed to apply. This appears to be a “hot” war, with real dead in our streets. So does that permit extra-legal action anywhere, and at anytime?

Is this actually a matter of a religious war? Could the President have been right when he first stumbled and claimed it was a crusade?

Stunned and hurt by the attack on U.S. soil, the system responded by acting as though this was something new and unprecedented. Of course it was not the first attack on U.S. soil, or on U.S. ships, or on U.S. facilities considered national territory overseas.

I doubt seriously that the Pike and Church Congressional Commissions that established the court supervision of the physical tapping of wall-mounted phones could have envisioned the technical challenges inherent in packet-switched digital networks and disposable cell phones.

There was a program that caused some controversy in the Defense Department two years ago. It was called Total Information Awareness; or TIA. It was an ambitious attempt to collate the information on the web, and data bases, and phone calls and integrate it into an understanding of relationships. It was the methodology of Amazon.com, taken to a more robust level.

TIA was shut down by Congress as a threat to privacy. Yet it seems to be alive and well, if what the President, in his charming and inarticulate manner, seemed to be describing in his latest sound-bite this morning. Is what NSA doing a threat to my on-line shopping experience, or to my Liberty ?

Or both?

What is this thing we are about? Who is the enemy? What laws apply?

The terrorists and insurgents operate in a place where there is no law and no order. They are ruthless and focused killers. Their conduct is certainly criminal in nature, but is part of a strategic campaign to overthrow the West.

I can see what is coming as well as you can: Congressional hearings that skirt the real issues, grandstanding, mounting personal legal bills and ruin for the hapless government functionaries. Dramatic revelations and dark mutterings about impeachment.

In order to stop the murder, I think it is not unreasonable that we should ask to have only one hand tied behind our back. But we can’t even seem to begin the rational debate.

We don’t seem to have the right words.

Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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