Can we be safe and free? The dilemma terrorism creates - Law & Justice

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), Jan, 2003 by Gene Stephens

New directions

Real safety, as noted earlier, depends on being both physically safe from harm and able to exercise one's personal liberties. After 9/11, many Americans felt so unsafe physically they believed they had to give up some liberties--especially privacy and freedom of movement--in order to achieve a modicum of security. Almost half (49%) of respondents to a poll taken nearly a year after the terrorist attack said First Amendment rights go too far in protecting free speech and particularly freedom of religion. More significantly, perhaps, 41% said media criticism of military policy should be banned.

In a poll shortly after the event, a large majority expressed willingness to endure long waits and personal searches at airports and public gathering places, but the size of the majority began to dissipate as, despite the inconvenience, those testing the systems put in place found them easy to thwart--carrying knives, razors, cutting tools, and even handguns through security checks. A poll marking the one-year anniversary of the attack found Americans had come to terms with their new reality: 75% had little confidence the government could prevent future attacks and 60% thought such attacks were inevitable. Few felt capturing or killing Al Qaeda head Osama bin Laden (and only two percent believed he was already dead) and Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein would stop future terrorism against the U.S., but 82% said they had not and would not let the terrorist acts change their lifestyles in any permanent or significant way.

The voices present just days after Sept. 11 are growing louder--suggesting that a high-tech war on terrorism and high-tech, repressive security are not the answers to the safety issue. Obscured by feelings of fear and anger, and a demand for retribution, have been what some say are more-effective and less-draconian measures.

Fear itself is a major stumbling block to security and, to a large extent, research indicates the pervasive fear in America today is simply not justified. Despite 9/11, there was no more terrorism (in fact, somewhat less) in the world in 2001 and 2002 than there was in 2000 and earlier years, and street crime in America is far below the levels of a decade ago. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reports show a constant drop from the early 1990s through 2000, with a slight increase in some categories in 2001, while the self-reporting system of the Bureau of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey indicates major household crime (including rape and assault) in the U.S. dropped significantly from 1974 to the present.

In Creating Fear: News and the Construction of Crisis, popular culturalist David L. Altheide writes about the "discourse of fear"--"the awareness and expectation that danger and risk are lurking everywhere"--that news media and social control agencies have created in recent years, even before Sept. 11, but certainly accelerated by the terrorists' attack. Such fear serves the media to obtain reader-listener-viewership, while providing monetary, legal, and citizen support for law enforcement and other government agencies to "solve" the problem. Altheide says fear perseveres "despite clear evidence that most citizens are healthier, safer, and happier than ever before."