The fog of war: how can we tell if we're winning the War on Terror?

Reason, June, 2005 by Stephen J. Lyons

To adopt the entire Israeli model is simply not possible, but what is possible--and what Brzezinski would like to see--is measures such as limiting access to airport entrances and tightening the screening of passengers. To Einav, the United States is an easy target. "What if Al Qaeda hit a dozen shopping centers in different U.S. cities?" he asks. "I bet you Americans would demand security then."

Brzezinski reports we are narrowing the gap between our lax security and Israel's lock-down mode, and in doing so we are creating tension between civil liberties and national security. Basic freedoms should not be eroded, he writes, nor should Americans be abused in the "name of defending freedom from terrorism." The author also writes, however, that "as new terrorist scenarios arise, as new extremists crawl out of some cave brandishing new vehicles for mass murder, the government will have to react--and possibly overreact --quickly." Case studies of Muslims in America who disappeared into our prison system immediately after 9/11 demonstrate that the government did overreact, as the new secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, acknowledged during his confirmation hearings. They also show just how easily basic freedoms can be erased during a national crisis.

The threat of terrorism also opens the door for Orwellian surveillance. Use of the creepy technology known as "radio frequency identification" (RFID), implemented through transponder tags coded with information that can be tracked, is expanding. It sounds harmless and useful when applied in commerce to track shipments--some ups drivers are required to wear RFID bracelets, or their trucks won't start--or in the livestock industry to monitor animals. But when the idea is broached of injecting the tags into political prisoners (as is rumored in China) or convicted sex offenders (as has been proposed in this country) to monitor their exact location, the potential for abuse is clear.

"All that was lacking was the political and social will to bring all this technological wizardry to bear in the war on terror," Brzezinski writes. "It wouldn't happen overnight or without another catastrophic incident, something that upped the ante and put America in the same survival mode [as] Israel: a nuclear detonation, a biological outbreak, a mass casualty event. But if the stakes were high enough, would we be more willing to accept life in a maximum security surveillance state?"

Equally disheartening is the author's visit to the offices of the Department of Homeland Security. At the time, the physical appearance of this $36 billion security nerve center had all the gravitas of a Jiffy Lube waiting room. "My own doubts about whether DHS had been dealt a bad hand were not dispelled when I announced myself on a clunky old phone that hung next to its gray door," Brzezinski writes. The reception area "had a cheap suspended ceiling of yellowed acoustic tiles and was decorated with a badly mounted blown-up photo of Ridge walking with Bush, both striding purposefully toward the mutual goal of keeping us all out of harm's way."