Creeping fascism is a threat to national security …

[one...two...tree 2,762]

So even as we "debate" -- if that's what you want to call it -- the treatment of prisoners and the clarity of the Geneva Conventions, we discover that the U.S. is holding an estimated 14,000 people in its global network of detention facilities.

Captured on battlefields, pulled from beds at midnight, grabbed off streets as suspected insurgents, tens of thousands now have passed through U.S. detention, the vast majority in Iraq.

Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were "mistakes," U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.

A report based on defense Department documents put the rate of "mistakes" at Guantanamo Bay at 55 percent, and CIA officials have said that "a significant but undetermined percentage" of those held at Baghram Airbase in Afghanistan were "innocent of anything except being in the wrong place during 'sweeps' by Afghan warlords." Let's just say for simplicity sake that a majority of those held in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Gitmo are innocent, or at the very least not hardened terrorists.

In a recent comment on one of my pieces, a conservative reader acknowledged that this is problematic, and then gave the most common justification for the whole mad enterprise: "I also have children working in Manhattan," he wrote, "and I'd rather my government [do] what ever it can to make sure they are safe." Because the safety of his kids, understandably, is paramount, he had "no problem with them being held."

There is a massive disconnect here: U.S. policy -- the detentions, the invasion of Iraq and allegations of torture and sexual abuse -- are directly related to our own security in the most obvious ways.

We are not in a worldwide Clash of Civilizations and, fortunately, broad swaths of the Muslim world have not taken up a global Jihad against us. There are probably a few hundred to a couple of thousand violent extremists targeting the West.

But there is a conflict, largely being brewed by a very public discussion between "their" extremists and our own, and there are millions of people who resent America's "forward leaning" -- read "militaristic" -- foreign policy, and with good reason. Common sense would dictate that a cornerstone of our approach to anti-terrorism should be to keep those millions of people who supposedly "hate" us from joining the ranks of those groups willing to do something about it. That commenter's kids are in no danger from people hating them.

Now, think about those 14,000 people dropped in a hole without charges and without knowing when -- or even if -- they'll ever get out. Consider that a number of them are subjected to "coercive interrogation" methods that can legally approach, but not exceed, the pain associated with major organ failure. Consider that over half of them are innocent and that they will go back to their villages and recount their tales. Consider how many of them have brothers and fathers and uncles who will have a newfound desire for vengeance against U.S. troops. Or sons who will grow up with real hatred in their hearts. It's like the endless pictures of dead Iraqi babies proliferating across the internet -- they're a far more potent draw to radicalism than some fringe Imam's Friday sermon.

This stuff is incredibly dangerous over the long-term, and yet so many Americans can't see it. The question isn't just Ben Franklin's safety versus liberty -- it comes down to whether we should prefer a small potential gain in security over the short term to possibly a large security threat in the future.

I think part of this is a result of the war on terror rhetoric. The hawks were so anxious to forestall any discussion of those dreaded "root causes" -- the idea that maybe there were real and valid issues that created an environment in which violent extremism could flourish -- that they insisted that the enemy was a caricature, a horror movie monster, inhuman and unfeeling. They hated us for no reason but because of our "freedom."

Contrast that approach with the counter-insurgency campaigns during the Cold War. Even when the U.S. was supporting the worst terrorists in Latin America and Southern Africa in the name of "counter-revolution," there was always a component of our policy that recognized that the revolutionaries had legitimate grievances. We understood that while we were training and equipping death squads to put down peasant movements, we also had to encourage land reform, we had to work towards independence from foreign rule and we had to deliver (or at least try to deliver) some development, some tangible proof that even if our words and deeds didn't sync up perfectly, our stated ideals weren't purely a matter of spin.

But here we are in a "war" that's supposeldy being fought against people who hate us for no reason. And if that's the case -- and entirely too many of our leaders believe their own propaganda on this point -- then it doesn't much matter how we actually conduct ourselves in that war. The CV is that our actions don't have any relationship with our ongoing security, and that's a really troubling analytic failure with potentially far-reaching consequences.

Joshua Holland is a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

too many of our leaders believe their own propaganda on this point -- then it doesn't much matter how we actually conduct ourselves in that war. The CV is that our actions don't have any relationship with our ongoing security, and that's a really troubling analytic failure with potentially far-reaching consequences.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

...

[Trompe le Monde 1,107]

[pedroh 21]

owned?

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

We need Stalin to save us!!

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

We need Stalin to save us!!

Things keep going the way they are, we'll be getting someone like that before long.