It's obvious that political correctness and fears over a fanatical response by conservative politicians, activists, and right-wing media has till now largely prevented a discussion of religiously inspired violence by our nation's more fundamentalist Christians.
Though the logic and policies of the "war on terroism", with its disturbing but commonplace neo-fascist language has become popular on the right and easily applies to the hard-core evangelical Christians who use religion to sanction and committ violence, maybe we should avoid labelling people terrorists. It too easily follows the Orwellian logic peddled by, yet to be convicted war criminals, Bush, Cheney, Edington, Yoo, et. al.
Terrorists are desperately hoping our nation overracts to their violence, but if we maintain respect for our nation's democratic institutions, with no military detentions of civilians, and not expecting a militarized response to solve this challenge, than we will avoid serving Al Qaeda through a fearful overreaction.
As a thought expirement, what if the hard-core right's militant, neo-fascist logic of the "war on terroism", were applied to Christian "terrorists" as it has been applied until now so selectively to Muslims?
In this alternate United States, say 3/4 of us are Timians, following the sacraed teachings of the holy and god-like Father Timothy. In this religion there would be a mix of conservative, liberal, moderate, and fundamentalist Timians...
In this version of the United States there are several minority religions, one of which is viewed with great suspiscion and even hatred by many Americans. A small but undeniable number of its followers haved committed deadly violence against the United States in the name of their religion. This minority religion is called Christianity, whose members follow the teachings of Jesus as stated in the Bible.
How would first this alternate United States respond to Christian Terrorism? First; politicians would exploit citizens' fears over Christian Terrorism for political gain and victories in elections, second; politicians and like-minded allies in the media would exaggerate the threat reprsented by Christian Terrorists while their beliefs are stereotyped, third; a "War on Christian Terrorists" atmosphere would develop especially among the more conservative, authoritarian minded law and order politicians, where the President would proclaim to have "war powers" authority to ignore certain laws and aspects of the Constitution, which he feels restrict his Commander in Chief powers to use the nation's military to defeat the dangerous, Christian Terrorists, through military detention w/out charge or trial, b/c the nation must dicover what the Christian Terrorists know, through torture, and through surviellance agencies deployed against all Americans, including the Timians, who politicians and media pundits would say should have nothing to hide if they aren't a Christian Terrorist.
Of course this thought expirement hasn't happened yet, but it is a reminder how in the United States, which is supposedly "the land of the free", our democracy's could easily degrade further than they already have in the last eight plus years. The right's militant, neo-fascist logic of the "war on terroism" can and has badly damaged our democracy's institutions, our respect for our Constitution, and "way of life".
A present-day pundit, Fareed Zakaria, made the case in Monday's Was that we should react logically and not overreat out of politician-induced fear.
Overreacting to terrorist attacks plays into al-Qaeda's hands. It also provokes responses that are likely to be large-scale, expensive, ineffective and possibly counterproductive. More screening for every passenger makes no sense. When searching for needles in haystacks, adding hay doesn't help. What's needed is a larger, more robust watch list that is instantly available to all relevant government agencies. Almost 2 million people travel on planes in the United States every day. We need to isolate the tiny percentage of suspicious characters and search them, not cause needless fear in everyone else.
As for the calls to treat the would-be bomber as an enemy combatant, torture him and toss him into Guantanamo, God knows he deserves it. But keep in mind that the crucial intelligence we received was from the boy's father. If that father had believed that the United States was a rogue superpower that would torture and abuse his child without any sense of decency, would he have turned him in? To keep this country safe, we need many more fathers, uncles, friends and colleagues to have enough trust in America that they, too, would turn in the terrorist next door.
While Zakaria is mostly sane, other media members, politicians, and activists such as Liz Cheney advocate Constitution-shredding Bush-era counter-terrorism policies, which are a dangerous, unbounded expansion of Presidential power. These draconian, basically unlimited powers so favored by the Cheneys threaten our civil liberties, freedoms, and way of life. This major expansion of "big government" has real-world implications for our society which the "Tea Party" activists should be protesting along with other Americans. In the wake of the failed Christmas Day airline bombing by the "underware bomber" those on the hard-core right have said the failed bomber should be sent to military detention to be "interrogated", rather than tried in a federal, civilian court.
I don't think politicians on the right appreciate how dangerous these policies are for our society. What's to stop a future President from imprisoning Americans, and not just non-citizens in military detention in or outside of the United States?? Though Obama claims as President he has the power fitting a Monarchy to imprison non-citizens in military detention, he doesn't go as far as the Bush-Cheney Presidency did in arguing before federal judges that they have powers of a dictator to imprison Americans in military detention without due process or safeguards of a jury trial in civilian court. This unconstitutional detention power by the the Bush-Cheney Cabal wasn't only hypothetical, on several instances after 9/11 they did imprison several Americans by the military.
As a democracy with a Constitution this should've caused far more alarm than it did within all elements of the political spectrum, going forward we need to call out and oppose the right's Constitution-shredding, disturbingly militant, and neo-fascist logic of their "War on Terrorism" hysteria.
Our overreaction to terrorism, and enactment of draonian, civil liberty restricting laws and policies on us all, threaten our freedoms and way of life far more than pathetic terrorists ever will.