newsrackblog.com

Thanks to the latest advances in technology, we can now not just be subject to electronic surveillance without warrant, but can also examine with great precision the laws allegedly permitting the government to do so. Surveillance law expert David Kris has helpfully provided a color-coded document showing just how much FISA has changed since 9/11/2001.

Orange underlined and strikeout font show additions and deletions due to the “Protect America Act” cave-in from earlier this summer, red edits are for those due to the 2001 “USA PATRIOT Act”, and so forth. A key is provided at the top of the document.

Via Kim Zetter at “Threat Level,” a WIRED Magazine blog.

1. PLEASE BRIEFLY DESCRIBE THE EMOTIONS THAT THE THOUGHT OF YOUR OWN DEATH AROUSES IN YOU.
2. JOT DOWN, AS SPECIFICALLY AS YOU CAN, WHAT YOU THINK WILL HAPPEN TO YOU AS YOU PHYSICALLY DIE AND ONCE YOU ARE PHYSICALLY DEAD.
   

These two questions are part of one kind of psychological experiment* designed to measure the difference in subsequent behavior between people confronted with thinking about their own death, and those not so confronted. Using methods like these, psychology researchers are zeroing in on a truth that is still not well enough, or widely enough, understood about events like 9/11: they really do change everything — that is, they really do change the way people, in the aggregate, think about everything.

Mortality salience
In “Death Grip: How political psychology explains Bush’s ghastly success,” John Judis of The New Republic provides an overview of this research, called variously “mortality salience theory” or “terror management theory.” Judis recalls going door to door in West Virginia in the June and then just before the 2004 election, and being struck by how skeptical voter attitudes towards Bush had reversed and solidified into Bush support. In contrast to “rational choice theory” which presupposes, well, rational choice, Judis explains that

[t]here is, however, one group of scholars — members of the relatively new field of political psychology — who are trying to explain voter preferences that can’t be easily quantified … the research that is perhaps most relevant to the 2004 election has been conducted by psychologists Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. In the the early 1980s, they developed what they clumsily called “terror management theory.” Their idea was not about how to clear the subways in the event of an attack, but about how people cope with the terrifying and potentially paralyzing realization that, as human beings, we are destined to die. Their experiments showed that the mere thought of one’s mortality can trigger a range of emotions — from disdain for other races, religions, and nations, to a preference for charismatic over pragmatic leaders, to a heightened attraction to traditional mores.

(Links added.) Judis goes on to explain how the three researchers were influenced by the work of Ernest Becker, whose final book, “The Denial of Death,” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1974. Based on Judis’ explanation — but without having read Becker’s book — I’d venture to say the fear of death is a subsurface foundation of Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs.”

Judis describes remarkable and apparently widely reproduced results indicating that people recently confronted with thoughts of their own death or death in general are more likely to

• take a negative view of essays critical of the United States (American respondents),
• take a negative view of essays by “outsiders” (such as Jews, in a survey of Christians, or Turks, in a survey of Germans)
• favor a “charismatic” leader telling them they were not ordinary, but part of a special nation

Moreover, the effects remained when the respondents were unconscious of what was going on — and they were readily extended to the effects of reminders of 9/11. Similar to how subliminal exposure to the word “death” caused respondents to complete “coff-” as “coffin” rather than “coffee”, subliminal exposure to the phrases “9/11″ and “WTC” did so as well.

How to hack a presidential election
In a key 2004 experiment, Rutgers students were subjected to mortality reminders, and then compared to a control group for their likelihood to vote for Bush. The control group favored Kerry by four to one — while those reminded of death favored Bush by two to one. Judis:

This strongly suggested that Bush’s popularity was sustained by mortality reminders. The psychologists concluded in a paper published after the election that the government terror warnings, the release of Osama bin Laden’s video on October 29, and the Bush campaign’s reiteration of the terror threat… were integral to Bush’s victory.

It certainly didn’t hurt.

What remains unclear from Judis’ article is why not everyone responded the same way to 9/11, or to reminders about it. Of course, not everyone in the classic “mortality salience” experiments reacted the same way either; maybe it’s some uncharted psychological predisposition, maybe it’s a difference in what happened to them the morning of the experiment.

Likewise, maybe Americans with an actively hostile stance towards Bush at the time of 9/11, or thereafter, were “immunized” from the “mortality salience” effect Pyszczynski et al describe. Or maybe the “mortality salience” effect was enhanced for people with deeper empathies for the victims, higher exposure to TV broadcasts about the attacks, or being part of a crowd or a group co-experiencing the attacks or their aftermath. Looking overseas, maybe repeat exposure to mortality reminders dulls the effect — after all, the IRA or the Red Army Fraction terror campaigns in the U.K. and Germany didn’t result in the same kind of “ghastly successes” that Bush, Rove, and Cheney celebrated.

But maybe that’s also because the peoples involved still remember far worse than a band of criminals on a terror spree — and because their political systems made it harder for a ‘commander in chief’ to exploit fear the way our current rulers have.

“Nobody jumped.”

Falling man, 9/11. Richard Drew, AP.

Similarly, certain elements of the American reaction to the deaths of 9/11 hint at a particular American vulnerability. The national allergic reaction to the “Falling Man” photo is Exhibit A. Under guise of outrage, concern for privacy, and the welfare of children reading newspapers, to name a few, that photo — arguably the Tomb of the Unknown 9/11 Victim — was “airbrushed from history,” as the Falling Man documentary film by Henry Singer and Richard Numeroff put it.**

The need to deny that people in extremis had to choose one nightmarish death over another was widespread, as writer Tom Junod found when he set out to investigate who the iconic falling man was:

I talked to the coroner’s office in New York; I asked them for a count of how many people jumped that day. And what the woman from the coroner’s office said was ‘Nobody jumped that day. They were blown out, they were forced out… we don’t say that they jumped. Nobody jumped.’

That just made me feel that there was just something going on that was not familiar American territory about dealing with tragedy. There were just things about that day you weren’t supposed to say, you weren’t supposed to see, you weren’t supposed to talk about.”

Fear itself
We are frequently reminded that the next terror attack is a matter of “when, not if.” We should see such reminders for what they are: the self-serving comments of those who need American citizens to remain in a defensive crouch, dreading the next blow, applauding whatever is done to ward it off.

It’s prudent to identify threats and reduce or eliminate them; it’s prudent to calmly and quietly prepare for what may come, so attacks are thwarted and those that aren’t are survived by as many as possible. But it’s also prudent to steel ourselves for what happens after an attack: anger, grief, and fear — and the exploitation of that anger, grief and fear, then or later, by whatever unlikely figures (Dubya, Rudy, etc.) happened to be on hand to simulate leadership in our hours of need.

Because if Pyszczynski et al are right, it’s not just the Roves, the Bushs and the Cheneys I’ll need to be on my guard against — I’ll need to keep a close eye on myself as well. It’s not that there’s nothing to fear but fear itself — it’s that fear, particularly the fear of death, preys on us in ways that predictably distort and damage the way we live.

=====
* From the “Research Materials” section of the Terror Management Theory site maintained by TMT researcher Jamie Arndt (University of Missouri).
** Tellingly, the US debut of the film is only today, on the Discovery Channel; it’s already been seen in Britain and Britain, in March and September of last year.

NOTES: I first wrote about Pyszczynski, Greenberg, and Solomon in August, 2004: “Fear works. What works better?” A documentary — “Flight From Death: A Quest for Immortality” — has been made about the issues raised by their work and that of Ernest Becker; judging by the trailer on YouTube, it looks extraordinary. A more recent post of mine — “The Illuminated Crowd” — is also an attempt at discussing the political psychology of 9/11, in reaction to a remarkable sculpture of the same name in Montreal, and the famous work “Crowds and Power” by Elias Canetti.

EDITS, 9/10: final sentence, “applauding” line, 2d footnote added; “American citizens” for “country.”
UPDATE, 9/10: Surprisingly, there’ve been only a few other reactions to Judis’s article so far. Among them, Kim Sbarcea (”Thinking Shift”) notes that Giuliani is ringing the changes on death reminders; Alan Bock sees something perverse in seemingly celebrating events like 9/11 or Katrina, rather than simply commemorating them. After having written a five part series in 2006 on fear and environmentalism, David Roberts (”Gristmill”) uses Judis’ article to argue that “fear of death leads to authoritarianism, not sustainability”; many comments followed. (Via Ken Stokes of “SusHI”). Via her blog, Rachel Maddow discussed it on her Air America radio show on 8/31.
2D UPDATE, 9/10: OK, a lot more reactions to the accessible online version of “Death Grip,” including Avedon Carol and (via her) Kevin Maroney.

“A crowd has gathered, facing a light, an illumination brought about by a fire, an
event, an ideology - or an ideal. The strong light casts shadows, and as the light
moves toward the back and diminishes, the mood degenerates; rowdiness, disorder
and violence occur, showing the fragile nature of man. Illumination, hope,
involvement, hilarity, irritation, fear, illness, violence, murder and death
- the flow of man’s emotion through space.”

– Raymond Mason, The Illuminated Crowd
(sculpture and words, 1985, Montreal)

Bear with me here; I doubt this will be an essay for the ages with a neatly constructed argument and conclusion. Instead, I’m going to wander around a bit, because I’m not sure where this is all headed myself.

We came across this sculpture while wandering about Montreal last week. It’s on the Avenue McGill, just up the street from Indigo Books, and just down the street from McGill University, seemingly just another piece of plastic/corporate/civic art, in this case set in front of a faceless black glass and steel headquarters for one BNP Paribas Bank.

Another crowd, sixteen years later

Onlookers react to WTC collapse.
Angel Franco/New York Times.
Also at DigitalJournalist.com

I’d never heard of it. But as I came closer, and read the words, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. It was like coming across a prediction of that September day going on six years ago, a prediction of how we — or at least I and many like myself — would react.

On the surface, of course, are the immediate reactions to an immediate, transfixing event. Mason’s sculpture is all but a pre-enactment of photos like this one.* But Mason had more in mind than a crowd merely gaping at a disaster; it seems to me he was also driving at the repercussions over time of the fire, event, ideology — or the fiery ideological event. As the description implies, you find expressions of despair, rage, fear, and finally acts of violence as you walk along the side of the sculpture group.

And that surely fits, too.

There’s been an interesting set of posts touching on this lately. Roy Edroso’s Writing Lesson contrasts a forthright statement by one individual, Christopher Hitchens, with a less forthright paraphrase of the same by Rod Dreher. In his 2002 Boston Globe piece, Hitchens recalls his sense of exhilaration as the implications he saw in 9/11 crystallized for him:

In order to get my own emotions out of the way, I should say briefly that on that day I shared the general register of feeling, from disgust to rage, but was also aware of something that would not quite disclose itself. It only became fully evident quite late that evening. And to my surprise (and pleasure), it was exhilaration. I am not particularly a war lover, and on the occasions when I have seen warfare as a traveling writer, I have tended to shudder. But here was a direct, unmistakable confrontation between everything I loved and everything I hated. On one side, the ethics of the multicultural, the secular, the skeptical, and the cosmopolitan. (Those are the ones I love, by the way.) On the other, the arid monochrome of dull and vicious theocratic fascism. I am prepared for this war to go on for a very long time. I will never become tired of waging it, because it is a fight over essentials. And because it is so interesting.**

As Edroso acknowledges, this is at least interesting and honest: “[o]ne of the things I still admire about Hitchens’ writing is that I believe him: not his belligerent analyses, but his portrayal of his own thoughts and feelings.” And in the daisy chain of posts leading back from Dreher through Ross Douthat to the original rediscoverer, Julian Sanchez, there’s a common thread that there was something oddly “special” and unifying, even exhilarating, about 9/11. Sanchez:

…it is hard not to get caught up in that feeling. I recall Camus writing something similar about the feeling among members of the French Resistance, who in conditions that surely licensed despair felt a kind of supernatural energy at the chance to throw themselves into a cause so clearly vital and right, who saw that never again would their lives be so invested with meaning.

Canetti the Inevitable
But I think what Mason’s sculpture suggests — clearly, it proves nothing, it’s “just” a very interesting sculpture — is that there may have also been less to it than that.*** I hesitate to cite this, because I haven’t read it in full, so it seems like name dropping. Plus it seems a little wide of the mark in some ways. But here goes anyway, from Elias Canetti’s famous work “Crowds and Power”:

The most important occurrence within the crowd is the discharge. Before this the crowd does not actually exist; it is the discharge which creates it. This is the moment when all who belong to the crowd get rid of their differences and feel equal.

These differences are mainly imposed from outside; they are distinctions of rank, status and property. Men as individuals are always conscious of these distinctions; they weigh heavily on them and keep them firmly apart from one another… [...]

Only together can men free themselves from their burdens of distance; and this, precisely, is what happens in a crowd. During the discharge distinctions are thrown off and all feel equal. In that density, where there is scarcely any space between, and body presses against body, each man is as near the other as he is to himself; and an immense feeling of relief ensues. It is for the sake of this blessed moment, when no-one is greater or better than another, that people become a crowd.

But the moment of discharge, so desired and so happy, contains its own danger. It is based on an illusion; the people who suddenly feel equal have not really become equal; nor will they feel equal forever.

Like Mason’s sculpture, this proves nothing, but it’s surely apropos. I think many of us — again, me included, but maybe also Hitchens included — did feel a certain relief and exhilaration at being “united” about something again. It’s very seductive to be part of a crowd, even a virtual one glued to our TV sets, or our online news reports — or our warblogger echo chamber. In Terrorism, Crowds and Power, and the Dogs of War, Lesley Brill wrote:

Alongside the grief, fright, and disgust, however, one sensed a swelling pleasure, even exuberance, as among the stunned, delighted audience of an over-the-top horror movie. Was it because at last, after nearly thirty years, there was a real battle to join? [...]

Here, finally, came a crisis worthy of our half-trillion-dollar-a-year armed forces, one offering moral certitude and potential redemption. With it arrived a dreary, increasingly dangerous bonus: “After 9/11” instantly replaced “In the new Millennium” as the signal cliché for declaring Now to be definitively different from an outmoded Then.

So what
So how to wrap up? What to conclude? Like I said, I’m not sure; this is all pretty tenuous, plucked helter skelter from sociological meditation, art, and sundry quick stops along the Internet.

I guess it makes me not dismiss Dreher’s allegedly “groupthink” reaction too much. It’s just that the “clarity” he felt wasn’t clarity so much as being spellbound and thinking that was clarity. At any rate, this sense of awesome togetherness was real — and it was predictable.

The 9/11 moment was designed to be a gigantic groupthink moment, a “where were you when” moment — an illuminated crowd moment. A nation in its millions transfixed, grieving, enraged — and yes, comforted by the knowledge that you were part of a crowd, that nearly everyone else was feeling what you were feeling, too. I’m not saying Dreher was more honest than Hitchens, just that I think his reactions were believable too. (Not especially worthy, just believable.) Many people thought not in “I,” but in “we.”

So when Sanchez argues that Rove misplayed that violin, I suppose I disagree a bit with that, too. There may have been no good tune to play on that violin; this wasn’t ever going to be the few, the proud, the Resistance, this was going to be an echoing mass moment on CNN, brought to you by Bin Laden first, and Rove and Bush thereafter. I don’t disavow how I felt or how angry I was or that I wanted to see Bin Laden pounded flat or that I liked the unity I felt in that. I do see how predictable I was, and how easily the country (and I) could be played for suckers in the ensuing months and years.

So what’s the antidote to all that? Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe that’s people for ya, at least most people.

But maybe being a little forewarned is to be a little forearmed if there’s another 9/11. Beware of that pointing guy, saying “follow me, children! I’m sure I know what it all means.” Or maybe the essential antidote is simply remembering Teresa Nielsen Hayden’s insight:

“Just because you’re on their side doesn’t mean they’re on your side.”

Maybe less wallowing in the grief of it all would be wise, too. But good luck with that. We’re not wise, we’re hominids, we’ll grieve, we’ll wallow. When I see those pictures, I know I still do.

=====
* From the “Onlookers” section of the “Here is New York” site archiving 9/11-related photography. For more onlooker/crowd comparisons with the sculpture, see also “the illuminated crowd,” a pooled shared online photo site at Flickr.com.
** Hitchens link via a comment by doghouse riley at Edroso’s post; d.r. points out that the article was rather selectively excerpted by Dreher. Since my convention is to italicize quotes, I’ve replaced Hitchens’s original italicization with underlining, but the effect may be slightly different for some readers.
*** Both a New York Times review of a gallery retrospective and the table of contents to a book by Michael Edwards imply Mason was fascinated by crowds as a subject for his art. The fascination was shared by at least one friend of his, Georg Eisler, who created several paintings about them including “Hillsborough,” about a 1989 stadium panic disaster in Liverpool.

Giuliani warns of ‘new 9/11′ if Dems win (Roger Simon, “Politico”):

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

Atrios rephrases:

Unless Rudy and the Republicans run the government, 9/11 could happen.

Oh, wait…

Lest we forget, in the summer of 2001 CIA people were running around with their hair on fire, famously warning “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” But they didn’t just produce a memo, they went directly to Crawford, Texas to brief a vacationing GOP president on their concerns. From the preface to Ron Suskind’s book “The One Percent Doctrine” (2006):

He’s not much of a reader, this President, and never has been… He’s not a President who sees much value in hearing from a wide array of voices — he has made that clear… He may not have had a great deal of experience, especially in foreign affairs, before arriving the job, but — because of his trust in [his] interpretive abilities — he doesn’t view that as a deficit.

The trap, of course, is that [sometimes the] thing to focus on, at certain moments, is

what someone says, not who is saying it, or how they’re saying it.

And, at an eyeball-to-eyeball intelligence briefing during this urgent summer, George W. Bush seems to have made the wrong choice.

He looked hard at the panicked CIA briefer.

“All right,” he said. “You’ve covered your ass, now.”

These people have no business lecturing anyone about how to tie their shoes, let alone about national security. The GOP nominated and then installed a lazy, stupid figurehead to handle the national affairs of 300 million people, and it was always clear we’d just have to hope we’d somehow muddle through with the moron. Sadly, our luck ran out on 9/11.

When the real world rears its head — whether it’s Osama, or Katrina, or global warming — it’s not attitude, it’s not connections, it’s not ideology, faith, or fear-mongering that matters. It’s intelligence, competence, and honor. But judging by the way both Bush and Giuliani seem to be among the sorry “best” the GOP has to offer, there’s just not much of that to be found in a feckless, worthless, corrupt Republican Party.

=====
UPDATE, 4/26: Steve Benen (”The Carpetbagger Report”) grades Democratic responses, giving highest marks to Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee. You can join the DNC and send your own response to the Giuliani campaign. Mine:

Dear Mr. Giuliani,

If Bush weren’t such a colossal screwup, we wouldn’t even need to be talking about 9/11. But lucky for you he was — that sure bailed out *your* political career. Never mind about the apology, I know it isn’t in you.

Contemptuously, etcetera etcetera

UPDATE, 4/27: Roy Edroso (”alicublog”) provides one-stop debunking of Giuliani’s tenure as mayor of NYC — including his 9/11 glory days. Follow every link; then blogroll or bookmark Edroso, if you haven’t already. He’s one of the best (and funniest) bloggers out there.

More from Barton Gellman’s review of the new Ron Suskind book, “The One Percent Doctrine“:

The book’s opening anecdote tells of an unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

Now beat it. But wait — there’s more!

Three months later, with bin Laden holed up in the Afghan mountain redoubt of Tora Bora, the CIA official managing the Afghanistan campaign, Henry A. Crumpton (now the State Department’s counterterrorism chief), brought a detailed map to Bush and Cheney. White House accounts have long insisted that Bush had every reason to believe that Pakistan’s army and pro-U.S. Afghan militias had bin Laden cornered and that there was no reason to commit large numbers of U.S. troops to get him. But Crumpton’s message in the Oval Office, as told through Suskind, was blunt: The surrogate forces were “definitely not” up to the job, and “we’re going to lose our prey if we’re not careful.”

“All right, Crumpton. You’ve covered your ass, now.” Now beat it.

I’d prefer to think this is just run of the mill (for Bush/Cheney) extreme fecklessness and incompetence, rather than yet more high crimes and misdemeanors by our ruling duumvirate. But it seems important — for their sake! — to try to rule out darker explanations for why Bush didn’t care much about an imminent attack, and didn’t heed warnings the attacker would elude capture.*

Come November, there should be some investigations. Make them happen. Call your Democratic Congressman, or your Democratic challenger and let them know you want these matters — the August 6 memo, the Downing Street memo, NSA warrantless surveillance, Tora Bora, torture, Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Katrina, and more — investigated, with a view to impeachment if warranted.

=====
* Reminds me of the recent Atlantic Monthly article about al-Zarqawi by Mary Ann Weaver:

During my time in Jordan, I asked a number of officials what they considered to be the most curious aspect of the relationship between the U.S. and al-Zarqawi, other than the fact that the Bush administration had inflated him.

One of them said, “The six times you could have killed Zarqawi, and you didn’t.”

The Washington Post’s Sari Horwitz and Christian Davenport report (”Terrorism Could Hurl D.C. Area Into Turmoil: Despite Efforts Since 9/11, Response Plans Incomplete”):

On the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation’s capital lacks a comprehensive way to tell people what to do in a state of emergency, especially a terrorist attack with no warning, according to law enforcement and Homeland Security officials involved in emergency preparations.

“What we lack is a coordinated public information system in the event of a major incident,” said David Snyder, a member of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments’ homeland security task force. “What we need is a system that will function instantaneously and automatically every time. . . . That doesn’t exist now.”

Local leaders are taking note of the bungled Katrina response:

“For four years, we’ve been hearing from the feds that they are going to take charge so we can respond to any catastrophe that comes our way,” said Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D). “And here’s the first major test, and it’s a failure. . . . I’ve lost confidence in [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] to come in and be part of the solution.

“We’ve got to take all the plans that relied on the federal government and throw them out and start over again,” Duncan said.

Local emergency responses to what turned out to be false alarms have not helped build confidence, either. While the nation’s attention was captured by the helter-skelter response to hapless pilots flying into the restricted airspace, there have been more serious lapses. For instance, an anthrax scare in March resulted in hundreds of Pentagon employees receiving antibiotics — yet no local health authorities were informed. If the attack had been real, many people would have died who might have been saved, given the rapid progression of the disease.

The article points out that for some kinds of emergency, the best option may be to “shelter in place” — not try to evacuate, but stay where you are.

But some local leaders are worried that the notion of staying put goes so strongly against human nature that in an emergency, people would flee no matter what they were told — especially after seeing how long it took to get help to the disadvantaged in New Orleans.

“I think people will look at Katrina and think of 9/11 and think what you’re supposed to do in an event of an attack is to run,” [DC delegate Eleanor Holmes] Norton said. “And I think it’s a failure that that’s what people think. The best thing to do most of the time is to stay in place.”

No, no, no, no, no, Ms. Norton! Get with the program! The best thing to do will be whatever “Drownie” and his FEMA flunkies decide is the best p.r. move for Master.

=====
UPDATE, 9/11: How FEMA delivered Florida for Bush, by Charles Mahtesian, govexec.com, 11/03/2004:”Seldom has any federal agency had the opportunity to so directly and uniquely alter the course of a presidential election, and seldom has any agency delivered for a president as FEMA did in Florida this fall.” Via digby. Nice to know they can deliver when it really counts.

Rejoice, Comrades! The September 11 State Sponsored March To Support Our Troops As They Struggle For Freedom and Permanent Military Bases in Oil Rich Territories has the Support Of Our Glorious State’s Free Press, A Vanguard Sandwich Maker, and the Selflessly Patriotic Military Equipment Industry:

We are proud to have the following supporters for the inaugural America Supports You Freedom Walk:

Stars and Stripes
Pentagon Federal Credit Union
Lockheed Martin
Subway
ABC WJLA-TV Channel 7 and News Channel 8
WTOP News Radio Network
Washington Post
Washington Convention & Tourism Corporation

Comrades! Together, We Can Join With Our Nation’s Military in the Inaugural Appropriation of the Anniversary of Our Nation’s Great Tragedy for the Political Purposes of Our Leader and His Trusted Advisors! They Have Made Our Grief Their Own by Eminent Domain!

Comrades! Join With Me! Send Patriotic Messages to All September 11 March Supporters, but Especially to Our Glorious Free Press, Sharing Your Appreciation for its Support for This March and for its Patriotic Role in The War Struggle War That Has Made This March So Necessary To the Continued Good Fortunes of Our Leader!

Comrades! Join With Me! Register for the Inaugural State Sponsored September 11 March To Support Our Troops As They Struggle For Freedom and Permanent Military Bases in Oil Rich Territories!

And remember to dress appropriately! America Supports You Freedom Walk!

=====
UPDATE, 8/13: The Editor & Publisher’s Joe Strupp reports: “The Washington Post has no plans to withdraw its co-sponsorship of a controversial Sept. 11 memorial walk being organized by the Department of Defense, according to Publisher Bo Jones. But, he said the paper would pull out if the event turns out to be some kind of pro-war or political march.” (Via The Left Coaster) The walk concludes with a concert by Clint Black; Strupp concludes his article with the lyrics of Black’s country hit, “Iraq and I roll.” The Washington Post: stupid? Servile? Both? Our lines are open — you make the call!
UPDATE, 8/17: Post Drops Plan to Promote Pentagon Event
UPDATE, 8/22: Sunday New York Times lead editorial: “The event is an ill-considered attempt to link the Iraq war to the terrorist attacks of 2001, and misguided in almost every conceivable way.”

SPIEGEL reports on an ongoing legal drama in Germany that has gone unnoticed so far in the U.S.: the German supreme court in Karlsruhe may well throw out Moroccan national Mounir Al Motassadeq’s conviction for 3000 counts of accessory to murder in connection with the 9/11 attacks. The decision is expected on March 4.

As with the Mzoudi case, captured terrorist Ramzi Binalshibh plays a key role in the legal battle. The fact that the United States refuses to make him available to the German legal system, where he might be able to provide exculpatory evidence for Motassadeq (and Mzoudi) is a central point for the German supreme court. From a Berlin Morgenpost report at the end of January:

“If official agencies block evidence and thus prevent a complete gathering of evidence, an especially careful honoring of their evidence is not called for,” said presiding judge Klaus Tolksdorf. His colleague Walter Winkler agreed: “The question in such a case, in which the accused is deprived of exculpatory means, is whether the accused can be the loser at the end of the day.”

From the defense point of view [Binalshibh] testimony would have been of central importance to the trial. “There was no better witness than Ramzi Binalshibh”, said attorney Josef Gräßle-Münscher. His Hamburg colleague Gerhard Strate emphasized that because this important exculpatory witness was not heard, the “right to a fair trial” guaranteed in the European Human Rights Convention was damaged.

It’s not clear to me why Binalshibh would say anything other than what was needed to spring two (alleged) co-conspirators. But the German judges would presumably have had the sense to take Binalshibh’s testimony with a pound or two of salt — if they were allowed to hear it. There must have been some way to provide the German legal system access to Binalshibh while meeting U.S. needs for security: closed-circuit hookup to Guantanamo, closed German courtroom, penalties for breaking whatever agreement is reached…something.

There would even have been a German precedent. Once upon a time, German legislators and courts were quite willing to make new rules as they went along as they dealt with the Rote Armee Fraktion (”Baader Meinhof”) terrorists. The results were the Stammheim court and prison complex and designer laws temporarily limiting access to the captured terrorists. Similar measures, updated to the current situation and technologies, might have been a way around the impasse — assuming there was enough German political good will to work with, of course.

It’s cases like this one and the Mzoudi case earlier that can’t help but raise doubts about the Bush administration’s legal strategy. It’s possible but seems unlikely the Bush administration has no firm opinion on the guilt of these two individuals. It seems more likely they do think these two belong behind bars; in that case, they’re certainly not doing enough to help keep them there.

Motassadeq is definitely an unpleasant young man. In his New Republic article about Hitler and current-day Hitlerism, Omer Bartov writes: Ralf Götsche, who shared the student dormitory with Motassadeq, testified that the accused had said: “What Hitler did to the Jews was not at all bad,” and commented that “Motassadeq’s attitude was blatantly anti-Semitic.” That doesn’t prove he’s guilty, of course, but it does suggest he’s just the kind of shriveled nut you’d expect among the 9/11 killers.

Jim Henley welcomes John Kerry’s view that the Administration is abusing Americans’ fear of further attacks (“George Bush has announced that he intends to make national security the key issue of this campaign: preemption, war on terror,” Kerry said. “It’s gonna be another one of these ‘culture of fear’ elections.”) After considering a David Brooks column, Jim adds:

If you still feel “every day” the way you felt on September 12, 2001, and you did not personally lose a loved one to the savages, there is something wrong with you. Snap out of it. You are indulging yourself and it is unseemly.

I don’t know which is more unseemly: to indulge in obsessive fear, or to presume to judge someone else is doing so. Let’s call it a tie. I’ve never liked someone else sticking my neck out for them, or prescribing the level of risk I “ought” to be willing to tolerate.

To be clear, I don’t feel like it’s “9/12 every day,” and some of Brooks’ language was a little over the top for me. But to the extent it reflected that 9/11 was a focusing event, I agree with Brooks’ language a lot more than I do with Henley’s. There are people out there who would be happy to slaughter me and my family and my neighbors in their thousands, and lack only the means and opportunity to do so. There are more people out there who would dance in the streets once it happened. And there are more yet who would take two minutes of silence — who knows, maybe even three — to mourn the victims. And then go about their business as usual.

So I’m not inclined to apologize about thinking a lot about 9/11, about how to prevent or at least put off another day like it, even if that might earn me the label “sniveling coward.” And ceteris paribus I’d prefer a president who does dwell on 9/11 to one who doesn’t. The issue is what is undue fear-mongering, and what is clear-eyed understanding of the dangers around us.

Postscript

A year or so ago I had a talk with someone who’s much more in Henley’s corner about these matters. Things got a little heated, and when I suggested that he might be able to afford a relaxed view given the small town he lives in, far from any likely attack — not Jim’s situation, by the way — he got upset. “If you feel that threatened, move!” he said. Me and the rest of the eastern seaboard? Where to? We’ll be right over.

Ken Pollack: Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong, Atlantic Monthly, January 2004:

Imagine that you were a CIA analyst in June of 2000 and heard Saddam make the following statement: “If the world tells us to abandon all our weapons and keep only swords, we will do that. We will destroy all the weapons, if they destroy their weapons. But if they keep a rifle and then tell me that I have the right to possess only a sword, then we would say no. As long as the rifle has become a means to defend our country against anybody who may have designs against it, then we will try our best to acquire the rifle.”

President Bush, 2003 State of the Union address:

Before September the 11th, many in the world believed that Saddam Hussein could be contained. But chemical agents, lethal viruses and shadowy terrorist networks are not easily contained. Imagine those 19 hijackers with other weapons and other plans — this time armed by Saddam Hussein. It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known. We will do everything in our power to make sure that that day never comes.

Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not an option.

Former CIA director Robert Gates to Jeffrey Goldberg of the New Yorker:

“If the stakes and the consequences are small, you’re going to want ninety-per-cent assurance. It’s a risk calculus. On the other hand, if your worry is along the lines of what Rumsfeld is saying — another major attack on the U.S., possibly with biological or chemical weapons — and you look at the consequences of September 11th, then the equation of risk changes. You have to be prepared to go forward with a lot lower level of confidence in the evidence you have. A fifty-per-cent chance of such an attack happening is so terrible that it changes the calculation of risk.“ (via ‘Armed Liberal’ in “Winds of Change”; emphases added here and above)

I agree with Bush’s and Gates’ statements above. But I also agree with George Will — at least this part:

It would have been much better if the president and others, speaking about Iraqi weapons, had said “we believe” rather than “we know.”

After the war, in May, on Polish television, President Bush said, “We found the weapons of mass destruction. You know, we found biological laboratories.” No, we did not. “So what’s the difference?” said the president in December about the failure to find WMDs, because “if (Saddam) were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger.” Such casualness, which would be alarming in any president, is especially so in one whose vaulting foreign policy ambitions have turned his first term into Woodrow Wilson’s third term, devoted to planting democracy and “universal values” in hitherto inhospitable places.

Bush and others in his administration oversold a good case. While some — Powell, Rice — stayed within the bounds of the assertable, I think, at least in their most famous comments, others — Cheney, Rumsfeld — did not. Bush is responsible for that, and for allowing an exaggerated case to take root in American public opinion. Even if you consider the war a good development, on balance, getting there by a message that was deceptive at worst and artfully muddled at ‘best’ was not.

There are plenty of other reasons to vote against Bush, including Ashcroft, Delay, the Supreme Court, and the debts my kid will face paying off tax breaks for the wealthy. But I would prefer to vote for a Democrat who won’t give the Saddams of the world the benefit of the doubt, and who will hunt Bin Laden and his ilk relentlessly. And I don’t mean that I want Osama or Zawahiri ‘brought to justice.’ I mean that I want them dead.

I think — I hope — the remaining strong Democratic candidates ‘get it,’ though I think Gephardt or Lieberman were stronger on that score. I disagree with Kerry if he truly considers Al Qaeda style terrorism merely a ‘criminal’ matter. It isn’t. It’s a war with stateless pirates. I also disagree with Dean if he truly thinks we’re not safer with Saddam out of the picture. We are.

If a Democrat is to be elected president of this country, I don’t want him to have secured his election on such ground that he’s not inclined to aggressively defend it — pre-emptively and unilaterally, if necessary. We shouldn’t make that decision without good intelligence. But neither should we insist on proof positive of an imminent threat with dictators and war criminals like Saddam Hussein.