Terror and Crime, Crime and Punishment, Terror and Limbo

Most Americans, watching the events of that terrible morning in September 2001 can remember exactly the anxiety, fear, anger, and uncertainty. For many that day marked very personal losses -- losses that happened as the result of the hatred that some people harbor for everything that America was on that day and hatred for everything that we stood for.

While the murder of thousands of people felt like nothing short of war, it was not an act of war in the traditional sense. No specific nation threw down a glove and said to the United States, "we'll meet you at the playground after school and we'll settle this." It was a senseless lashing out against America, American values and the West in general. And if the terrorists who attacked us that day wanted to spur a disproportionate reaction, they got their wish.

We made war on Afghanistan after the attack because Afghanistan's leaders actively and consciously made that country a base of operations for Al Qaeda. We invaded Iraq because, the thinking went, the Iraqi leader hated the United States, the Iraqi leader had used and pursued the development of weapons of mass destruction, and the Iraqi leader could and would provide such weapons to those who hated the United States. After loosing the lives of thousands of additional Americans in Iraq and many, many more local national civilians most Americans have reconsidered the hasty nature and the logic of our invasion of Iraq and found that we sometimes ought not take counsel in our fears. Right?

And then came the attempted attack on an American airliner on Christmas day 2009 and the insensate response to it led by an American right wing who are more concerned with political advantage than national security. The argument is that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- the underwear bomber -- was arrested by the FBI and has been charged in Federal court for his action. For a minute, let us ignore the fact that a similar attack, also on a Christmas day, was attempted in 2001 by Richard Reid. The exploding article of clothing on that event was his shoes. Almost immediately, we learned that the shoes and the underwear both contained the same type of explosive material. Both men were motivated by the same hatred of the United States, and both were arrested by the FBI and charged by the Justice Department. Reid now spends his days by himself at a Federal prison and will continue to do so until he drops dead. He does not spend time in the yard recruiting counterfeiters into the Jihad. He sees no one who is not an officer of the Bureau of Prisons.

Other than the item of exploding clothing involved, Reid and Abdulmutallab's cases are identical. And yet the political reaction is very different. Take for example Senator Joe Lieberman (Free Agent -- Connecticut). Lieberman, chairman of the Senate homeland security committee is livid that Abdulmutallab has been treated in the same manner as Richard Reid. The fact that we have a president on this occasion that is a member of the Democratic party is the only difference between Reid and Abdulmutallab -- unless exploding underwear is much more offensive to Lieberman's sensibilities than exploding shoes.

Lieberman's argument is that Abdulmutallab should have been placed in military custody and interrogated instead of what actually happened. What actually happened was that he was placed in FBI custody and, well, interrogated. Let us forget for a moment that the FBI is our nation's counter-intelligence agency and that counter-terrorism is not something the FBI was experimenting with on with Abdulmutallab. In fact, the book written by the American officer who interrogated Saddam Hussein while he was in military custody in Iraq was written by an FBI agent. Some, those people consisting at least of me, think that the counter-intelligence part of the FBI and the purely law enforcement part of the FBI should be separated and that we should put the new counter-intelligence agency under the Department of Homeland Security. I think the cabinet level department charged with defending the homeland should actually have an intelligence agency as part of it. But never mind that, let's argue about using the FBI is a sign of weakness in a Democratic president, but a sign of strength and wisdom in a Republican one.

So the heart of Senator Lieberman's ire must lie elsewhere. Perhaps it is the fact that Abdulmutallab has afforded constitutional rights to silence, an attorney, and all of that other, sissy stuff. Remember Jeffrey Dahmer? Jeffrey Dahmer murdered and raped 17 people -- mostly teenaged boys. He raped them and he ate them. While much about his existence on this earth is offensive, the fact that, during his trial, he had protection from self-incrimination and counsel fails to offend me. Dahmer had a fair and public trial and was found guilty by a jury of his peers, sentenced to 957 years in prison. He was also beaten to death in the prison gym. We may not agree on how, but justice was served.

In the war on terror, Americans do not seek justice, we seek victory. In order to obtain victory, we do need intelligence that will enable us to defeat all of our enemy's efforts to attack the United States. This seems like a simple thing -- witness the American victory in the war on drugs, the war on deadbeat dads, and the war on driving while text-messaging.

While the American government should make every effort to thwart those who would attack us with deadly footwear or with lethal intimate apparel, we must also not become the nation that the terrorists believe we are. Every family member, loved one and friend of those killed on 9-11 and every family member, loved one, and friend of those who have died in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would love to have the opportunity to beat a terrorist to death with a free weight, but as a nation of laws, our actions have consequences.

For better or worse, modern technology and modern popular culture means that everyone in the world knows what is going on inside of the United States. It is important that the America they think of is the America that wrote the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution -- that we are the America that helped defeat fascism and communism and went to the moon -- not that we are the America that ignores our own laws and puts people in limbo off-shore in order to avoid our own Constitution. You know, the Constitution that put Tim McVeigh to death for his act of terrorism in Oklahoma City.

The Middle East is full of young men with a lot of time on their hands and, in most places, few prospects for a happy prosperous life. Abdulmutallab came from a wealthy, influential family, was well educated, and yet he still donned the exploding underpants. It is an inescapable fact that some of these men will lean toward Islamic extremism no matter what the West does. Others, however, will only rally to Al Qaeda if they believe that Americans are not just as a people.

So, do we fly barefoot and commando from now on? Do we combat evil by adopting its ways? It amazes me that the Lieberman and Dick Cheney -- both of whom are proven to have been quite adept and finding the loopholes in the Vietnam era draft laws -- are suddenly more hawkish then men like retired army General Colin Powell and retired navy Captain John McCain when it comes to the treatment of terrror suspects.

Joe Lieberman can say whatever he wants about our system of justice. As a senator, he can even try to change it. But there is nothing lamentable about what the FBI learned from Abdulmutallab -- either in December, or recently -- and there will be nothing lamentable about his fair trial with a lawyer. But, if I were Abdulmutallab, I would stay out of the weight room.

Major Hasan and the Army

Congressional hearings were held on January 20th to hear the results of an independent investigation into what signs, if any, the Army missed that might have indicated that Major Nidal Hasan might, at some point in his career, murder 13 fellow Americans.

Former Veterans Affairs and Army secretary Togo West, Jr. -- who began his Army career as a JAG lawyer, and retired admiral and former chief of naval operations Vernon Clark were charged with finding out whether the Army had enough information to connect the dots to Hasan, and if not, why.

Of course the review the two distinguished public servants conducted has one overarching and purely political purpose. It permits members of Congress to throw brickbats at the Obama administration and make the case for a Dick Cheney-like level of seriousness on the "War on Terror".

I suppose a sign of what Dr. Hasan was going to do might have been there. I can imagine one of his supervisors, bumping into him at the local gun store in Killeen, Texas -- the town outside the gates of Fort Hood -- asking him if he what kind of handgun he was there to buy. "Whichever one brings the righteous arm of Allah down upon the infidel without mercy -- but isn't too expensive or difficult to conceal," he might have responded. That would have been a sign.

Another clue to what Hasan planned could have been in his day-to-day interactions with soldiers at Fort Hood. As he walked to his car in the mental health clinic parking lot at the end of the evening and soldiers saluted him, perhaps sounding off with a unit slogan, like the "all the way, sir!" of paratroopers or the Cavalry's "Garry Owen, sir!" -- Hasan could have responded with, "death to America!" Surely that would have been a sign.

But Congress will probably learn, to their chagrin, that the only signs of his impending murder of thirteen of his fellow Americans, were his tepid performance evaluations from his superiors.

There is an old saying that goes something like this: "owe the bank a thousand dollars and the bank owns you. Owe the bank a million dollars and you own the bank." Hasan received his Army commission through the ROTC program at Virginia Tech University. He received his medical degree from the defense department's uniformed services medical school, plus a masters degree in public health. All three academic degrees, his BS, his MD, and his MPH were bankrolled by the Army at the expense of the American Taxpayer. The officers writing Hasan's evaluations were well aware of the amount of money invested in him, and so were the officers deciding whether he should have been promoted.

Add to the mix the fact that Hasan is a psychiatrist. He is a psychiatrist in the ARMY while we are at war in two places and service members and their families are coping with an endless cycle of deployments and trauma. We don't exactly have a surplus of mental health care professionals in the armed forces or in the veterans' health care system. Hasan could have gone to work naked and not been fired. His evaluations might have prevented him from becoming a general, but absent a gross professional failure -- or a shooting rampage -- he was not going to be fired from the Army.

Would that have changed if civilian law enforcement/counterintelligence agents, like, say, the FBI, had talked with Hasan's commanders about his potential contacts with extremists? Perhaps it would have, although absent signing out on leave to Yemen for "Jihad Training," I am not certain how explicit contacts must be in order to fall into one of the categories that the Army relies on to fire officers prior to their completion of the years that the officer and the Army have committed to by bankrolling his extensive and expensive education in exchange for his continued service.

Of course, I doubt we will hear Secretary West or Admiral Clark talk about how the inclination of the Army to fire a quirky but essential professional into whom the American government has invested a great deal of time and money was impacted by that investment. Curiously, the military has fired many gay officers who have not yet completed their service commitment and recouped the money spent on their education, but don't expect to hear about that during the congressional hearings on why the Army never fired Major Hasan. Apparently, we must deal with one threat to national security at a time.

Voting to Make People Equal? Like in Arkansas in the 1950s?

We have to remember that other than the very rare circumstance of a constitutional amendment granting women the right to vote in elections this country has never, ever given civil rights to those without power willingly.

Conservatives ask candidates for judicial office whether they will follow the law or make law. The reason they are asked this question is because conservatives want to make sure that we don't have another Brown versus Board of Education-type court ruling giving civil rights to unpopular minorities.

I nearly fainted when the Supreme Court said that the law criminalizing consentual sex between gay adults in Texas was unconstitutional in the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision.

Conservatives want to make sure that any time the opportunity to expand rights comes up it has to be democratically approved.

The problem with this is the majority naturally has to give up their superiority over the unpopular minority.

The majority never wants to give up power they never want to give up their perceived superiority.

That's why it's very difficult to win these elections that would result in making more people equal with one another.

Although in our history. The fact that people are equal under the law has yet to diminish anyone's power under the law. George W. Bush was equally president to Barack Obama. It is absurd to say that because a black man becomes president a white president is diminished.

It is equally stupid to believe it because two people of the same gender marry, people of the opposite sex are somehow diminished. No one has demonstrated how that is so.

J.D. Salinger was no goddam phony

So J.D. Salinger died last week. Salinger, a World War II veteran who saw some of the most intense and horrific fighting in the history of mankind in Europe, tried desperately to become a famous author. With the publication of Catcher in the Rye, he became famous in the era before cable television, before the internet, and before (gasp) blogs. Salinger became more famous than he found comfortable and retreated from society making little impact on the world save a few more books and his death last week at 91, and possibly the thousands upon thousands of pages he wrote during his seclusion that might see the light of day now that Salinger has passed on. We will learn what his will says about that.

In a bizarre parallel to the death of the Great Author, the Grammy Awards were held the weekend following his death. Award shows these days are a festival of people with both small and large talent trying desperately to attain what Salinger obtained and shunned -- fame.

I think about the young people on cable who are famous because their father is a lawyer who once was part of a famous trial and because their stepfather is a famous athlete but who have no other readily apparent talents of their own. It is not disturbing that they seek fame, it is disturbing that they have attained it. What's next, becoming famous for being the vapid heiress of a hotel fortune?

For all of the media whoring that goes on in the world for temporary notoriety -- even it means launching a silver balloon into the air while hiding a child in the attic -- the people who seek the limelight with no great lessons or art or athletic skill to offer history will, fortunately, soon be forgotten.

While the talents of a man who never did a 60 Minutes interview or walked on a red carpet to the flashing cameras will live on.

Salinger, you see, was no goddam phony.