A Question for War on Terror Hawks
The attack on Dr. Tiller is widely referred to as “terrorism” in the blogosphere. Agree or not, it is easy to image an ongoing terrorist campaign run by fringe pro-lifers to shut down abortion clinics. Heaven forbid that this recent murder is followed by bombings at a few Planned Parenthood locations, but that scenario isn’t unthinkable — copycat atrocities are a sad fact of modern life.
Should something like that come to pass, I wonder how “War on Terror hawks” would react. My admittedly flawed term is meant to reference folks who believe the executive branch possesses broad unchecked powers to combat terrorism, including the designation of American citizens as enemy combatants, the indefinite detention of terror suspects, wiretapping phones without warrants, “enhanced interrogation techniques,” and other powers initially claimed by the Bush Administration and its defenders. Would these predominantly conservative officials, commentators and writers be comfortable if President Obama declared two or three extremist pro-lifers as “enemy combatants”? Should Pres. Obama have the prerogative to order the waterboarding of these uncharged, untried detainees? Should he be able to listen in on phone conversations originating from evangelical churches where suspected abortion extremists hang out? The answer is probably that different “War on Terror hawks” — anyone have a better term for this? — would react differently, but as a matter of law, it seems to me that if they’d gotten their way during the Bush Administration, President Obama would have the power to take all those steps and more, a prospect that is terrifying to me, not because I think our Commander in Chief is looking for a pretext to round up innocent pro-lifers, but because it doesn’t take many violent attacks before Americans start clamoring for a strong executive response, a dynamic that tends to erode liberties in previously unthinkable ways and spawn mistakes whereby innocents are made to suffer.
Question: is this a post too far, Conor? Are you essentially concern-trolling the right blogosphere?
Nonetheless, interesting question.
— Klug · Jun 2, 05:05 PM · #
“terrorist groups of global reach” was the Bush administration formulation. Not domestic loners. Really, this is a pointless, nyah-nyah gotcha meme which Mr. Friedersdorf seems to have swiped from Jack Balkin.
I have said it before and I will say it again, unless you have read Justice Jackson’s opinion in Youngstown, you really aren’t equipped to discuss the legal issues here.
— y81 · Jun 2, 05:07 PM · #
Conor, you and E.D. are my heroes.
Bravo, my habbibi.
Michelle Malkin actually wants recruitment centers to be cordoned and protected now, like abortion clinics targetted by prolifers are, but I doubt she is going to want Scott Roeder’s contributions to Operation Rescue audited like domestic muslim terrorists contributions to CAIR.
You presume too much rationality.
The rightside is not rational. Not a’tall.
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 05:16 PM · #
This is an important question, Conor! I’ve had many arguments with self-righteous hawks about torture and the limits of state-sanctioned violence, and even I’ve presented them with this exact scenario. In my limited experience, most folks are simply not willing to entertain the thought that they could be legitimately (thanks to their own unquestioning support of the last administration) investigated and even subject to the mechanics of the state’s security agencies.
Of coure, the corollary to this is that the White House takes a page from GWB, alienates the mainstream pro-life movement, and there-by unwittingly drives nutters like Roeder even further into terrorism and violence.
— CEK · Jun 2, 05:48 PM · #
Learn the correct use of the verb “reference.” You do NOT mean to “reference” folks; you mean to “refer” to them. Why ruin intelligent thoughts with mornonic syntax?
— Mandy · Jun 2, 06:05 PM · #
So…I wonder….as a machiavellain pragmatist Obama might be opportunistic and exploitive enough to extend compromise once again to the prolife, even though they rejected it before in their typical draconian all-or-nothing fashion…do you think, CEK, that the prolifers are sufficiently humbled to accept the wisdom of compromise?
The problem would be that the next poll will show fewer americans trending to prolife sentiment because of domestic terrorist Scott Roeder.
And of course CEK, you should remember…….my side doesn’t NEED to compromise.
;)
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 06:06 PM · #
The hypothetical isn’t quite right. Suppose that some anti-abortion group decided that America’s pro-abortion legal structure made it so unjust that it demanded rebellion and so they decided to pursue a strategy of bombings, kidnappings, torture, etc. to either force a change in the law or bring the government down. Suppose further that they had trained for a number of years in various terrorist tactics and struck several American cities, killing, say, about 3,000 people and dropping a couple of buildings in the process. Suppose further that this group was quite well-organized, supplied with very good communication technologies, and that their organization structure/membership was not well-understood.
A few questions for the War on Terror Doves. Would you support the relaxation of wiretap laws, search and seizure laws, habeas rights, and the like to find and stop this group? Or would you want the laws to stay exactly as they are now (or maybe as they were pre-9/11)? What if the group made a plausibly credible claim to be in possession of some form of WMD (say, a neurotoxin, weaponized anthrax, dirty nuke)? Would that change your mind?
Conor’s original hypothetical is too weak, precisely in the sense that it makes the anti-abortion terrorists out to be something along the lines of the Underground Weathermen. The threat from the Islamic terrorists, I take it, isn’t quite existential (end of western civilization and such) but it’s certainly more significant than folks who want to bomb abortion clinics. And it seems to me that setting it up that way obscures the ways in which our decisions in this arena are necessarily, inevitably shaped by pragmatic judgments regarding the threat we face.
— Bryan · Jun 2, 06:29 PM · #
Bryan,
The problem is that any blanket powers the president is given to fight terrorism can be used to respond to the weak threat in my hypothetical just as easily as to the strong threat in your hypothetical.
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 2, 06:34 PM · #
I think in the real-world the comparison wants for scale; i.e., there is no al-Qaeda like organization that wants to bring down abortion providers in the same way and with the same tactics as al-Qaeda wants to bring down American hegemony.
But given the hypothetical: if some extreme anti-abortion groups constitute a genuine existential threat to the nation, for what reason do suspect your WoT hawks would shirk? This doesn’t strike me as much of a gotcha.
If you take the Andy McCarthy argument, the president is given such powers by the Constitution, where weak-threat vs. strong-threat are properly delineated. If he is right, the “just as easily” argument is simply untrue.
— Blar · Jun 2, 07:03 PM · #
Blar, they already shirked.
The rightside demanded the retraction of the DHS report on rightwing extremism and got it.
Roeder is a classic rightwing extremist that should been surveilled, right?
Freemen member, anti-abortion activist, bomb-maker, anti-tax protestor, abortion-doctor murderer.
Classic.
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 07:28 PM · #
You don’t have to look for imaginary hypotheticals to consider possible responses to domestic terrorism. You only have to look at the nation’s experience with the Ku Klux Klan and other violent Southern white groups in the 1860s and 1870s. In reaction to waves of terrorism that threatened to overturn multiracial governments in the South, Congress passed laws authorizing suspension of habeas corpus, which was done in South Carolina in the early 1870s, and President Grant repeatedly intervened militarily on his own authority. This had the effect of staving off the immediate threat, but these actions in the long term undercut support for Reconstruction precisely because they seemed dangerous expansions of executive power. Eventually the North lost the will to intervene and terrorism was triumphant. It seems to me this episode should be a cautionary tale for hawks and doves alike. Hawks should realize that claims of unlimited power to deal with a problem aren’t sustainable. Doves should realize that when terrorist violence is widespread or severe enough it will be beyond the capacity of ordinary law enforcement and civil government to handle. The challenge is finding a way to allow for expanded powers that are still limited in some way, a challenge we have not found an effective answer to.
— rd · Jun 2, 07:35 PM · #
It’s imprecise to say the President is “given such powers by the Constitution,” if by ‘such powers’ you mean those which our Presidents have historically laid claim to.
In fact, the Constitution is rather coy on this subject. That’s why Justice Jackson was moved to suggest an extra-constitutional test to determine, not the President’s powers per se, but the persuasiveness of the claims thereto.
Here’s an excerpt from Randy Barnett’s book The Structure of Liberty:
Another way to say it: the limits of executive power can only be discovered by using them. Rather than enumerated powers, which have connotational boundaries, the President has unenumerated power, up to the point The People say no.
— Sargent · Jun 2, 07:53 PM · #
Of course, that’s not quite right either, except in a loose de facto sense, since the President clearly hasn’t the power to make laws (but he can issue executive orders), appropriate funds, levy taxes, “declare” war, etc. But you get my drift. It’s unclear from reading the Constitution what the President may or may not do in this or that situation.
— Sargent · Jun 2, 08:11 PM · #
Conor, that’s a good question. Here’s my answer, which will be a little unsatisfying.
It depends on the scale. At a certain point, a domestic terrorist organization crosses the line between organized crime and civil war. After that, I would expect that the President would use war powers against the organization, if required to protect the American people.
I think that line falls farther out for domestically spawned terror than for foreign — the government already has more resources in place to fight home grown groups using the tools it uses against organized crime, but fundamentally, if the President actually felt compelled to declare civil war and if Congress supported it, I might go along.
(I would be particularly sympathetic if the hypothetical anti-abortion group had a Bin Laden style Bond villian multimillionare at the helm, was dedicated to the destruction of the US, had bombed the World Trade Center twice and included in almost all Presidential Daily Briefings as a major and present threat).
— J Mann · Jun 2, 08:57 PM · #
J Mann, I don’t like “degree” arguments.
I personally feel exactly the same way about fundamentalist christian terrorists as I do about fundamentalist islamic terrorists.
If you can’t obey the rule of law, gtfo of America.
Or prepare to be dead or incarcerated.
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 09:22 PM · #
Matako, do you have any evidence that Roeder was part of the DHS report? My understanding is that part of what made that report so outrageous was that there were no particulars, so I doubt it.
In general, the right was up in arms about that report not because they objected to investigating right-wing terrorism, but because the broad, flaccid wording of the thing was such that any right-wing advocacy group could be called terrorist and investigated and harassed as such by the recommendations of the report. But if it turned out that Kasinski and McVeigh were not lone nuts but part of a large and elaborate network dedicated to bringing down the United States, then I would want as robust a response as Bush (and now Obama, frankly) executed against Islamist terrorists.
— Blar · Jun 2, 09:40 PM · #
Blar, Roeder fits the profile.
I never understood the instant solidarity the right expressed with potentially violent right wing extremists.
Why on earth would you believe the DHS report was talking about you?
Are you a potentially violent rightwing extremist?
— matoko_chan · Jun 2, 09:59 PM · #
Mr. Friedersdorf (and others) who keep asking this question about “how do you feel now that Obama is president?” seem to think that it is devastatingly unanswerable, so that all the terror hawks will suddenly break down and sob, “Yes, yes, Mr. Mason. I was wrong. I supported the Bush policies even though I knew they were wrong.” It isn’t devastating: most people don’t find questions that require line-drawing, a sense of proportion, and a trust in a rather minimal level of good faith from democratically elected leaders to be all that difficult.
— y81 · Jun 2, 10:45 PM · #
Are Terror Hawks in any way related to Caution Horses?
— Tony Comstock · Jun 3, 12:30 AM · #
The question isn’t one of degree. Either you respect the Constitution or you do not. Either your values are more important than your generally disproportionate fear for your immediate physical safety, or they are not.
AQ was never about the actual physical destruction of Western Civilization. They lacked the capability. Their genius – and dumb luck – was running into opponents who were willing to do the job themselves. Patrick Henry spoke for liberty, not a “secure homeland.”
— DB Cooper · Jun 3, 01:18 AM · #
Bryan writes: “The threat from the Islamic terrorists, I take it, isn’t quite existential (end of western civilization and such) but it’s certainly more significant than folks who want to bomb abortion clinics.”
If we include with the abortion bombers other right wing domestic terrorists I am not sure was can say the threat today from foreign terrorists like al Qaeda is greater. Al Qaeda was hugely successful in the 911 attack, but that was using a method no longer available to them. Compare the results of Khalid Sheik Mohammed versus Tim McVeigh when both used the same means. McVeigh killed 168 with his fertilizer bomb compared to KSM’s five in the WTC bombing.
Since 911 it has been much harder for foreign terrorists to operate in the US, as shown by the lack of al Qaeda attacks since 911. If US domestic rightwing terrorists become sufficiently aroused there might develop connections between them and al Qaeda since they have many points of agreement: anti-Obama, anti-US government, pro-gun, anti-gay, anti-feminist, pro-patriarchy, anti-abortion and anti-Jew. The al Qaeda recruiters would not say they were from al Qaeda, of course. They probably wouldn’t even acknowledge they were Muslim, simply that they were opposed to the government of Barrack Obama.
— Mike Alexander · Jun 3, 01:19 AM · #
Y81,
Though I too see the need for line drawing, it is also the case that at some point, if you give the government enough unfettered power, it is going to be misused. I regard the power some wanted to give the Bush Administration as going beyond that line. I realize that they disagree in that particular case, but I hope to persuade them that even if we disagree about that particular case, they advocated rules that could lead to results they very much dislike in other plausible cases. I’d wait for one of those to arise, but then it would be too late, wouldn’t it?
— Conor Friedersdorf · Jun 3, 01:25 AM · #
It’s pretty obvious that Bin Laden achieved his aim, which was to make the US insanely terrified about everything. It’s been just one ‘chicken little’ moment after another. That’s the thing about turning your back on your values—you get lost. Remember Viet Nam? ‘we destroyed the village in order to save it?’ We’ve done that to ourselves now.
I think and hope we are returning to sanity and our traditions. But everyone who tries to keep up the scare (I’m talking to you, Dick) is aiding and abetting terrorism.
— paul o · Jun 3, 01:27 AM · #
I’m a hardcore “war on terror hawk” and I would recommend we send them to Gitmo, waterboard them to find out if they know of more plots and then leave them there to rot. Just like KSM. they are terrorists and they are attacking Americans. No difference from KSM or Ramzi Yousef as I noted yesterday:
http://environmentalrepublican.blogspot.com/2009/06/asking-wrong-question-about-abortion-dr.html
by the way, I’d include that guy who murdered the recruiter yesterday. I didn’t note any mention of him. He was the latest death in the war on terror. i find it astonishing that you are calling Roeder a terrorist and not a guy who actually is.
— Scott · Jun 3, 01:41 AM · #
bq.“Suppose that some anti-abortion group decided that America’s pro-abortion legal structure made it so unjust that it demanded rebellion… Suppose further that they had trained for a number of years in various terrorist tactics”
Suppose? That’s already going on, and being dealt with in normal law enforcement channels.
Here’s another example: England. Everyone and anyone, it seems, from Al-Queda to the CIRA, wants to blow up the English, and have for decades.. heck, centuries, if you think about it. I mean, there’s a country that’s been dealing with terrorists for ages. Yet, the cops don’t even carry guns, and plans for a national ID system have been repeatedly been shot down, there’s not even a law stating that people are required to carry any kind of ID (though you might need one to check into a hotel or order a drink).
— Tioned · Jun 3, 01:53 AM · #
Scott, the muslim convert Muhammed Bledsoe has been arrested and charged with Long’s murder and 15 counts of terrorism. Roeder has been arrested and not charged with anything yet.
Bledsoe is a fundamentalist islamic terrorist with a beef against the military based on Iraq and Af-Pak.
Roeder is a fundamentalist christian terrorist with a beef against abortion doctors.
— matoko_chan · Jun 3, 01:59 AM · #
Mandy,
Why ruin intelligent thoughts with mornonic spelling?
— sannity · Jun 3, 02:25 AM · #
I think the supporters of the powers granted the executive branch under the patriot act are missing a key point. The danger is not necessarily that a right wing armed rebellion begins based on abortion and that harsh tactics are used to suppress it. The danger is that attacks like that of Roeder provide sufficient pretext to apply the vastly expanded powers of surveillance and investigation acquired since the 9[11 attacks and these are used against the political opposition, either on purpose or as a side effect of the effort to address the domestic terror issue. For example, what if Roeder is a member of the NRA? (I don’t know that he was) If his act is designated as terrorism, could Federal law enforcement start wiretapping their board of directors? The boundaries are more than a bit vague. The Patriot Act could be used against the current administrations political opponents under the right circumstances. It’s a dangerous tool to leave in the hands of any administration, and I say this as an Obama supporter. We need to think about what the ramifications are of this view of Executive powers in regard to Terrorism when the shoe is on the other foot.
— Hebisner · Jun 3, 02:34 AM · #
An elegant prodding of the rot in the Conservative Movement, which has forcibly ejected principled conservatives like Conor and Sully, perhaps Frum, and others. The problem is hypocrisy, or at least an unspoken belief in inequality under the law. To take a few examples:
a) Charles Graner deserves a different standard of justice than Dick Cheney.
b) A President can use executive powers to move prisoners to offshore facilities, but if a different president uses the same powers to move them back into the country he is a fascist (thanks Mike Savage…)
c) A Hispanic female (or mulatto male) at the upper echelons of government has certainly benefited from preferential treatment, and is likely to be prejudiced against white men; a white male at the top tier of government has achieved his rank through merit alone, and MUST NOT be assumed to harbor any prejudice against women and minorities.
d) A darkskinned Muslim member of a violent cabal who kills American(s) in the name of his religion is a indubitably a terrorist, and may be too dangerous to receive due process; a white Christian involved in a pro-violence organization who kills a man in the name of his religious beliefs can be certainly be handled in the court system, is only debatably a terrorist, and let’s not pretend that the victim was blameless.
It is indeed amazing to me how many Movement Conservatives have difficulties, or complete inability, to empathize with The Other. Jose Padilla being abducted by the Feds, vs. dear old dad being cuffed and taken away in a black van, are separated by a vast gulf of acceptability. Never mind that they are both American citizens, the tacit assumption is that they are not Americans in the “same way”…
This mental sclerosis has never been distilled more cuttingly than in the “Homer BadMan” Simpsons episode (in which Homer is wrongfully accused of groping a babysitter). The “Nightline” ripoff show ends up doing a lurid profile on Groundskeeper Willie for taping people with his VCR recorder, the same recorder that had provided the evidence to vindicate Homer’s story. In the Simpsons’ living room…
On TV: “Tomorrow, on ‘Rock Bottom’: [slo-mo of Willie walking into Godfrey’s office] he’s a foreigner who takes perverted videos of you when you least expect it. He’s ‘Rowdy Roddy Peeper’…”
Homer: Oh, that man is sick!
Marge: Groundskeeper Willy saved you, Homer.
Homer: But listen to the music! He’s evil!
Marge: Hasn’t this experience taught you you can’t believe everything you hear?
Homer: Marge, my friend, I haven’t learned a thing.
— Mason · Jun 3, 02:44 AM · #
Mandy – when you’re going to complain about someone’s vocabulary usage, try to use the correct word yourself. The word you were looking for wasn’t syntax (which refers to the rules for constructing clauses and sentences out of words) but vocabulary (the words themselves) or perhaps semantics (the way signs, usually arbitrary, link to meaning).
Tioned – no, but let’s not forget the English CCTV system, the DNA database, their set of Terrorism laws, etc. Civil liberties in England and Wales have taken a bit of a drubbing (Scotland is somewhat better).
— undercat · Jun 3, 02:56 AM · #
“unless you have read Justice Jackson’s opinion in Youngstown, you really aren’t equipped to discuss the legal issues here.”
As it happens, I am a Constitutional Law attorney, and I have read the concurrence in the Steel Seizure case more than once. I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone he is or is not equipped to make a point, when I myself am equally ill-equipped (or incoherent). The case was about what inherent powers a President has when a President takes an action, purportedly under the exercise of his “Commander in Chief” powers, that has expressly been forbidden by Congress. In the case, the President sought to nationalize steel mills due to what he claimed was a wartime exigency (i.e. insufficient steel for the Korean War effort was being produced). Justice Jackson noted that when Congress has explicitly authorized a Presidential action in such a context, the action is constitutional. When Congress has neither authorized nor forbidden the action, it may or may not be constitutional. When Congress has expressly forbidden the action, the President’s power is at its lowest ebb and is most likely Constitutional; hence Jackson’s conclusion that the nationalization was unconstitutional. The language of Jackson’s opinion itself, and his punt on whether Congressional silence did not necessarily dictate whether the Presidential act was constitutional evidently showed he found line-drawing to be difficult, and he also found it difficult, given the result he reached, to have what you believe we all must have: trust in a rather minimal level of good faith from democratically elected leaders. The concurrence is one of the classic examples of checks and balances and an elegant example of separation of powers, and was cited by Justice Kennedy in the Hamdan opinion when Kennedy noted that, in the absence of Congressional approval (or even mere notice), the Executive could not create on its own initiative war tribunals, as such creation was statutorily required to be a collaborative effort between the Congress and the President. One thing is clear from the opinion: the President, through the implicit structure of the Constitution, through its text, and as shown by history, with centuries of case law in that history, does not have unfettered discretion to do whatever he wants in the name of “fighting a war.” The war in the Steel Seizure case happened to be a foreign war. No constitutional analysis of what the President’s powers are in the case of domestic war/rebellion/insurrection/civil war (these terms themselves lack a clear definition, legal or otherwise, and whether they exist can be the subject of their own case) was effected, as the issue was not before the Court. I suppose I’m not equipped to discuss the issues either. Is that because I actually explained what the opinion actually said, or because you disagree with me (which is actually just disagreeing with the opinion). Your comments/the manner in which you state your position (a position which I cannot quite discern) lack sufficient clarity for me to make any determination in this regard.
— y81 · Jun 2, 01:07 PM · #
— Daniel Lebovic · Jun 3, 03:56 AM · #
Unsurprisingly I see no mention of the murder of Pvt. Long in this discussion.
— motionview · Jun 3, 05:15 AM · #
Daniel, look again. Surprise.
— Kevin Bailey · Jun 3, 07:16 AM · #
motionview, have a reading disability?
there’s several comments on Muhammed Bledsoe and Long.
Like this one—
“Scott, the muslim convert Muhammed Bledsoe has been arrested and charged with Long’s murder and 15 counts of terrorism. Roeder has been arrested and not charged with anything yet.
Bledsoe is a fundamentalist islamic terrorist with a beef against the military based on Iraq and Af-Pak.
Roeder is a fundamentalist christian terrorist with a beef against abortion doctors.”
— matoko_chan · Jun 3, 10:55 AM · #
Bryan
Using pre 9/11 laws there were, if my memory serves correctly, several leads on the 9/11 attackers which were not followed:
The FBI had an informant in contact with two of the hijackers but the informant did not implicate them and the CIA failed to share information on the two men as being members of al Queda (they had just attended an operational meeting in Malaysia.)
An FBI agent warned his superiors about Moussaoui, that he had suspicions he was involved in a terrorist plot but his superiors refused his request to search his belongings, including his computer.
There’s the memo from the FBI agent in Phoenix, theorizing that bin Laden’s followers were looking to infiltrate the US civil aviation system. It named several men (none of the 9/11 hijackers) who subsequently left the country with one believed to be an al Queda member.
The CIA also warned Bush that bin Laden was looking to hijack US aircraft (though not use them as weapons).
There were other leads as well. The problem was tying them all together, not having some legal construct which obstructed intelligence from getting them.
So the laws (vis-a-vis intelligence gathering) worked well, the people working within the confines of those laws, not so much. It wasn’t a matter of not having sufficient laws but a combination of too much information, not enough analysis, careerism, fiefdoms and poor intra agency communication.
— Steve · Jun 3, 12:27 PM · #
Terrorism is attacks on civilian targets in pursuit of political aims. Tiller was a civilian. Long was a soldier. The WTC was a civilian target. The USS Cole was a weapon. The OKC Federal Building was partly civilian. I’m not trying to excuse any of these acts, only to point out distinctions among a class of events that some people will try to lump together as being all the same.
— Lyle · Jun 3, 01:27 PM · #
Lyle, would you classify a commander-in-chief as a civilian or military?
— Fred Beloit · Jun 3, 02:10 PM · #
“by the way, I’d include that guy who murdered the recruiter yesterday. I didn’t note any mention of him. He was the latest death in the war on terror. i find it astonishing that you are calling Roeder a terrorist and not a guy who actually is.”
Unless there’s some evidence that Bledsoe/Muhammed was actually working with other people and there was a plan beyond firing blindly at anyone in a uniform, I find the description of him as a ‘terrorist’ absurd.
— Erik Siegrist · Jun 3, 03:06 PM · #
b-b-b-b-but Bledsoe has been charged with 15 counts of terrorism, and Roeder with none so far…..
i’m confuzzled.
— matoko_chan · Jun 3, 07:23 PM · #
Since torture is the worst way to get good information quickly, the “ticking time bomb” debate is as pointless as the “if you could go back in time, would you kill Hitler” discussion. We can’t go back in time, and torture doesn’t give you the information you want from a suspect.
Yet I half expect Dick Cheney to start running around yelling at Obama for canceling his secret time machine program.
— Whistler Blue · Jun 4, 06:27 PM · #