The Weekly Argument
What would a sensible anti-terrorism policy in the US look like — not so much the foreign aspects of it as domestic policy and actions?
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July 15th, 2005 @ 11:19 am
Realistically, there is no way we can achieve domestic security against a terrorist attack. Neither the states not the federal government have the money; and private industry doesn’t accept the responsibility.
The scale of the problem — the number of plants, transit stations, ports and possible suspects — is just too great in a nation of 280 million.
More importantly, protecting ourselves internally is only reacting to the symptoms, not the causes, of terrorism. As Richard Clark observes, the causes are in our foreign policy — specifically around oil, the Middle East and Israel.
For months after 9-11, two or three humvees with National Guardsmen stood watch over the northern entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge. As time passed, they looked increasingly bored, embarassed, pointless. Imagine a similar depressing military presence everywhere you go — in bus stations, highway rest stops, toll bridges, not to mention baseball stadiums, high school and college campuses, and movie theaters!
Rather than increased security, we should resist any attempts at further surveillance and militarizing of our domestic society. As John Pilger said in the Guardian UK “Blair will certainly use last week’s tragedy to further deplete basic human rights in Britain, as Bush has done in America. The goal is not security, but control.”