Terrorism and Democratic Virtues

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I. Introduction to "Terrorism and Democratic Virtues"

Those that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

In the days and weeks following September 11, both the executive and legislative branches proposed various national security measures aimed at reducing the risk of future attacks on the US at home and abroad. While there was general support among the American public for improved protections against further attack, various proponents of civil and human rights have voiced concern that too many rights and freedoms might be limited in the name of national security. In this section, we explore various aspects of these government responses to September 11.

Democracy, liberties and rights - some definitions

Directly translated from Greek, democracy means 'rule by the people.' In modern democracies, citizens retain the ultimate political authority, although routine decision-making is often delegated to representatives at the federal and state levels. Many leading social scientists have recognized that there is tension between democracy and liberty, since the majority in a given country could vote to limit the liberties and rights of the minority in that country. It is because the drafters of the United States Constitution recognized this potential problem that they provided safeguards against such abuses of power by the majority, including provisions for the protection of inalienable individual rights, and the division of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Still, history shows that this system is not foolproof. For example, the rights of African Americans were limited, particularly in the Southern states of the United States until 1954.
Civil rights and civil liberties in the United States are founded on the principles contained in the Bill of Rights. These principles protect citizens from unwarranted interference by the government or other individuals at the same time that they identify the government's role in providing equal protection under law to all citizens regardless of race, religion, sex, or other characteristics unrelated to the worth of the individual. Many of the constitutional amendments protect civil liberties, including freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention; freedom of speech; freedom of lawful assembly; and freedom of association and movement. Other amendments define a government role in ensuring fair and equal treatment under the law, including the right to a fair trial; the right not to incriminate oneself in a legal proceeding; and the right to equal access to public facilities (e.g., schools, public housing and polling places).
Human rights echo many of the principles upheld by civil rights in the United States, although these two terms cannot be used interchangeably. A very basic definition for human rights is "those basic standards without which people cannot live in dignity". Rights for all members of the human family were first articulated in 1948 in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The 30 articles of the Declaration together form a comprehensive statement covering economic, social, cultural, political, and civil rights. The document is both universal (it applies to all people everywhere) and indivisible (all rights are equally important to the full realization of one's humanity). These rights are more comprehensive in scope than those articulated in the US Constitution, which generally address only civil and political rights, with little attention to the other economic, social and cultural rights included on the international human rights agenda.

The United States' history of limited rights in times of crisis
The United States government has denied the rights and freedoms of certain populations in the face of a perceived threat at different times in its history. The Alien and Sedition Acts, adopted in 1789 during the administration of President John Adams, came at a time of controversy over the U.S. role in the conflict between England and France immediately after the French Revolution. These acts defined criticism of the president as "sedition" (i.e., inciting rebellion) and provided for extra-judicial deporting of legal resident aliens if the administration considered them to be a security threat. During this period, several newspapers were closed, and "threatening" non-citizens were forced to leave the country.
During the Civil War, on several occasions President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus (designed to ensure that people who have been imprisoned have not been unlawfully arrested) without Congressional approval. He also closed newspapers that he considered to be seditious.
During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson urged Congress to adopt the Espionage Act, under which his administration sent more than 1000 people to jail for speaking out against the war and the military draft. Some, like socialists Eugene Debs and Rose Stokes, were imprisoned for as long as 10 years. After the war, attacks on dissidents intensified due to a rising fear that radicals might be inspired by the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Six thousand people in the U.S. were seized during the "Palmer Raids" of 1918-1921 (named after Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer), many of them aliens who had fewer rights than citizens.
During World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt approved the detention of more than 120,000 people of Japanese descent, more than two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens.
The Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the "Smith Act") was the first statute since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to make advocacy of ideas a federal crime. During the Cold War era, this Act was used to imprison people believed to be leaders of the Communist Party. Moreover, Senator Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin attacked many civil servants, writers and artists working in Hollywood and elsewhere, journalists, and others for their supposed activities in the Communist Party during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Many were "blacklisted" so they could not find work.
During the Vietnam War, anti-war activists (and some civil rights activists) were subjected to considerable surveillance and secret "dirty tricks" conducted under the FBI's domestic COINTELPRO (counter intelligence programs). During recent decades, the previous excessive curtailments of rights of critics of wartime have been largely repudiated.

Current policies that have raised concern in the United States
Citing the increased threat of terrorism from actors inside and outside the United States, Congress enacted the USA PATRIOT Act ("Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism," originally termed the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001) on October 24, 2001. Civil liberties advocates have criticized numerous provisions of this bill as well as the lack of adequate debate before its adoption.
These critics are concerned by numerous provisions of the Act, which weaken rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The USA PATRIOT Act creates a new, very loosely-defined crime of "domestic terrorism," breaking down the distinction between foreign-intelligence and domestic criminal investigations - a distinction that has been maintained until now to protect against government intrusion into citizens' private lives. It allows secret searches and wiretapping of telephones for an investigation whose primary purpose is gathering intelligence for a criminal investigation of U.S. citizens and non-citizens without establishing probable cause that a crime has occurred. (For more information, see http://www.aclu.org/congress/archives.html#ns).
Most civil liberties advocates do not contest the notion that additional investigative methods may be needed to address extraordinary threats of terrorism. They are concerned about the broader and longer-term implications of reducing legal rights in response to acts of terrorism. Because of the extremely broad definition of "domestic terrorism," there is grave concern that the new law will be used not only against suspected foreign terrorists but also against people engaged in civil disobedience against the World Trade Organization and other international financial institutions, at the U.S. naval base in Vieques, Puerto Rico, or at clinics that perform abortions. They contend that the fight against international terrorism is being used as a way to "normalize" greater powers of surveillance, intelligence-gathering, and arrest.

Reduction of rights for immigrants
Following September 11, immigrants have suffered a dramatic decrease of rights. For example, one provision of the USA PATRIOT Act gave the government the authority to detain immigrants for repeatedly extended six-month periods. An Executive Order issued by Attorney General Ashcroft on the same day that the Act was passed equipped his department with the authority to keep immigrants in detention even if a federal immigration judge has already ordered the release of the individual for lack of evidence. Since September 11, more than 1180 Arab or Muslim men have been detained. As of the posting of this teaching resource, the Justice Department would not release the names of the detainees and would not reveal the number of people who have been detained. Many have been held without charge for months, without access to a lawyer. The vast majority of charges have been minor immigration violations, such as overstaying an expired visa. The Justice Department has sought to interview 5000 immigrant men aged 18-33 from the Middle East who entered the U.S. after January 1, 2000. Justice Department officials have argued that this does not constitute "racial profiling" because their definition is based on national origin, not ethnicity or religion.
Civil rights advocates voice concern that the founding principles of the United States are being jeopardized by these policies as minorities and immigrant groups are targeted by the government. Current US behavior that have raised concern abroad
While civil liberties advocates have focused on infringement of rights guaranteed to people in the United States by the Constitution, foreign policy commentators have raised concerns that the U.S. government is not promoting democracy and human rights in its foreign policy. For the last 25 years, the U.S. government has included advocacy of human rights and promotion of democracy in its foreign policy pronouncements. However, some of the countries that are members of the coalition for the war on terrorism have very poor human rights records. For example, the United States has made partnerships with Uzbekistan, where Muslims had been imprisoned for violation of religious laws, and Pakistan, where the leader has not been elected democratically, and there are regular accounts of serious human rights violations. (For more, see Human Rights Watch's report at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/september11).
Many U.S. allies have begun to raise questions about the United States' dedication to international human rights. In January 2002, there was a rising chorus of concern about U.S. treatment of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan who were taken to the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They have not had access to lawyers and are held in wire cages, which are violations of international law.
The terrorist attacks of September 11 have heightened many Americans' awareness of the democratic principles that they value. At the same time, the war on terrorism has shifted the balance between civil liberties and security, putting some of those core values at risk. The challenge is to mount a domestic and international response to terrorism that is effective but that does not, in the long-run, compromise basic human rights in the U.S. or internationally.