One distressing result of the Sept. 11 bombings has been the reawakening of latent bigotry within this country. A classic illustration was the Dec. 5 Herald letter that said that military tribunals, racial profiling and harassment of Middle Easterners are appropriate because, after all, Middle Eastern males have committed a whole string of bombings (“Terrorism: Military tribunals are reasonable measures”).
Indeed they have. But they’ve hardly been alone. Somehow ignored is the fact that it was white American males who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, shot up a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, firebombed black churches, gunned down doctors who performed abortions and mailed letter bombs to universities across the country. The republic somehow survived without military tribunals, racial profiling and harassment of white American males after these events.
Because it’s not her race or ethnicity that’s being targeted, it’s easy for the writer of that letter to pooh-pooh the possibility of innocent tourists getting jailed in an FBI sweep (which has, in fact, occurred), and to question why any innocent person would mind the inconvenience of being held for questioning. But would she feel the same if the SWAT team invaded her house, removed her furniture, her shelves and her refrigerator contents, and dragged her to the pokey for a few weeks, without ever charging her with anything? If so, then she’s either a true patriot or a glutton for punishment.
The biggest challenge this country faces is winning the war against terrorism without becoming a xenophobic police state. Before Sept. 11, you often heard the quote: “People who sacrifice liberty for security will soon have neither liberty nor security, and will deserve neither.” Of course, at that time, this quote was used to oppose things like anti-smoking or seat belt laws. Now, the people who used to recite this quote (at least those who aren’t Middle Eastern males) have a new mantra: “It’s OK to sacrifice liberty for security, as long as it’s another ethnic group’s liberty being sacrificed for my security.” This somehow seems like a perversion of the principles on which this nation was founded.
The president has said that the terrorists are enemies of freedom. Presumably, then, we are the defenders of freedom. But if our constitutional freedoms are so fragile that they can be discarded whenever U.S. security is threatened, then haven’t the enemies of freedom won?
Marysville
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