Passed in the Senate today was the National Defense Authorization Act, which contains a provision that would give the government the legal authority to lock up in military custody people it suspects of terrorism. The detentions could be indefinite and without trial. All that is needed is the suspicion of terrorism. There is no exception for American citizens in the provision.
This is, without a doubt, totalitarian. What makes this even scarier is the very loose manner in which terrorism is defined within the United States. Besides the carnage and violence of car bombs and other mass murder, the U.S. includes vandalism and other property crimes in its definition of terrorism. In the past decade the FBI has included such acts as the pouring of sugar in the gas tanks of construction vehicles and the releasing of thousands of minks from a farm as acts of terrorism.[i]
Clearly, we must thwart Al Qaeda and any other terrorists, be they Timothy McVeigh or the Shoe Bomber. But a law that could take a vandal out of the criminal justice system and place him into indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay is nightmarish beyond the imagination of Kafka.
[i] FBI website: Terrorism 2002-2005 http://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/terrorism-2002-2005
This offers an insight into the Second Environment -- our human and memetic surround -- and how some of us think about it. Clearly the attitude that informs bills like this is very akin to the attitude that levels West Virginia mountain tops to gain coal. Brutish, angry and endlessly embroiled in destruction.
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