Terror Makes Us Secure

So a War On Terror Makes Us Secure

By Roy D. Follendore III

July 16, 2002

Our "war" on terrorism is unfolding into a political scheme to change American values. The banner is "911 changed everything." The fact is that the United States military, Justice Department, INS, NSA, FBI and the CIA simply did not do their jobs. The fact is that the people who were supporting our President of the United States did not do their jobs. It is not the fact that we did not have the capability to secure this country from external threats, it is the fact that executives did not choose to manage our capabilities. We trusted our leaders and they let us down. They say they let our enemies in. Now the same leaders who failed us want to change the checks and balances of our land to hold unprecedented internal power over the American citizen.

They say that they want to do this because they actually want to be able to prevent violence from taking place from within our country. I find that concept absolutely amazing. This is why.

Let us play this tape all the way to the end by first of all, assuming that that they could actually do this. Suppose the administration were to allow the military to freely operate freely throughout our country so that our armed soldiers were constantly guarding our streets, airports with machine guns, rockets and tanks. Suppose one out of ten people were on the Federal Payroll, reporting suspicious people and events. Suppose that the courts uphold the right of our Government to imprison citizens without trial, without access to an attorney, to interrogate suspects using pain and isolation, to seize personal property without question, to censor free speech and to limit free unrestricted travel. Suppose facial recognition devices, voice stress analyzers, and virtual polygraphs were placed throughout every home, building, stairwell and alleyway within the United States. Suppose we continue to give Government tools and power to look into our private lives without presumption and control all that we think and do with political consequence. Just suppose that everyone in the United States had an "American" ID implanted under their skin so that not only did it constant report who are by our genetics, it reported what we are doing and if we have been around, illegal drugs, explosives or plutonium. Suppose all of this were possible. Two simple questions remain.

Would this make us secure from terrorism? Is this the future we want to live?

Consider...

The United States is made of divergent populations of people. There are American citizens who support the various politics their country of Iraq, Vietnam, China, Syria, Palestine, Russia, Afghanistan, Iran do different degrees. If we are a single people, a single country, then we are a single amalgam of people with divergent political views. We all express our opinions. Our belief systems are really quite different. The only thing that as citizens we often have in common is one old and fragile document with the names of a bunch of dead people on it. The document I am of course referring to is the Constitution of the United States. The laws of our country flow from the ideals arising from this flimsy paper contract. As Americans we all have agreed to uphold and defend it.

I teach security at a University and in some circles I am known as somewhat of an "expert" on the subject. The one thing that I know for certain is that security is a nebulous thing. That which can make you feel more secure can actually make you far less. The most secure things have the least value. Having said this, I don't know how to put this next statement more clearly.

The ONLY true security that American citizens have is our United States Constitution.

Technology can never replace it!

Technology is never the true answer to security because there is a fundamental law of the universe that states there is no free lunch. Just as entropy is an exchange for work, so security technology only trades one weakness for another. If we are careful and wise then we can accept that tradeoff. But if we abandon the freedoms and the laws of the Constitution, in order to gain security from terrorism, then we shall imprisoning ourselves in the same way as the Germans and the Russians. We will be assuring our destruction through dissention within the American society. If America does not take the true nature of freedom seriously, our leaders single minded actions will be assuring terrorism and violence from within. It is the power of the Constitution of the United States that holds us together, that provides us the means to resolve internal crisis in a peaceful way. It is not the power of Armies or our powerful technologies that can do this for us.

So what would make the U.S. absolutely secure from acts of terrorism?

The answer is simple. Nothing can make us absolutely secure.. There are more opportunistic ways to act as a terrorist than there are resources to prevent it. War was written into our Constitution for this reason and war has always involved acts of mass terrorism. Violence through terrorism is historically an essential and necessary part of human nature and character. People resort to violence when they are downtrodden and can not be listened to. We ourselves have used violence to achieve our objectives. We destroyed British armies with violence. We took the lands we live on from the American Indian nations with violence. We systematically killed our own brothers and raped and burned homes and food in order to stop the dissidence and succession from the Federal Government. We have agreed to fight in wars for our allies in a gallant but ridiculous hope to end all war. Eventually America deliberately chose to exterminate millions of innocent men, women and children in World War II because we thought it was preferable to the totalitarian order presented by the Axis powers.

Terror is terror, and the fact that it happens in peace does not make it less so. We live in the terror of hijacked nuclear weapons and we are the people that invented them. I would not be underestimating or trivializing the tragedy of 911 if I were to say that the fact that three aircraft flew into three buildings is of little consequence in mathematical comparison to the destruction property and human lives in London, Germany and Japan. The so the called military experts from the Pentagon are speaking out in the press today are treating terrorism as an extension of their own design for civil mass destruction. They are either ignorant or lying if they say that terrorism is just another weapon of war that we can combat with our military arsenal and tactics. They should know better than that. They do know better than that. But maybe someone up there doesn't have basic common sense. After all, these are the same people who blow up what are essentially a couple of guys with machine guns using B52 strategic weapon systems flown from around the world. Talking about shooting ants with elephant guns! Is it any wonder we are blowing up small town weddings?

Military philosophy taught in schools and universities teaches us that terrorism and war are political statements. The act of war is always political and they are always about economics. Weapons of war are used when the negotiation of political and economic reason fails. There will always be those who are willing to sacrifice all that they love, including themselves and others for their own political ideals. This is no different for some political leaders as it is for some religious leaders. Both detest discord because it undermines political power and control. Security technology is seen by those in power as a means to an end. It is a means to absolute political control. But that is exactly what it is not and should not be.

Unlike people, security technology can either benefit mankind or it can unexpectedly fail us and it does not care. Technology can also be used as a weapon on ourselves to halt social and economic progress. I happen to believe that it should never be used in ways that destroy our ability to think and act. I believe that if we are not careful, we can enslave ourselves with security technology to the point were our society will not be allowed to adapt to change. Instead of weapons of mass destruction, we can be creating a new class of weapons for mass paralysis. Order is not freedom. Technology has the potential to put America and our world in a dark age for a thousand years.

You might want to remember what I have just written, but in doing so also remember this. You may at sometime feel that we should give up our Constitutional rights to individual civil liberty because of the threat of terrorism. You might feel that we Americans are superior. I say you only speak for yourself. You do not speak for me. The vast majority of people will not agree with you.

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