We are at war, but against whom?
After the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress authorized the president to use military force against al-Qaida, the Taliban and associated forces. The president has since informed us that al-Qaida has been largely eliminated as a military threat by drone strikes and captures, and that the Taliban was always a regional organization fighting for control of Afghanistan rather than fighting the U.S. So our enemies at this point appear to be "associated forces." But who are these undefined "associated forces" in a seemingly perpetual war?
Our government supposedly keeps a list of them, but the list is classified and the public is not allowed to know who they are.
On Aug. 18, we received a glimpse of who these forces might be. A young Brazilian, David Miranda, en route from Germany to Brazil, was detained for nine hours during a stopover in England and all of his electronic equipment was confiscated, under a British law that authorizes the detention of terrorism suspects for up to nine hours. This section is almost never invoked, especially not for the full nine hours. David Miranda must be really dangerous.
I met David a year ago. We were crammed into the back of a van driving from St. Louis for a presentation by Glenn Greenwald at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo. David is a very pleasant, gentle person, and after several hours of conversation with him I can say with absolute certainty that he is not a terrorist and has no desire to injure the U.S. I am also certain that no government, including the U.S. and Britain, believes he is a terrorist.
David was detained because he is the domestic partner of Glenn Greenwald, and Greenwald is the journalist who published National Security Agency documents obtained by Edward Snowden that showed extensive wrongdoing by the Obama administration, including possible perjury by NSA director James Clapper, in testimony before Congress, when he asserted under oath that the NSA did not collect information on typical Americans.
The Obama administration will not be filing criminal charges against itself any time soon. And by classifying all of its potential crimes and constitutional violations as top secret, the administration can attack people who expose its wrongdoing. This is why the administration trains its full prosecutorial fury on principled whistle-blowers like Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden.
But still it is a long way from terrorism to David Miranda. David was detained in Britain — presumably at the request of the U.S., although a White House spokesman denied it — because he was "associated" with Greenwald, who was "associated" with Snowden, who was supposedly trying to influence the policies of the U.S. government by illegal means. Specifically, it was said to involve releasing classified documents that showed wrongdoing by the administration. That's the definition of terrorism under the Patriot Act.
In the upside-down world of the war on terror, whistle-blowers, journalists and persons "associated" with them are now the terrorists. The U.S. government — which illegally violates our privacy, collects personal information to use against us, assassinates American citizens without due process, militarizes law enforcement, tortures people and holds them indefinitely without charges, and lies about it to our face — is merely our friend who is "protecting us". Classifying the government's wrongdoing is good because anyone who exposes possible government crimes can be prosecuted.
In this crazy war on terror, who is being treated like the enemy?
It is us.
Steve Downs lives in Selkirk. He is a lawyer and executive director of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms.