The United States and Responses to Terror

The United States is at it again. They are fingerprinting and photographing people born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, or Syria regardless of their current citizenship, including Canadians. People born in those countries can only stay in the US for a limited term, and have to check out by being fingerprinted and photographed again. Even worse, they have to go to specific border points to have this humiliation take place. Still worse, they have to go through the whole procedure again the next time they want to visit the US.

Americans like to talk about being a free country, but it's clear they've given up their Republican freedoms for the Imperial tyranny of security. For now they only target people that meet a particular racial profile, but there's no doubt in my mind that this is a first step. Next will come Arabs in general, then Muslims. After that, who knows? I guess it depends on who the US is annoyed at, and who they need to remain friends with.

After all, almost all the people who hijacked the aircraft on September 11, 2001 were Saudi Arabian citizens, but the US doesn't want to offend (yet) that oil rich kingdom. I note that North Korea was one of the "axis of evil" countries, and even though they recently admitted to developing nuclear weapons, they still don't make the fingerprint and photograph hit list. Libya has had a low profile lately, and eventually co-operated with the civilized world over the Lockerbie bombing. Iran has been moving toward democratic reforms in fits and starts, and have taken some steps to normalize relations. I can see where fingerprinting Iranian-born people is going to help this process.

I certainly don't know how they came up with that list of countries, and I suspect there simply isn't any rational reason. Their vaunted security and intelligence services don't know who might attack them next, or when, or how, and don't appear to have any leads on the people involved in last years attack, beyond saying Al-Qaeda. They seem to think that if they cast their net wide enough they have to catch someone, and it's good enough if the detainees are suspected being terrorists, or even worse, drug users. They aren't concerned at all about violating racial discrimination laws.

It's clear the US doesn't trust anyone anymore, and are well on their way to the splendid isolationism they practiced before WW1 and between WW1 and WW2. The only change is that instead of periodically invading their southern neighbours, their adventurism will take place on a global scale.

The foreign policy of the US, such as it is, is completely driven by domestic politics. I recall one US senator exclaiming, "If any nation is doing better at trade than the United States, they must be cheating." They've shown no hesitation at invoking trade sanctions for trading partners that are smarter or cheaper than domestic industries. The softwood lumber and steel industries are only two recent examples.

Right now the US has the biggest economy in the world, but as they make it more difficult to trade, countries will find or develop other markets. Why would you deal with a country that treats your country and your citizens as criminals if you had any other choice? Isolationism will gradually have an effect on the US domestic economy. No doubt, as domestic markets are affected by economic forces, the US government will start using the term "economic terrorism" and consider it a crime to not trade with the US no matter how badly the US stacks the deck.

Once the US regards a country as sufficiently criminal, they don't have much hesitation about bombing it. The upcoming Gulf war isn't about terrorism, it's about making an example to the world, and bolstering Bush's popularity ratings. The current thrashing around in the UN is more about optics and buying time for strike preparation, than really seeking consensus on sanctioning Iraq. The first Gulf war wasn't about liberating Kuwait, it was about oil. Afghanistan wasn't a war, it was target practice. As the "war on terror" drags on, I suspect the US is going to get less and less fussy about who it shoots at. It already doesn't care who it offends.