More importantly, the controlled flow of anonymous leaks to the mainstream press has laid the groundwork for the Obama administration to threaten Pakistan harshly -- even as Iraq and Afghanistan sink further into deadly and destructive fighting -- and to ponder extreme revisions of criminal procedures involving the rights of suspects. The administration's radical suggestion to suspend Miranda rights and delay court hearings for terrorism suspects amounts to a threat to every American citizen's right to an attorney and a defense against state power. Is this the message the country wants to send "the evil doers," as President Bush used to call them?
Or have we already taken the message of those evil doers to heart? Faisal Shahzad, an American citizen taken into custody on American soil, disappeared into the black hole of interrogation for more than two weeks -- despite President Obama's assertion to a CIA audience over a year ago that "what makes the United States special... is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy, even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when it's expedient to do so."
When the going gets tough, as Attorney General Holder made clear on "Meet the Press" on May 9th, the tough change the rules. "We're now dealing with international terrorists," he said, "and I think that we have to think about perhaps modifying the rules that interrogators have and somehow coming up with something that is flexible and is more consistent with the threat that we now face." None of this is good news for Muslims in America -- or for the rest of us.
Stephan Salisbury is cultural writer for the Philadelphia Inquirer . His most recent book is Mohamed's Ghosts: An American Story of Love and Fear in the Homeland. The latest TomCast audio interview in which he discusses the words that changed our world since September 11, 2001, can be heard by clicking here or downloaded to your ipod by clicking here.
[Note to Readers: If you are interested in reading the Duke University-University of North Carolina study, it is available by clicking here, as is the Rand report by clicking here. (Note that both are PDF files.) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's aversion to contact with U.S. Muslims is mentioned in evidence presented at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui and can be found in PDF format on page 36 of defense exhibit 941 here. For another view of just how overblown the Islamic terrorist threat in the U.S. is, check out Tom Engelhardt's "Fear Inc."]
Copyright 2010 Stephan Salisbury
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