by Raphael Schweber-Koren
The Johns Hopkins News-Letter
U-Wire
We cried on Sept. 11, watching the twin towers fall and many good men and women die. We listened to the soothing words of the Bush administration: "No one could have prevented this." We suffered betrayal earlier this year, when evidence and whistle-blowers came forward, telling us the FBI and the CIA had information that if pursued vigorously, would have lead to the Sept.11 plot. Uh-oh, said the Bushies! Caught with their hands in the cookie jar!
And so they developed the Department of Homeland Security to save us from our enemies. Truthfully, it's a good idea, and if the resulting collaboration does develop, then I'm all for it. If Homeland Security Intelligence believes, from CIA data, that someone is a terrorist, I want the INS to stop him. Immediately. If the INS says no, I want someone trained in intelligence and security to evaluate the evidence objectively and stop the squabbling.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
The department is also a really dangerous idea.Collaboration and secrecy combine in a security apparatus whose vague mission is to defend the homeland against all threats. Who decides what is a threat? Calling al Qaeda a threat is easy. Are IMF protestors a threat? What about Baltomoreans outside designated "free speech zones," intending to disrupt our daily lives? Are they a threat too? How about people questioning the government on its terrorism policies? They could be aiding and abetting our enemies, as John Ashcroft said. Political manipulation of subjective words such as "threat" and "enemy" leads to governmental abuse and the destruction of freedom.
Early in U.S. history, government confronted the same problems of political abuse of government functionaries. Under the "spoils system," which began under Andrew Jackson, all government employees served at the discretion of the president. Using this enormous power of patronage to reward friends and punish enemies, the president could completely control the decisions and actions of the infant bureaucracy.
This lack of stability and integrity in the government's decision-making process lead to reform. Starting with the Pendleton Act of 1870, the creation of the civil service and the formation of robust government unions have helped to put the brakes on day-to-day operations happening politically. Imagine having your driver's license denied or revoked because you voted Republican. Havoc results. Government cannot provide modern-day functionality without a semi-independent civil service.
The same civil service laws should protect new Homeland Security Department workers. The Bush administration proposes what they call a "freedom to manage," which effectively strips members of the department of their worker protections. He also proposes stripping the department of whistle-blower protections. This gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the power to hire, fire, promote and demote any employee for no reason - just like Jackson perfected under the spoils system.
President Bush's insistence on stripping civil service protections from the new department could be explained with some theories:
It's a good election issue: The Democrats apparently just killed the Homeland Security Department over worker rights/ "freedom to manage." While they profess their good faith, Bush feels he can take the obstructionism to the country as an election issue, and that the worker's rights issue won't resonate with most voters.
Bush wants to break the government unions: Reagan also did this with the air traffic controllers. Republicans generally are not union supporters, and the unions provide an institutional force that resists political direction and tends to support other policies internally. If the administration breaks the union here, a political strategy of "national security" and "freedom to manage" might break other unions.
Bush wants true political control over Homeland Security: If this is true, then "enemy combatants" could be just the beginning. Conducting domestic surveillance and evaluating thoughts (which may be indicative of future actions) is an integral part of defending the homeland from possible terrorism. Surveillance targets and ideology evaluation are subjective, and thus easy to control politically. When given the power to fire or demote someone over a decision, based on trivial qualms or because it is inconsistent with management's view, security becomes politicized. Further, security force members begin "going along to get along."
According to The Washington Post, this has already happened on various "objective" scientific panels. Bush produces politically favorable outcomes by stacking these group's composition or dissolving those that don't go along. Objective decisions in security often involve who to target. For Homeland Security employees, who depend on their jobs for a living, the choice could be between pursuing the president's political enemies and putting food on the family table for children and loved ones.
So it all goes back to the very subjective definition of a terrorist. "Terrorist" carries implications into people's hearts. No one wants to support "terrorists." Defining enemies as terrorists gives power; it evokes powerful memories of those who died on Sept. 11 and the madmen who carried out those heinous attacks. Those madmen are terrorists. By allowing the Bush Administration to strip civil service protections from Homeland Security employees, we risk letting the sitting administration (Democrat or Republican) define who is a terrorist, spy on them, investigate them for being outspoken Americans or just having opinions that are "different."
Let's not let our own government be the real terrorists, frightening Americans into silence and conformity. Let's not build our own Ministry of Love.
