Fw: CounterPunch: HOMELAND INSECURITY

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 - Monday, 1 October 2001 -

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 ____________________________________________________________________

 HOMELAND INSECURITY
 ____________________________________________________________________

 By Douglas Valentine
 http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine2.html

 Under Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, the Homeland Security Office will
 coordinate 46 government agencies against terrorist suspects in the United
 States. Ridge will perform this function in conjunction with Bush's deputy
 national security advisor, Army Gen. Wayne Downing.

 Bush Administration officials are still working out the "lines of
 authority" between the two new positions, but it's clear that from now on,
 the military is going to have a central role in domestic anti-terrorism
 activities.

 The reason for the military's prominence is simple: Bush wants to establish
 special, extra-legal military tribunals that can try suspected terrorists
 without the ordinary legal constraints of American justice. These military
 tribunals apparently would have the authority to execute terrorists within
 30 days of their conviction.

 The Bush Administration denied considering a national identification card
 system that would empower our Big Brothers with the omnipotence required to
 catch terrorists before they strike. But you can be sure that some system
 will be devised to enable Ridge at Homeland Security, and Downing on behalf
 of the Pentagon, "to keep track of every suspects every move."

 The problem is that no one has yet defined "suspect".

 The Usual Suspects

 During the Vietnam War, under the CIA's Phoenix Program -- which is the
 model for the Homeland Security Office -- a terrorist suspect was anyone
 accused by one anonymous source. Just one. The suspect was then arrested,
 indefinitely detained in a CIA interrogation center, and tortured until he
 or she (or in some cases children as young as twelve) confessed, informed
 on others, died, or was brought before a military tribunal (such as Bush is
 proposing) for disposition.

 In thousands of cases, innocent people were imprisoned and tortured based
 on the word of an anonymous informer who had a personal grudge, or was
 actually a Viet Cong double agent feeding the names of loyal citizens into
 the Phoenix blacklist.

 At no point in the process did suspects have access to due process or
 lawyers, and thus, in 1971, four US Congresspersons stated their belief
 that the Phoenix Program violated that part of the Geneva Conventions
 guaranteeing protection to civilians in time of war. I repeat, in time of
 war.

 But those sorts of abuses can't happen here, during Bush's newly declared
 war on terrorism, right?

 Yeah, right.

 Symbolically, the terror attacks of 11 September wiped the psychological
 slate clean. All the moral prohibitions on the reactionary right wing have
 been lifted. The same thing happened in the Fatherland after the First
 World War--and that is the real threat of anti-terrorism we're facing in
 America today.

 In the name of anti-terrorism, all of the nation's pent-up anger and
 frustration over Vietnam, and a host of other "cultural" issues, is poised
 to be unleashed on the Enemy Within. And the Bush Administration and its
 propagandists have already defined the Enemy Within in very clear terms:
 "We're all Israelis now," they say, adding that, "You're with us or you're
 against us," in the declared war against terrorism.

 And being "against us" is a dangerous proposition. As noted, Bush has asked
 Congress to approve, without consideration, the formation of Phoenix-style
 military tribunals with the authority to torture suspects and execute them
 within 30 days, without due process of law. The system was tested in
 Vietnam 30 years ago, and perfected in Israel on the Palestinians, and is
 ready for application here and now.

 The New Psywar

 As stated twelve years ago in the October 1989, Marine Corps Gazette (p
 22-26a), Bush's New War will be "widely dispersed and largely undefined;
 the distinction between war and peace will be blurred to the vanishing
 point." There will be no "definable battlefields or fronts," and the
 distinction between "civilian" and "military" will disappear. "Success will
 depend heavily on effectiveness in joint operations (such as Bush proposes
 between Ridge at Homeland Security and Downing at the Pentagon) as lines
 between responsibility and mission become very blurred."

 According to the Gazette article, success in the New War against undefined
 suspects will also depend on "psychological operations" manifest "in the
 form of media/information intervention." One must be "adept at manipulating
 the media to alter domestic and world opinion...." On the psywar
 battlefield, "Television news may become a more powerful operational weapon
 than armored divisions."

 The TV "hawks" love to blame the anti-war movement for Americas defeat in
 Vietnam, and they assert in these do-or-die times that dissent promotes
 terrorism. In terms of the psywar strategy outlined above, this is exactly
 how nationalists and even pacifists became equated with terrorists in
 Vietnam, and thus subject to indefinite detention and torture in an
 interrogation center, and -- in the case of some 40,000 plus individuals --
 assassination under the CIA's Phoenix Program.

 The Bush Administration claims that a war against terrorism requires
 different justice. The strategy is working in Israel, but in Vietnam it
 turned an entire population against its government and engendered a tragedy
 of epic proportions.

 One can only wonder how Americans will react if due process is abandoned
 through the Office of Homeland Security, under the direction of the
 Pentagon.

 Douglas Valentine writes frequently for CounterPunch. He is the author of
 The Phoenix Program, the only comprehensive account of the CIA's torture
 and assassination operation in Vietnam, as well as TDY a chilling novel
 about the CIA and the drug trade (http://www.douglasvalentine.com/).

 Copyright 2001. All rights reserved. CounterPunch is a project of the
 Institute for the Advancement of Journalistic Clarity.