Excerpt: How Would a Patriot Act?

By Glenn Greenwald, AlterNet. Posted May 11, 2006.

In one sense, it is difficult to understand how the Bush administration has been able to embrace such radical theories of executive power, and to engage in such recognizably un-American conduct -- first in the shadows and now quite openly -- without prompting a far more intense backlash from the country than we have seen

That is because the Bush administration has in its arsenal one very potent weapon -- and one weapon only -- which it has repeatedly used: fear. Ever since September 11, 2001, Americans have been bombarded with warnings, with color-coded "alerts," with talk of mushroom clouds and nefarious plots to blow up bridges and tall buildings, with villains assigned cartoon names such as "dirty bomber," "Dr. Germ," and so on

We have to invade and occupy Iraq because the terrorists will kill us all if we do not. We must allow the president to incarcerate American citizens without due process, employ torture as a state-sanctioned weapon, eavesdrop on our private conversations and even violate the law, because the terrorists are so evil and so dangerous that we cannot have any limits on the power of the president if we want him to protect us from the dangers in the world.

Here is Dick Cheney in early January 2006, proudly defending the administration's illegal eavesdropping program:

"As we get farther away from September 11th, some in Washington are yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country, and to back away from the business at hand The enemy that struck on 9/11 is weakened and fractured, yet it is still lethal and trying to hit us again "

Cheney never once addresses the fact that the administration had full leeway to eavesdrop on terrorists without breaking the law. He ignores that fact because he is not making a rational argument. He is attempting to play on the fears of Americans to justify their violations of law.

President Bush has also been fueling the fires of fear in almost every speech he has given since September 11, 2001. Here he is on October 6, 2005, attempting to whip up as much fear as possible in order to try to prop up Americans' diminishing support for the country's ongoing occupation of Iraq:

"The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region, and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia. With greater economic and military and political power, the terrorists would be able to advance their stated agenda: to develop weapons of mass destruction, to destroy Israel, to intimidate Europe, to assault the American people, and to blackmail our government into isolation.

Our enemy is utterly committed. As Zarqawi has vowed, "We will either achieve victory over the human race, or we will pass to the eternal life." And the civilized world knows very well that other fanatics in history, from Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, consumed whole nations in war and genocide before leaving the stage of history

With the rise of a deadly enemy and the unfolding of a global ideological struggle, our time in history will be remembered for new challenges and unprecedented dangers."

Islamic terrorists are depicted as omnipotent villains with quite attainable dreams of world domination, genocide, and the obliteration of the United StatesFor four years, this is what Americans have heard over and over and over from our government All of our plans for the future, dreams for our children, career aspirations, life goals -- these are all subordinate unless we stand loyally behind George Bush as he takes the extreme and unprecedented measures necessary to protect us from these extreme and unprecedented threats.

It is that deeply irrational, fear-driven view of the world that has been used to convince Americans to acquiesce to the administration's excesses and abuses of power. And it is not difficult to understand why it works.

After all, if it really were the case that terrorism constituted the sort of imminent, civilization-ending threat the administration has spent the last four years drumming into everyone's head, then it might be extremely difficult to gin up much outrage over an eavesdropping program -- warrants or not -- or over a few American citizens being rounded up and put in military prisons without any charges

In fact, it has become unacceptable in polite company to even raise the prospect that the threat of terrorism may be exaggerated. During the 2004 election, John Kerry stumbled in his clumsy way towards challenging this fear-mongering when he was quoted in The New York Times Magazine as saying, "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." This provoked predictable outrage from the Bush camp that Kerry, along with Bush's other opponents, was not serious about fighting terrorists and was too weak to protect our children from this unparalleled menace

Despite the dire warnings of the Bush administration, people in rural Kansas and Georgia are beginning to realize that on the list of problems and threats that endanger their children, the potential of a terrorist attack does not predominate.

Glenn Greenwald is a constitutional law attorney and chief blogger at Unclaimed Territory.

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