After the failed car bombing in Time Square last weekend, Congressman Nadler went on the Fox business channel to discuss the incident. Time Square, as well as the World Trade Center site, fall within the congressman’s district.
While talking about the need for New York to receive more funding to combat terrorism, he was asked if he had heard who might have been behind the attempt. At that point, the connection between Faisal Shahzad, the man accused of the failed attack, and Pakistani militants had yet to be established.
“Whether the guy who did this–or the people who did this–where with some Islamic terrorist group, or they were some right-wing nut group, or whether they were by themselves, in one sense it doesn’t matter because they’re all dangerous,” Nadler responded.
Yes, it could have seemingly been any of the above. The debate over terrorism in American seems too often to begin and end with selective memory. While the attacks on the World Trade centers were done by people that today are Terrorists when we talk about Terrorism, the idea that a Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombing, or a Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris Columbine-style plot–both of which are acts of terrorism–could be as likely as a Muslim committed to jihad doesn’t square with some people.
“As politicians like these fantasize about nonexistent Terrorist Tea Parties, the real thing slips through, blends in and plots mass murder,” wrote the Investor’s Business Daily editorial board, referring specifically to Nadler. While the threat of Islamic Terrorism is undoubtedly real–and no one, certainly not Nadler, is saying it isn’t–so, too, as the above examples directly show, is a form of domestic terrorism that appears to be conveniently forgotten.
Were it not the case, would former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, among others, be advocating stripping people of their rights and citizenship for being Terrorists?
“I would not have given him Miranda warnings after a couple of hours of questioning,” Giuliani told Jake Tapper on ABC’s “This Week” today, speaking about Shahzad. “I would have declared him an enemy combatant. I would have asked the president to declare him an enemy combatant.” This, it seems, is what you do to Terrorists At War With America. They are enemy combatants; they are certainly not to be treated as criminals.
Which is to say, they must be Islamic radicals bent on killing Americans. This is what Terrorism is. Imagine Giuliani’s suggestion applied to a McVeigh model: a United States military veteran, white, conservative, disaffected and dissatisfied with government and willing to do something about it. No Miranda rights for people like this? Declaring American citizens “enemy combatants”? Who among the Tea Party movement would Giuliani target first?
Maybe if, like Faisal Shahzad, you have the name and the face and the background to be a Terrorist. But if you’re a McVeigh or a disturbed adolescent like Klebold or Harris, the idea of extrajudicial imprisonment and the stripping of rights isn’t part of the conversation, even as we see a rise in right-wing militancy and Columbine-style plots are thwarted.
The idea that we should be putting strong security systems in place, treating terrorism as a crime, using the judicial and law enforcement systems to deal with these threats–all things Nadler has advocated for–should be a non-partisan issue. Yet this is what counts as substantive debate about how to protect Americans against terrorism. And Nadler gets called out of touch.