The Myth of the International Terrorist Conspiracy

Following the terrorist strikes on American assets on the eleventh of September 2001, there has been much ado about the international undermining power of terrorism. In fact, Western nations, both large and small, have been affected by the fear for this phenomenon so much that many of them have decided, in one way or another, to declare a "War on Terrorism", apparently expecting to be able to combat this elusive threat with some form of military power.

At the root of this lies the worldview that the current Western world, and synonymous with it civilization as we know and appreciate it, is under a full-fledged and skilfully executed assault by a network of terrorist movements everywhere across the globe, acting in unison to bring down everything we hold dear. The motivation for this would be their hatred of everything free and democratic, and a sort of juvenile demonic desire to bring down the good of the world because of a strange mixture of religious fervor and "just because we can".

Yet this conspiracy theory, popular as it may be at the moment, is pathetic and unconvincing at best. While the organization dubbed Al Qaeda, led by the wealthy Saudi fanatic Osama Bin Laden and his Jordanian henchman Al-Zarqawi, is most often seen as the real organization behind this purported worldwide terrorist network, the more one thinks about it the less likely this seems.

After all, what use would these terrorists have for such a network? There are very many organizations in the world that can be considered "terrorist", and they all have very differing goals. The Irish Republican Army is considered terrorist by many, yet it does not care about undermining the United States at all. The islamic terrorists in the Philippines desire independence, not revolution. The movement of Amrozi and Imam Samudra in Indonesia, responsible for the Bali bombings, is mainly aimed at the Western (mainly Australian) presence within their nation. The Tamil insurgency in Sri Lanka has no global goals whatsoever, but claims a struggle for self-determination. The Hamas and similar movements in Palestine are fighting against Israeli presence on what they deem their land, but do not appear to have any strategic interests beyond the region. And so on and on.

How could a Saudi fundamentalist, waging a private war against the Sunni Wahhabist regime of Saudi-Arabia and the United States, and all whom he thinks supports them, ever unite such varied and localized terrorist movements? They don't care about him and he does not care about them. The same goes for each of the leaders of the respective movements. There simply is no logical reason to assume there would be any kind of cooperation between these movements for a common global strategic goal, let alone the kind of hive mind they are commonly assumed to have by many modern Western politicians and the public.

What's more, there is no proof for such a 'global connection' either. The Taliban in Afghanistan harbored Bin Laden and others of his movement as refugees; but only as long as they would plan to strike at targets the Taliban also disapproved of, and as long as they would stay out of the country's domestic politics. Even a person like Mullah Omar, close enough in ideology to Bin Laden, did not very much feel like sharing any power with him, and certainly would not let himself be led by him in any kind of global movement. This is very much the only pattern that can be discerned about internationalist terrorist movements; they are now and then supported by existing regimes in various nations such as Iran and Iraq, but only under the "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" rationale, and not even that for long. In any case such support is usually ineffective in the long term unless such a regime in turn has the support of a Western nation, or formerly of the Soviet Union.

That said, it is not even clear what "terrorism" is. The definitions of it are so vague that anyone can find for any action a position that would allow calling that action "terrorist". Additionally, it has a universal negative appeal, making it rather useful for everyone's purposes. It is by its very nature a propaganda phrase.
All the more shameful for so many people, and even whole nations, in the West today that they allow themselves to have their liberties curtailed and their minds frozen in fear because of a shadowboxing match against a concept that has no real meaning and no real content of itself such as "terrorism". It is time we start paying attention to the real dangers in the West of the moment, and we stop our Don Quixote fight against the windmills of international conspiracies.
Posted by Matthijs Krul @ 23:27

 

The Myth of "Judicial Activism"

Ever since the Supreme Court of the United States explained its power to declare laws, statutes and state Constitutions invalid under the federal Constitution in Marbury vs Madison¹, there has been much ado about so-called "judicial activism". What is meant by this phrase is the general perception of many citizens and politicians alike that the courts in their role as guardians of the Constitution regularly exceed their authority, striking down statutes here and invalidating state amendments there, all based on the justices' own notion of morality or fair law.

This complaint is not new. Already during the very first years of the Supreme Court's history, the political battle (maybe even a "culture war" to borrow Justice Scalia's phrase²) between federalists and republicans/democrats was waged partially by laws and lawsuits, and the role of the courts in this came under fire. The very issue of Marbury was originally one of these cases. What further aggravates this perception of a structural problem is the fact that the Justices are always appointed by a very politically driven President, with the concurrence of a very politically driven Senate. In this way, such "judicial activism" seems a recurring evil.

Yet when you compare this general perception with the actual cases and which Justices decide them, and for what reasons, the notion of "judicial activism" becomes exceedingly ridiculous. It is important to consider in this context that this notion is (at the moment, at least) mainly railed at from the traditional conservative wing of American politics, and especially the libertarians. What they fear is that their ideal of locally-driven democratic politics with a strong civil rights character is threatened by judicial rulings that go against the grain of the wishes of a given local population.

It is, looking at a general overview of the history of constitutional law in the United States, however the case that more often than not, currently accepted constitutional rules of civil rights and legal procedure had to be 'created' by new interpretations of the Constitution, and by boldly going against what the current public feeling was on a given issue and instead doing what is right in the view of the justices. In short, by the very same "judicial activism".

One example of this is for example the absolute interpretation of freedom of speech. Originally, this right as considered in the common law tradition was seen as protecting the population from prior restraint, i.e. the censure or review of expression by the government before the actual publishing or utterance. Nothing more, however. What's more, the framers of the American Constitution, with the possible exception of Jefferson, were also of this opinion, following the famous common law guidelines of Lord Blackstone.
Nowadays, however, the people who would support allowing the government to ban disfavored speech such as statements of support for imperial Germany³, insults aimed against the current administration in general⁴, or even sexually loaded writings⁵, are few and far between indeed. Yet for every one of these cases it took "judicial activism", and often in several cases too, to establish a constitutional precedent on it.

Another example is the area of equal protection rights. Nowadays one of the most grim and infamous cases in the history of this field in the US is the Dred Scott decision⁶; and such a decision is certainly looked unfavorably upon indeed among the more intellectually honest rightists. But the remarkable thing about this decision is that it actually did follow the Constitution and the cultural feelings of the time, and was not "activist" in any way. The same goes for Plessy vs Ferguson⁷, which established the equally notorious "separate but equal" doctrine, absolutely within the literal (or "constructionist") reading of the Constitution. It took "judicial activism", in the form of Brown vs Topeka Board of Education⁸, to remove this faux equality and intervene on behalf of the oppressed minorities.

And I could go on this way. What is evident is that what is considered unacceptably encroaching "judicial activism" today, stands a good chance of being a historical milestone for the progress of freedom in the United States tomorrow. And the most beneficial and famous cases, reshaping the nation in a freer and better form than it was before and to the pleasure of a vast majority of the citizens of the USA, are exactly those where the justice of the Supreme Court dares go against the current cultural feelings and political notions, and goes in law where no man has gone before. The idea of "judicial activism" as the evil that plagues the courts is no more than a petty excuse for disagreeing with the outcome of a certain case for your own political and moral reasons, and it does a disservice the most to those who would protect the civil liberties of the citizens and uphold the Constitution.


¹ 1 Cranch 137 (1803)
² Lawrence vs Texas; 539 US 558 (2003)
³ North Dakota vs Fontana
⁴ Compare Abrams vs United States; 250 US 616 (1919) to Herndon vs Lowry; 301 US 242 (1937)
⁵ Compare Roth vs United States; 354 US 476 (1957) to American Booksellers Association vs Hudnut; 771 Fed. 2d 323 CA7 (1985)
⁶ Dred Scott vs Sandford; 60 US 393 (1856)
⁷ 163 US 537 (1896)
⁸ 347 US 483 (1954)
Posted by Matthijs Krul @ 13:36