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we're amazingly safe
Tuesday, November 27 2001
I think that sometime over the course of the past week, the fires burning at the site of the World Trade Center were finally extinguished. I say this because suddenly I no longer smell the acrid bouquet of burning metal/concrete/plastic/paper/flesh at the Fulton, Park Place, and Chambers Street subway stops.
Meanwhile, there's a plan afoot to have the many Arabs of greater Detroit give "voluntary" interviews about terrorists they may or may not know. It's such a controversial and bone-headed plan that Detroit police departments, who have developed good relationships with their Arabs communities, are reportedly refusing to cooperate. Given the questions to be asked in the interviews, they seem to have all the hallmarks (and utility) of McCarthy-style loyalty interrogations. Among the questions asked is one that goes, "How did you feel about the attacks on the World Trade Center?" It's a question that is, on its face, useless and insulting to ask. Is anyone who is truly dangerous going to say, "I felt refreshed and excited by the news of the collapse of those infidel towers. When evening came, after administering their daily beatings, I took my three wives out to KFC to celebrate."? Especially given that these interviews will be used as pretense for yet more
secret arrests. Only about 10 percent of Americans feel that the government is going too far in its crackdown on Arabs and in its general curtailment of civil liberties. This just goes to show the fragility of American liberty. In this country we're amazingly safe and we have it easy, even with a couple collapsing skyscrapers and smattering of anthrax letters. If things were as tough here as they've been for the people of Afghanistan, I'm sure 90 percent of Americans would gladly embrace our own version of the Taliban.
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