Almost two years ago, I first wrote that the "war on terrorism" would be a benefit to any national political candidate. I did not then, nor do I now, see much difference in the way the government would curtail civil liberties even if John Kerry were elected. Too much power--and money--is at stake to allow victory to be declared. Not that I think it ever could be, mind you, any more than one could declare victory in the "war" on drugs or "obesity."

The September 11 attack is the gift that keeps on giving and giving to George Bush. Once Bush convinced the country that we were at war all bets--and the rule of law--were off the table. Ad hoc legal process replaced the Constitution and the federal rules of criminal procedure; lies, fantasies and half-truths masquerade as truth; John Ashcroft continues to run amok, orchestraing his henchmen in trials that are remarkable for prosecutorial misconduct and lack of discretion; courts continue to defer to the president almost all the time; and, worst of all, the American media is working towards a lifetime achievement award for insuring that this most important of elections is reduced to bumper-sticker slogans and calls for the resignation of Dan Rather.

But at the center of all the madness is the so-called "war" on so-called "terror," which, as Bush promises, will be fought around the globe for a long time to come. Instead of stating precisely who the enemy is, which some believe to be Islamist extremism, Bush and Kerry are content to keep the enemy faceless and nameless. That makes it convenient to bring any person, country, or organization under the "terrorism" umbrella. Such was the case with Iraq. When no "weapons of mass destruction" were found, suddenly it became a battleground in the "war on terrorism."

It is not just political gain that is at stake for either candidate. Terrorism is big money. Every time a terror alert is raised a level, cash registers sing in corporations and lobbyists who make their killing on the killing threats. Former New York Major Rudolph Guililani, who achieved the status of sainthood after September 11, is one of the bright starts in the business of terrorism.

In the effort to find something intelligent to read, I have begun reading foreign newspapers and magazines available on the Internet. I came across this excellent opinon piece in Al Ahram, the Egyptian weekly newsmagaine.

In it (reproduced below), Gamil Matar stated precisely the essence of "terrorism" as political capital.

And Matar said it best--the war on terrorism cannot be won. There is too much at stake.

Here is the entire article:

Embracing the enemy

It is quite likely that Bush will win in the US presidential elections. Recent developments, some of which have been particularly serendipitous for his administration, have helped improve his odds.

His is an administration that has played remorselessly upon the fears and patriotism of the American public, rendering opposition to its foreign policies virtually synonymous with treason. As a result demonstrators during the Republican Convention in New York and writers and documentary film makers criticising the extremist policies of the administration have, at the very least, been vilified as unpatriotic. Against this alarmist and chauvinist backdrop, not all of which is the product of the scheming of team Bush, there have been several incidents that the US public has taken as confirmation of the administration's claims regarding global terrorism. The attacks on Jewish cemeteries and synagogues in France, explosions in Turkey, assassinations and booby- trapped cars in Iraq, suicide bombings of buses in Bir Shiba and the massacre in a school in Beslan in North Ossetia have all rained undreamed of blessings on the Bush administration and its re-election campaign.

These "fortuitous" events, from the perspective of Washington and Tel Aviv, mesh perfectly with the plans of Karl Rove, Bush's senior campaign advisor, to make terrorism the focal issue during the final phase of the campaign. To Rove goes the credit of ensuring that terrorism topped the American economy, domestic policy and Iraq in the American electorate's list of concerns, and terrorists the world over have worked overtime to help him achieve this aim, as though they, too, seek to confirm that terrorism is alive and kicking, and more viciously than ever before. Meanwhile, the neoconservatives have stepped up their relentless drive to control domestic and foreign policy decision-making centres and those bodies that influence them. The US Congress has become a bastion of Washington's hard line policies and has exhibited at least as much contempt for international law and the UN as the White House. American media magnates have joined forces to guard the Bush administration against the "excesses" of those oases in the media establishment that still cling to the principle of free opinion and expression, busily bolstering the barrier of silence they have erected to keep the American people from hearing the protests of nations and peoples abroad.

Everything seems ideal for the Bush administration. It may have failed to reduce unemployment or revive the American economy, but that hardly matters. The American political process is now dominated by a single issue: terrorism, and its defeat, is the single criterion upon which everything is judged. When, on the eve of the Republican convention Bush said that the war against terrorism could not be won, it was merely a slip of the tongue. What he probably intended to articulate was that terrorism was the one enemy he could not do without.

The hysteria that has been carefully propagated around terrorism is a boon for any future administration in Washington, whether led by Bush or Kerry. Terrorism has served Bush so well in his first term that he would surely welcome more in order to capitalise on his "achievements", both at home and abroad, in combating it. Nor is it likely that Kerry will resent the unprecedented unanimity and allegiance terrorism has drummed up for the occupant of the Oval Office and his government. Fanatic patriotism, a unique national consensus and unprecedented levels of loyalty are an invaluable tool for any administration seeking to implement policies and programmes aimed at changing the face of America and the world.

We can anticipate that the war against terrorism will continue, just as Bush has predicted. Too many interests are now vested in this war and they will not fade over the horizon just because Bush wins a second term, or because Kerry becomes president. Nor is it logical for either Bush or Kerry and their respective coteries to pass up the golden opportunity to rally the American people behind them presented by this shadowy foreign enemy. Many commentators, particularly those who have followed developments in the US over the past two decades, expected major changes to take place in American society as a result of the pressures of globalisation, including a radical overhaul of the American immigration system and upheavals in demographic and class structures. And the only way to confront these challenges is through an ideological and political mobilisation intense enough to create the necessary framework of national consensus.

Terrorism replaced communism as the great enemy, and it became quickly apparent that it was going to be a far more cost-effective bogeyman. Certainly the Bush administration has succeeded, with minimal effort, in creating new breeding grounds for terrorism and in intensifying terrorist activity throughout the world. Its foreign policies, alone, were sufficient. Washington realised early on, even if it refused to admit the fact, that a heavy dose of inappropriate arm twisting and an even heavier dose of injustice would do the trick. It knows that terrorism is not just a matter of criminals, extremists and political delinquents and it is now more than apparent than ever that American arrogance and bullying in its dealings with other nations, peoples and cultures have created unprecedented levels of hostility towards the US and Israel. We know, too, that America's active encouragement of Israeli expansionism, of its incitement of international antagonism against Arabs and Muslim peoples and of its threats against Iran and Syria, will guarantee that anti-Americanism mounts.

The US and Israel have benefited, albeit indirectly, from terrorism. But once the pursuit of this benefit becomes active through the deliberate provocation of terrorism and the propelling of terrorists to even greater heights of brutality we must then address the subject of responsibility, if not collusion.

Many parties are responsible for stimulating terrorism, but certain forces within the US and Israel are guiltier than others elsewhere. These forces have discovered the enormous potential an outside enemy offers and they have persuaded the American people, and many other governments, of the magnitude of the danger of an enemy that is so easily spawned and used.

Maintaining the focus on terrorism will reap fundamental changes in American defence strategy and policies. Already there are changes in the system of military mobilisation with, for example, the decision to withdraw large numbers of US forces from abroad and to train other forces in rapid strike operations. The purpose is to avoid the direct military engagement of US forces on the ground, as in Afghanistan and Iraq. US military policies also appear to be tending towards a preference for long-distance strikes aimed at destroying the infrastructure of nations branded as terrorist. There is little doubt that the US will continue its campaign to topple regimes it classifies as uncooperative in the war against terrorism and to intervene in the affairs of those nations whose economic and cultural conditions it feels have made them breeding grounds for terrorism. The US will also continue to hurl charges of negligence or remiss in the fight against terrorism against this nation or that. The important thing is to keep the terrorist subject alive and hot.

During the Cold War the world was sharply divided between communist and capitalist camps. During Vietnam, the American people were themselves bitterly split. Today, in contrast, the world is virtually united against terrorism and the Americans are united behind their leaders in the war against this new enemy. This unity will not disintegrate if they get a new leadership. The indispensable cementing force behind this unprecedented global and American unity is to maintain the state of anti-terrorist alarm.

END OF ARTICLE

The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Richmond, Virginia, stayed true to its tradition of being to the right of the Supreme Court in the decision handed down on September 13, 2004, in the case of the United States vs. Zacarias Moussaoui.

The prosecution of Moussaoui in the Alexandria, Virginia federal court has been a tortured one—not in the sense of physically abusing the defendant, but in the prosecutor's abuse of the law and legal process.

When we last wrote about this case several months ago, trial Judge Leonie Brinkema had finally caved in to the government's insistence that national security precluded them from producing "enemy combatant" witnesses for Moussaoui's lawyers to question—either in pretrial depositions or at the trial of the case. The government claims that to do so would risk the witnesses' intelligence value and even put the nation at risk of another terrorist attack.

So, Brinkema ordered that the government could not seek the death penalty against Moussaoui because she had determined from the government's own reports of what the witnesses would say, that they might testify in a way that would negate a finding that Moussaoui was involved in the September 11 terrorist attacks.

If you listened to news reports about this week's ruling, you probably only heard that the appellate court ruled that Moussaoui could send written questions to the witnesses. He could use their answers to his questions at his trial if he chose. Of course, the government could produce its own version of witness statements. (Any guess as to which party would have the best testimony?) It was not widely reported that the court overruled Brinkema's order about the death penalty.

Every American who thinks the judiciary is a co-equal branch of government that will protect its citizens from overreaching and illegal executive power ought to read the appellate opinion. The court buys the "war on terror" excuse, and backs off from interfering with the executive conduct of war. We should not, indeed we must not, it says, argue when the government tells us that it is withholding evidence in order to protect us.

To his credit, Judge Gregory dissented to the part of the majority opinion that put the death penalty back in play. Accepting the prosecutors' arguments about protecting national security, he still thought it a little unfair that a man could be put to death when his sixth amendment right to confront and cross-examine witnesses was so obviously violated.

Ah, but we live in different times, these. The Fourth Circuit agreed with the government's insistence on throwing out the rule book--the Constitution and the Rules of Criminal Procedure. The government does not have to produce its game plan—in the form of normal discovery. Its team of prosecutors can audible all the way to the end zone of the death house. The court stopped short of throwing in the towel and discarding all of its yellow flags. Perhaps it will throw down one or two for you someday, the way it has for Moussaoui. But the penalties for the government violation of the rules are meager—like a five-yard penalty for an unsportsmanlike conduct play that ought to get the government players ejected from the game.

The opinion admits that it the court is going out of its way to make the close calls all in favor of the government. With officials like these on the field, Moussaoui's legal team must surely be casting an eye to officials in the booth.

Instant replay before a full panel of justices, perhaps? Maybe, but a petition for a rehearing en banc is likely to turn out like it did for Yaser Hamdi. The full panel went even further than the three-judge court in marching to the war drums of President Bush.

Ultimately, Moussaoui may appeal to the ultimate arbiter—the Supreme Court—the NFL of the judiciary branch. Perhaps it will have a more measured response to the game as it is being played in Alexandria. Maybe it will have some thought for the future of the game if the rules are allowed to be ad hoc and arbitrary.

The Supreme Court told this very appellate court that it went too far in the case of Yaser Hamdi, allowing as how he ought to have a lawyer and be able at the minimum to have his day in court. And now, Hamdi is going to be released, in exchange for his giving up U.S. citizenship and returning to Saudi Arabia. Prosecutors count on Americans' short memory span to not recall their dire predictions, even to the Supreme Court earlier this year, that Hamdi was a grave threat to national security.

Maybe the Supreme Court will step in for Zacarias Moussaoui—and all of us—and hold the government to the decency and fair play demanded by the Constitution. It bears repeating that what the prosecutors do to Moussaoui, with the court's blessing, they will do to the rest of us.

It will only be a matter of time.

Fifteen months ago, American citizen and Virginia resident Ahmed Abu Ali was arrested while taking an examination in a Saudi University and imprisoned without charge and without access to an attorney. For the better part of a year, the Saudi government said it was holding Abu Ali for the benefit of the United States, who had requested his detention.

Federal prosecutors and FBI agents visited Abu Ali in his cell in Saudi Arabia. But they never charged him with a crime (though they appeared to want to link him to the Alexandria 11, young men serving 85 to 115 years for being in favor of helping the Muslim cause in Kashmir). When the Alexandria 11 case ended, Abu Ali's parents sued in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, asking the court to order a hearing on his detention. For authority, they relied on the Supreme Court rulings in the cases of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners and American citizen Yaser Hamdi.

At the time they filed the suit, in August of this year, the Saudi government told the family they had no interest in their son. The United States insisted that it was not holding him. But the day the family filed suit, the State Department, never before willing to share much information about their son, called the parents and told them that the Saudis were charging him with unspecified terrorism-related crimes.

That seemed to be enough for U.S. District Judge John Bates. It seems to me, he said, that the U.S. has nothing to do with his detention. After all, that is what the government told me, he said.

So Abu Ali remains a prisoner and the U.S. government disclaims liability or responsibility. The U.S. can, and will, continue to mastermind the imprisonment of its citizens without accountability. The administration cleverly dodges the law of the land and the law of human rights so deftly by calling on its friends, like the Saudis, to do its dirty work for them. My guess is that Abu Ali was tortured or at least abused while in prison, in order to extract information from him. When none was forthcoming, they had no reason to charge him or extradite him to the U.S. But they cannot let him come home either, lest he disclose how he was treated by his government and its surrogate, Saudi Arabia.

In another case, a federal judge is unmoved by the plight of another U.S. citizen. Remember Jose Padilla, the American citizen who has been held without charge for two years? In June, the Supreme Court dismissed his habeas corpus petition, claiming it was filed in the wrong court. Upon refiling, the U.S. District Court in South Carolina (he sits in a Navy brig in Charleston) said there was no reason to expedite the case on the docket.

After all, it is just the case of another American imprisoned contrary to the law and the Constitution. When American courts turn away the pleas of its own whose rights are so obviously and egregiously violated, we are in a pretty hopeless state, indeed.