Bloodless Coup

i can't say that i'm terribly concerned about whatever threat cat stevens might pose, nor am i thrilled about ridge's inane comments on the situation, but juan cole has an interesting observation that merits consideration. in short, cole expresses his lack of sympathy for a man, however harmless in fact, who endorsed the fatwa against salman rushdie. for my money, that makes stevens as much a terrorist as yasser hamdi or jose padilla or any of the other guantanamo detainees; at least stevens gets to go home.

Yes, I agree that Yusuf Islam's endorsement of the fatwa and weasel-y rationalizations are shameful. I'm just not certain this is the kind of priority deportation that we need. And if we're going to deport celebrities for saying stupid shit about politics, forget Gordon Lightfoot, can't they get Richard Gere or someone like that? (just kidding people, just kidding)

with due respect, binky, is it just "politics," trivially "shameful," to call for the slaughter of rush limbaugh and then hide behind the hem of my religious leaders' skirts? that's not politics. it's not even mere hate speech. it's incitation to murder; it is, in a word, terrorism, defined by merriam-webster as "the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion."

Well, first of all, I do not assume that shamefulness implies triviality. And as I said, I was joking about celebrities running their mouths about politics in the comment.

Second, while Yusuf Islam might still (though he appears to have backed off such behavior) pose the kind of threat you suggest, he poses it regardless of where he is located. That is, he opens his mouth and speaks, and I assume whether in England or the US the words would be reported equally broadly (given his celebrity albeit has-been status that he has parlayed into a supposed man of peace and charity profile). Keeping him out of the US isn't going to affect his verbal support for the edicts of extremists. So, what advantage does the US get from deporting him? We don't keep his inflammatory words from being heard, and in fact, have just upped his press potential and credibility in the world (and especially in anti-US areas, I would imagine). We likely (because it was highly unlikely he would have gotten up to terrorist hijinks while in the US for reasons of both celebrity and because the US government could have been keeping him under close surveillance) haven't prevented him from an act of terrorism on US soil. In fact, if we really suspected him of funding and linking and what not, it might have been an ideal opportunity to gather intel on the movements and contacts of Yusuf Islam. The very publicity surrounding the case has probably burned any usefullness he had as a link to be followed to terrorist funding; once outed like this he is going to be on constant watch anyway. So, unless the "burn" of deportation was a signal to him or someone in his network that "we are on to you," it's hard to know why it's important to keep Y. Islam out of the US.

In sum, I just don't see the value in making a very public case about Yusuf Islam, then having the Director of Homeland Security backpeddle and make weird statements about it. While I agree with you that his support for the fatwa was, hmmm, if not shameful how about execrable, it was probably not the reason for which he was deported. And if we can't come up with a better justification for why than "some people told us he was bad" then I remain suspicious.

i think we can agree to agree that tom ridge is an ass, in this case as in others. or more to the point, he's so hog-tied by political imperatives that he can't help but put his foot in his mouth (q.v., christie whitman and colin powell).

as a pragmatic matter, i pretty much have to concede your points: stevens poses no more a threat here than there; to the extent he's got anything to do with anything, he'd probably do more for us under surveillance than under a screamer headline about his putative mistreatment or the absurdity of DHS concerning itself with such impotent figureheads.

but there's a question begged by your last response that i think warrants consideration: as a formal matter, should we only exclude from this country those people actively engaged in or affiliated with terrorist acts or organizations? if so, for practical purposes should we recognize particular strains of fundamentalist islam qualifying as such an "organization." can we then apply an across-the-board exclusion to all people we can reliably identify as adherents to the beliefs of that organization, even when those amount to an endorsement of religious vigilantism?

contrary to the pragmatic concerns you validly raise, i've been thinking about this as a matter of principle: in the name of a fundamentalist islamic sect (i'd say minority, but i don't suppose i can be sure of that), stevens declared that rushdie should be killed for exercising what we hold sacrosanct in this country -- his right to express himself.

all of these things he can do (it wouldn't be illegal in a big way unless and until it qualified as an incitation to imminent violence with additional criteria satisfied as well), but i stand by my assessment that he's a terrorist (taking cole's representations of the case on faith, i find stevens' retraction-qua-qualification to be more or less completely devoid of value). whether an imminent and active combatant or not, we've rejected entry and/or imprisoned others far less clearly deserving of that mantel.

i'm sorry that it's a big story, but i still don't think he belongs here, regardless of whether he has any immediate intent to commit crimes against the people of this country. to my knowledge, he renounced everything about this country, including his citizenship, long ago. he has no due process rights at our shores, and i can't see why we'd make a dispensation for him we make for no others like him.

He never renounced anything about this country other than his career, did he? He was born and remains a British citizen, to my knowledge. As such, any prosecution for crimes (incitement to murder, etc) would have to have been under British law, and again, to my knowledge, the British government has not chosen to pursue the matter. In fact, Jack Straw has made a public statement in support of Y. Islam (not his ideas, but as a British citizen who was wrongfully deported), saying he never should have been on the watch list.

As you note, I tend towards pragmatism and recognize that thoughts and opinions are not wholly disassociated from action. However as for barring people from entering the country based on what they think and believe (particularly in regard to religion), rather than some reasonable expectation of action, seems rather in conflict with some basic US values.

binky, i don't disagree with your comments, or your analysis of what i said in my last post, but i want to clarify myself because i think my point was obscured.

i think we should retain the prerogative to bar people we in good faith believe to be terrorists at the border. it's something we have, more or less, always done.

i also think we should retain the prerogative to define who we will consider a terrorist, at least with regard to non-citizens, in a pragmatic, possibly extra-constitutional way -- perhaps to encompass not just those with imminent intent to do or incite harm, but also those unambiguously affiliated with groups guilty of that (i'm talking about a much more granular classification than, say, on mere ethnic or broad religious criteria).

thus, when someone like cat stevens jumps on the fatwa bandwagon in no uncertain terms, which as i've said constitutes in my mind a terrorist act that couldn't be much more repugnant to american values, i think it makes perfect sense to exclude him. even if he is an impotent, irrelevant former folkie.

as i've already conceded, the path to security surely does not lead directly through the exclusion of one self-important zealot, but in this area a little overinclusiveness doesn't hurt. and while i don't think that's unamerican, i'm all ears if you disagree.

Yes, we should be able to prevent terrorists from entering and acting.

Where I disagree is on such a broadly inclusive definition. I don't believe that Yusuf Islam is a terrorist. Might he have connections to terrorists? He might, through some of his charities, but I don't know that either. Should we condemn his support of the fatwa against Rushdie? Firmly and loudly. However I think acts of terrorism are so severe in their nature, that we run the risk of diluting their gravity by classifying Yusuf's support of the fatwa as the same thing as the suicide bombing in Bali. I suspect that you will continue to disagree, which is fine. But I prefer to maintain a distinction between active engagement with terrorist causes/acts and passive bandwagoning.

I am also not convinced that we should be enforcing thought police standards differently for citizens and non citizens. Of course these two groups are different in that we may deport one and not the other, although, with Jose Padilla (and that other guy whose name I can't remember) there have been attempts by the administration to blur the distinction of what citizens merit. I read somewhere - and it might have been inflammatory so I don't know if entirely accurate - that proposals for Patriot II had elements for stripping U.S. citizenship from terrorists. Again, while I understand the need to keep extremists who have the potential to cause harm out of the country, and that part of the basis for predicting future hostile action is the public verbal commitments extremists have made in the past, I worry about the banning of categories of thinkers. We have to be be more careful than that, even if it is costly in labor and other resources.

So, I think the answer to your question "can we then apply an across-the-board exclusion to all people we can reliably identify as adherents to the beliefs of that organization" is "no." To be an adherent to a set of beliefs, even a set of which a subset of adherents may have engaged in terrorist acts, is not an immediately identifiable marker of being a terrorist. There are radical anti-abortion activists who believe that the assassins who shot doctors have done a just thing, but would not ever do it themselves.

Of course, I know you draw a distinction between citizens and non-citizens, but this makes me think of something Armand has posted about: the OK senate race, in which the candidate has expressed support for the execution of people who perform abortions. One could see this as an incitement to murder, like Y. Islam's support of the fatwa, to the fevered mind of a radical anti-abortion activist who perhaps consulted the available "hit lists" of doctors, as might a fevered radical islamist who heard about the fatwa. That is a tenuous, and difficult link to prove. Why should we be more eager to accept the argument "I tried to kill Rushdie because Cat Stevens said he likes the fatwa" than "I shot that baby killer because Pat Robertson told me abortionists are murderers"? That strikes me as very tough, and also quite different than the "yelling fire" or "fighting words" kind of argument. However, you are the legal expert, not me, and perhaps I am arguing from a philosophical perspective when the law might see these things more similarly than I do.

And what about the "people we can reliably identify as adherents" part? Every local who ever stood up and said at a city council meeting that those militia boys might have had something going and that maybe Tim McVeigh had the right idea (without actually belonging to the militia organization, or having supported McVeigh) is now a suspect. What about white supremacists who repeatedly purchase literature that advocates racist violence against random strangers of "inferior" groups, but belong to no active organization? The Patriot Act lets the government find out that kind of information now. We could, by tracking a pattern of purchases by credit card reliably identify them. What do we do about that? And why is it different for citizens than non-citizens, since we see that McVeigh did as much or more damage than most suicide bombers?

Overinclusiveness does hurt. It hurts people wrongly accused, wrongly detained (checked on the prosecution of the spying cases at Guantanamo, or the Lackwanna case recently?) and not just in the cost to the lives of the individuals and their families. It costs in barriers to trade and intellectual exchange. It costs in the vanishing goodwill of people who are repeatedly screened and delayed, and who see the public case of Yusuf Islam and think, could it be me next? And as I argue in my original post, a screening system as glitchy and buggy as the one we are seeing under the current administration, inspires me with very little confidence in the government's ability to find and detain the right people. What happened with Yusuf Islam, for pragmatic reasons as explained above, has probably done more harm than good. I have no objection whatsoever to collecting intelligence on and stopping real terrorists. Yet I believe that civil society needs to be concerned and vigilant about those policies (to the degree that we can be informed without threatening national security) to the end of making sure our liberties - and the liberties of non-citizens visitors repellent as some of their ideas might be - are protected.

Here is a link to a blogpost from Total Information Awareness that also visits the "how to define a terrorist" issue.

http://www.tianews.blogspot.com/

Joshua,
I found this on the web and it seems to support your position, regarding Cat Stevens raising money for a Hamas front.
http://www.canada.com/news/national/story.html?id=572cea4b-839c-4080-9999-f53611a46aba

It's not that I think fundraising in support of terrorism is a good thing. And I also believe it is certainly something that should be criminalized. However, it is not "terrorism" and we weaken the seriousness of the definition by including various "actions in support of" as part of what we consider "terrorism."

oh dear god is morris actually on my "side?" :-)

perhaps it will surprise you binky (and disappoint morris as well?), but i think you actually have brought me back to first principles, at least to on the matter of mere verbal or ideological support for a problematic faith or activist group.

i'm not sure, however, how you could justify funding groups that engage in terrorist activities (however you choose to define them). i'm not visiting morris's citation regarding stevens' possible support for hamas, first, because i don't really care about stevens' specific case (as i think i've noted) in that he's obviously relatively unimportant, and second, because hamas presents (at least to me) a problematic case insofar as while their methods look "terroristic" their goals are at least somewhat geopolitical in scope and thus problematic. why? nobody calls american patriots terrorists, but on strict definitions some of their activities during the revolution would be called just that.

rather, let's posit a hypothetical: some group, say AQ, engages in what we agree is terrorist activities on a continual and ongoing basis. everyone knows this; it's common knowledge. after one of its most notable attacks, in say september 2001, which kills 3,000 westerners, certain people rally to AQ's cause. some donate their efforts, some quite literally donate their lives in attacks subsequent to the september 2001 attack, and others still donate money.

under united states common law, conspiracy to commit a crime is present when, with the intention of furthering a criminal act, a person aids in the planning or execution of that act and commits an "overt act" toward its furtherance. solicitation of murder, by hiring a hit man, of course qualifies. frankly, if some hypothetical person, say CS, gave money to AQ, knowing full well that they existed more or less solely to commit acts of violence against the west, he'd be guilty of conspiracy to commit murder in a united states court.

now that's even assuming constitutional protections apply, which they don't necessarily, and certainly not with equal force, to non-citizens. this same rationale has been used to prosecute people who, e.g., have posted private information about abortion doctors on line (with implicit exhortations to violence), with mixed results (but the fact that prosecutions were sought at all suggest trained prosecutors thought there was a case there).

i agree with you (binky) that my above comments militated towards a dangerous policing of thought, and that's not consistent with my general orientation on these matters. but if stevens supported groups unproblematically defined as terrorists, with clearly murderous objectives, i wouldn't have a problem with keeping him out. moreover, i would not apply the constitutional beyond a reasonable doubt standard to non-citizens at our borders.

Gotcha.

Also, on "i'm not sure, however, how you could justify funding groups that engage in terrorist activities," I am not sure you could, and have no desire to either. I think active funding of terrorist activities is wrong, and should be prosecuted under the law.

Verbal support, however, is a fuzzy line, and I am not sure is a necessary and sufficient criteria for calling someone a terrorist. To me, being a terrorist requires action. I could even see your point of direct funding being "action" and meriting the moniker terrorist which I prefer to reserve for someone who commits violence himself (or as a commander, orders his "troops" to commit violence, which is different than non-specific verbal support because of the hierarchy of command).

Eh. I'm repeating myself, a sure sign that low blood sugar is sapping my concentration.