Willamette Week has an interview with Karin Immergut, Oregon’s U.S. attorney, with some decent questions about “domestic terrorism” and the round-ups in the Northwest. There’s not much substance in the answers, surprise surprise, but take a look at some of the rhetoric:
Don’t you think calling it domestic terrorism puts self-defined civil disobedience in the same class as the 9/11 attacks or the Oklahoma City bombing? How can you compare the massive loss of life with blowing up property?
I’m not comparing the results of the actions, but terrorism is terrorism no matter what the motive is. There’s a real difference between free expression and First Amendment rights versus committing crimes to get what you want.
Karin’s right, as any reasonable person would agree, there is a difference between First Amendment activity and committing crimes. However, Karin and the Bush administration consistently leave out the next logical step in that thought process: there’s a difference between “committing crimes” and terrorism.
When MLK, Gandhi or [insert beatified nonviolent activist here] used civil disobedience, it wasn’t First Amendment activity, but that doesn’t mean it was terrorism. A U.S. attorney should know that there’s another category in between for political activity that breaks the law, and it’s called, um, crime.
Don’t you think that most people think terrorism means killing people?
That could be. I’m not making a judgment call between what the 9/11 hijackers did versus committing arson. That’s an apples-and-oranges type of criminal behavior.
I’m seeing this rhetoric more and more often from law enforcement, and it’s a load of… apples and oranges. If sabotage is seen by law enforcement as drastically different that flying planes into buildings and murdering people, then there only two possible explanations for why environmental and animal rights activists are the “number one domestic terrorist threat.”
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1. There are no terrorist cells operating in the United States that pose a threat to human life. If that’s true, then law enforcement and the Bush administration have a lot of explaining to do about all this terrorist scare-mongering.
2. There are political and corporate interests at work that make crimes by non-violent activists a higher priority than activities of violent organizations.
I’m going with option two. It is a “judgment call” to focus valuable law enforcement time, energy and resources on saboteurs when there are groups of individuals (like religious extremists both here and abroad) with histories of violence. That judgment call reflects political and corporate interests at work, and skewed law enforcement priorities. Karin and other U.S. attorneys need to get their priorities straight.