I understand The Walrus' editorial staff aims to foster discussion, yet I can't decide if this article is more a disservice to or an elaborate joke at the expense of its readers.
Mr. Stoffman makes a number of ludicrous statements apparently without irony:
"Rush[ing] the Anti-Terrorism Act into law," and, "[Giving] the Communications Security Establishment new powers to eavesdrop on private communications," are cited before "other, more modest improvements."
Improvements? These can only be viewed as great leaps backwards. The only questions are whether these infringements are efficacious; and if so, if they are worth the cost. Even our southern neighbours are daily inching closer to answering "No!" on both points.
"You have to find out about [the suicide bomber's] plans before he puts them into action, which means security operatives must snoop and watch and eavesdrop." This is laughably shortsighted. Why is the suicide bomber a suicide bomber in the first place? Let us say instead, "You have to ensure young people the world over are not cornered into becoming suicide bombers." Perhaps this problem is avoided in the article because it does not yield to the neat, illusory panacea of omniscient surveillance?
And, supposing it is true that, "It is human nature to overvalue the recent past as a predictor of the near future," who decides which events we should then devalue? The lack of Canadian terrorism deaths since Air India or 9/11, which apparently lulls us into incaution? Or the general terrorist violence of the last decade, which proponents of a culture war would have us believe is the norm in a new world disorder?
"Homegrown terrorists aren’t going to overthrow a state either, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do plenty of damage," the author writes. Indeed, damage has already been done; Mr. Stoffman is evidently terrified. In a marvelous feat of mental discordance he advances that terrorism will be overcome only if his readers are properly terrified, too.
All this combined with an eagerness to single out ethnic and religious minorities, predictable immigration barrow-pushing and a simplistic scanning of our basic Charter rights make this easily the weakest piece yet published in this magazine. I sincerely hope that this is an anomaly, and that next month I can resume recommending the Walrus to friends.
Mr Stoffman is to be commended for an insightful, balanced and thoughtful assessment of the terrorist threat environment confronting Canada — and it IS real! — and the response of our Security and Intelligence Community, which has indeed prevented attacks. Readers might be interested to know of the significantly increased student interest in Intelligence and Security Studies in Canadian universities, in particular at the graduate level in programs such as the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, and also at other institutions in this country and abroad.
Amazing how claustrophobic the terrorism/anti-terrorism debate so rapidly becomes. It's all about the nuts and bolts of anti-terrorism. Start with the worst thing you can think of and get everybody's hair standing on end.
The nuclear debate has always been like this. Somebody (usually the 'defence' industry, their righteous political supporters and senior military officers) thinks up some threat or other and a lot of money gets spent to make it come true. Anyone who tries to break out of the narrow debate is, at a minimum, disregarded by the heavies who by and large control the terms of the discussion.
So too in the terrorist discussion. But, instead of discussing anti-terror we should start first with a serious discussion of the sources of terror and why any terrorist might even be interested in Canada. The expectation is that an attack will come somehow from the Muslim world with aid perhaps from some sort of Muslim Fifth Column in Canada. How did we as Canadians get involved in all that?
Now imagine, first, a Middle East without unconditional support by the USA of Israel's perceived ambitions (and I don't mean denial of Israel's right to exist, only her determination to eradicate Palestinian claims to any part of the "Holy Land" and to make Jerusalem the Israeli capital). Take out that factor and there is no reason the USA and Middle Eastern nations could not get along quite amicably happily trading oil for US goods.
The second factor is the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Even after Mr. Obama removes some troops from Iraq there will still be 70,000 soldiers there. Afghanistan, apparently, is now this year's war of the century, the war America must win. But, getting anywhere close to "winning" a popular insurgency with widespread suuport amongst the other peoples of the region looks pretty illusory. It will at a minimum requrie a lot more bloodshed all round. 'Western' boots on the ground in the region are a running sore for Arabs and other Muslim countries. Their despotic leaders do not criticise overtly because they are afraid of their own people and frequently depend upon American support for their regimes.
So, any terrorist threat from the Middle East is surely a reaction to the policies of 'western' countries, primarily the USA but also Britain, Spain, Italy etc. Terrorism is the only weapon of the weak. It is 'blow-back' resulting from meddlesome policies(there are stronger terms for it).
Where is Canada in all this? After years of keeping a distance from American gunboat diplomacy in various parts of the world (SE Asia, Latin America, etc.) and years of emotional sympathy for Israel but a relatively even-handed approach to the Israel-Palestine issue, the Harper government has in recent years now very actively aligned Canada with the worst aspects of American (and British) foreign policy - i.e., unconditional support for Israel; supply of Canadian sepoys to fight in a faraway and completely insignificant Muslim country with no vital Canadian interests at stake.
Canada, in other words, has now provided opponents of US policies with a reason to extend terror to us. Take a greater distance to militaristic American policies in the Middle East and go back to an evenhanded approach to the future of the Holy Land and the rational of terror coming from the Middle East should disappear too.
Daniel Stoffman raises some interesting and worrisome scenarios for a possible terrorist attack on North America. These include detonating a nuclear bomb that has been smuggled into New York as well as an electromagnetic pulse attack that could knock out all electrical equipment over a wide area. Are these threats too fanciful to be taken seriously? Not if we consider the report of the U.S. commission that studied the events of 9/11 and recommended ways of preventing mass destruction terrorist attacks in the future. According to the commission, one of the main reasons why the 9/11 attack was so successful was a “failure of imagination” on the part of American authorities. In other words, the U.S. had failed to use enough imagination in envisaging the sort of attack that al Qaeda might launch.
Stoffman points out that national security measures, which are designed in large measure to prevent terrorist attacks against Canada, don’t come cheaply. We spend around $25 billion a year in this area. While critics may question whether it is worth it – particularly when there hasn’t been a major terrorist attack in Canada since 9/11, many consider it is money well spent. As Stoffman points out, Canada is on the terrorists’ list of priority targets. In one of its recent reports the Counter Terrorism Branch of CSIS indicated that it was monitoring 31 organizational and 274 individual authorized targets and, following the arrest in June, 2006 of 17 people charged with planning terrorist attacks in Toronto, the RCMP let it be known that they had earlier disrupted at least 12 other terrorist groups across the country.
There is no guarantee, of course, that all these measures and the attendant costs will prevent a major terrorist attack from taking place in the future. Resolute, imaginative and well-funded terrorists determined to do us harm on a large scale will keep probing our defences to try to find weaknesses. The best we can do in the circumstances is remain on the alert, establish priorities and make it as difficult as we can for terrorists to launch or even plan an attack. The Walrus is to be congratulated for publishing an article on a controversial topic such as this.
It is regrettable that Daniel Stoffman relies as a source on James Bissett, who once again provides incorrect information. Refugee claimants were photographed and fingerprinted long before 2001. What changed in October 2001 was that refugee claimants began to be subjected to a front-end security screening, meaning that detailed personal information is sent to CSIS for a security check.
I won't even bother attempting to dissect Bissett's long quote, which is full of misinformation and betrays his usual contempts for refugees.
I came to the Walrus thinking OK, a canadian publication worthy of reading. Disappointing to see this Stouffman article.
The Walrus claims
"We are committed to publishing the best work by the best writers from Canada and elsewhere on a wide range of topics for readers who are curious about the world."
Are you guys a humour magazine?
The central issue — not adequately dealt with by the article by any means — is that no measure of security response is adequate if the attacker is sufficiently determined and suitably skilled. As the air power advocates of the pre-World War II days warned, "the bomber will always get through" [meaning that, no matter how many defensive fighters you put in the air to stop them, some offensive bombers always will make their way to the target]. The same held true in the Cold War period, and holds true in today's international security environment (allowing for contextual differences in the definition of the bomber...).
Future security will not come from reactive security screens or invading other countries, particularly when the latter largely only serves to further alienate the West (and Canada within it) from the communities that are behind the security threats.
To these communities and individuals, *we* are the threat, and they feel justified to use any means at their disposal to strike back or enhance their own security. Sound familiar?
Without addressing the root cause of *why* we're casting stones, bullets, or bombs, we'll always have the same ongoing spiral, and the same debates. And, until we can transform our own personal or collective national sense of insecurity into empathy for the similar views of "others" seeking a sense of security in their own personal, community, or national context, we're not going to be able to bridge that gap.
LET'S BE CLEAR. I'm not a part of the "give them a hug and the world will be fine" crowd. I have a family and a way of life that I am committed to protecting, and would exercise all necessary measures to do so if under direct and immediate threat. But I also don't believe in simply applying violence or nailing closed the doors and windows to every situation where we perceive that there's a threat. In part, that very mentality is what got us to where we are now in the first place.
Both as an international affairs graduate who has studied the issues professionally, AND as someone who lost a cousin in the 9/11 attacks, I recognize that there are continuing gaps in today's security infrastructure that give illusion to a "safer" post-9/11 world, however one chooses to define the word. Clearly, without giving up many of our cherished civil rights and creating a xenophobic police state surrounded by fences and barbed wire, we won't be able to plug all of these gaps, or even reduce to them a point where another attack becomes highly improbable. Even if we accepted the loss of privacy (or that part of it which remains in today's world) and civil rights — which I don't — the costs and complexities of trying to build a "foolproof" defence would quickly scuttle the plan. That, and the fact that it's rarely the fools on the opposite side that are doing the attacking...
While I greatly value the efforts of those dedicated to our national security (among whom I count former classmates and current friends), I also have to admit a distinct sense of unease about the fine line between reasonable safeguards and those other types of more draconian or intrusive security measures that undermine the very fabric of the society that I thought we were trying to protect: one built not just on protecting our physical and economic security, but on maintaining our respect for democracy and principles of justice, even if that incurs a degree of personal risk.
We accept personal risk in the name of convenience or liberty every day, even when the likelihood of injury or death is statistically much higher than a terrorist bombing attack of the types we've seen, or can contemplate. I board a public transit bus each day, risking the common occurrence of a traffic accident even though I'm not given a seat belt — or issued with bubble wrap and a bike helmet — to safeguard myself. This is but one of the many contradictions we face in how we even think about the "terrorist threat" and possible measures to enhance our security, and how we try to quantify what we'd be giving up if we accepted some of the proposed solutions.
Although a flawed article, I applaud The Walrus for publishing it. If nothing else, it should stimulate Walrus readers (and through them, their wider network of friends and acquaintances) to react strongly to the issues raised, and get engaged in a very important public issue. The march to police state status (or even into lesser security sector violations of civil rights that add up over time) in other countries did not happen overnight. In most cases, it happened decision by decision — including the decision by individuals to abstain from the debate entirely by not thinking or talking about it.
