[CLUE-Talk] FBI Gets Broad Domestic Spy Powers

[Sean LeBlanc]

On 06-01 16:43, Myke Komarnitsky wrote:
> At 08:34 AM 6/1/2002 -0600, Richard Knechtel wrote:
> >Historically, they were put in camps to prevent what didn't happen. 
> >Nothing happened, so obviously it worked.  It was safer to control 
> >all.  We didn't know who the enemy was then just like we don't know who 
> >the enemy is now.
> 
> This is foolish.  If I put Richard Knechtel in prison, and no one is killed 
> by Richard Knechtel, then I've done a good thing; I stopped this violent 
> criminal from breaking the law!  ;-)
> 
> Are you really trying to justify that the detention camps for these US 
> citizens was a wise move?  You do know the US government formally 
> apologized in '88 to Japanese Americans for those actions, right?
> 
> Getting historical and all, some of the Japanese-Americans that weren't in 
> the camps were in the 442nd infantry regiment in the European 
> theatre.  Obviously, "something happened".... would we have been better off 
> as a country if we had left these citizens in their camps?

This may be true, but it's all too easy to judge past actions by today's
standards. And it's also true that there were Japanese-Americans that were
dual citizenship holders that made no bones about their loyalty to *Japan* -
and were on "subversive" lists of the U.S...I'm not sure across-the-board
snatching of anyone who looked Asian (there are cases of folks who were
Chinese, but put into camps, too, even though the folks rounding them up
knew they were not Japanese) and throwing them into camps was the answer
either. It still was a much more restrained response than some civilizations
would have done, though. Consider what some cultures in this century have
done to the folks within their borders that they considered a threat - Nazi
Germany rounded up and killed Jews, Communists, Gypsies, blacks in all kinds
of horrible ways...the Japanese performed vivisection on Chinese, etc. I
still think we could have had a more focused effort on finding the real
spies, but I also think the action we took needs some perspective. BTW, I do
think the formal apology was the good and just thing to do.

Another place where folks continue to judge past actions is McCarthyism. The
man's methods were way out of control, but he wasn't wrong about Communists'
active attempts at subversion and spying. And being blacklisted sure beats
vivisection any day of the week. 

You guys are correct about watching out for group associations, but I also
think our government needs to be able to practice realistic profiling, and
political correctness be damned. Sometimes political correctness can be
funny, but there are times when it can be deadly. I'm not denying it is a
hard line to walk...but hand-wringing over human rights violations at
Guantanomo (sp?) Bay is an example of pc that I consider way over the line.

-- 
Sean LeBlanc:seanleblanc at attbi.com Yahoo:seanleblancathome 
ICQ:138565743 MSN:seanleblancathome AIM:sleblancathome 
The problem with pessimists is that they're right too much.