The Democrats' "Long War": Port Security

Over at TPM Cafe, Representative Jerry Nadler argues that "homeland security should be more than a slogan" and that the U.S. should pass the Democrats' SAFE Port Act, which would scan every shipping container before it sails for the U.S. According to Nadler, it's the only way to stop Al Qaeda or another nefarious terrorist organization from smuggling a nuclear bomb into the U.S. and destroying an American city -- "something we know Al Qaeda would very much like to do."

Nadler's argument applies the exact same logic as the Administration to justify a massive increase in port security. Recall that for the Administration, we need to fight a global war against radical Islamists, because they "would very much like to" carry out terrorist attacks on the U.S. The sheer depravity of their intentions justifies a permanent emergency footing, in which protecting individual lives becomes the paramount political objective. The problem with such reasoning is obvious. Al Qaeda simply does not have the capability or means to fulfill these intentions. As a result, the Administration's doomsday logic actually perpetuates a climate of insecurity, in which nightmare scenarios rather than rational threats become the baseline for politics. Under such circumstances, the hope of developing positive and emancipatory agendas that improve society is rendered pointless. Who cares about liberty (in all its various forms) if the individual's bare existence faces so much danger?

Thus, for Nadler and many Democrats, their disagreement with Bush isn't the security logic, but what fear should have the greatest purchase. The vision of ominous plotters smuggling in nuclear bombs is as apocalyptic and improbable as those projected by the Administration. And just like the Administration's "long war," it promotes a deeply limited view of politics -- one which plays on the alienation experienced by many individuals, and one that forecloses imagining new social possibilities in the name of keeping people safe from doomsday threats.

The power of such security logic is so strong that even thoughtful civil libertarians like David Cole find themselves slipping into it. In yesterday's Washington Post, Cole very usefully summarizes the absurdities of Zacarias Moussaoui's trial and situates it within the larger framework of detention and torture that's marked the Administration's post 9/11 practices. Yet, in the end he sees such practices as serving symbolic purposes, while the goal should be to provide the substance of security (by doing things like -- drum roll -- protecting the ports). But the whole point is that given the very limited actual danger, all these measures, pursued by Democrats and Republicans alike, are just symbolic. Since there's no there there, they’re left spending more time wishing the threat into existence with dramatic, overblown security policies. The end result is a political life in which politicians spend more time dramatizing security threats than imagining the larger social ends to be preserved.