Posted on 09/13/2001 3:22:17 AM PDT by Dundee
Terror's shockwaves echo in the waters of the Pacific
The carnage in the US has changed the world and will have direct consequences for Australian society, writes Padraic P. McGuinness.
It was no fault of Justice Tony North that his judgment on the Tampa boatpeople should have been delivered only a few hours before the worst act of terrorism since that term began to be used. They are in no way connected, but the speculation about the perpetrators of that act will certainly ensure that the North judgment will not have to wait for its demolition by higher courts; popular feeling will now ensure that the Government will have little difficulty in tightening up on refugee policy so as to diminish the interference of the courts.
Judge North denies that he was involved in policy. But even though he manages to imply that all the Tampa people were "friendly aliens", something which cannot simply be assumed, and pretends that the existence of statute law on aliens precludes any sovereign prerogative authority with respect to aliens trying to gain access to Australian territory, he nevertheless admits that on the current law of standing the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties (or the Council for Criminal Liberties, as it is becoming known) should not have been heard.
The strangest thing about his judgment is that many of the extracts he cites from judgments of other courts, particularly the High Court, say the opposite of the conclusions he bases on them. And in the unlikely event of the High Court in the final analysis supporting him on habeas corpus the Tampa people will have been long set free on other than Australian territory.
The whole point of checking on the credentials of the Tampa people is that some of them may not be true refugees and could even be agents of Taliban or one of the many other fanatical Muslim terrorist groups. It is certain now that would-be refugees trying to gain access to Australia will not receive a friendly reception if they have destroyed all means of identification, so that their precedents cannot be investigated.
Innocent people will suffer from this, of course, but when have terrorists ever worried about this? Among the innocents will be peaceful Muslims all over the world, including Australia, who do not support such acts even by proxy. The TV footage of Palestinian Arabs, including many children, jubilantly applauding the World Trade Centre tragedy will not help them in world opinion, either.
It is not yet apparent who was responsible for the remarkably well-organised suicide attacks. The two most plausible suggestions have been the bin Laden organisation (now headquartered in Afghanistan) and one of several fanatical religious sects (similar to the Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas). But as Professor Des Ball of the ANU strategic and defence studies centre said yesterday, the extraordinary thing about this operation was that the various counterintelligence and electronic surveillance centres seem to have detected nothing in advance - no unusual pattern of communications, no evidence of concerted ticket bookings, nothing. So it is far too soon even to blame any of the Muslim terrorist groups. Nevertheless, they are the most obvious scapegoats. It will take very careful management by national authorities all over the world to prevent this turning into an anti-Muslim backlash.
More than any other world religion now, however, Islam does seem to have encouraged a culture of violence among many of its adherents. It is not sufficient to dismiss this proposition as being equally applicable to Christianity in the past - while true, it is of no contemporary relevance, even in Northern Ireland where disgusting religious bigotry between Christians is at its worst.
For this reason it does make sense to carefully screen prospective immigrants, and refugees, from Muslim countries. One cannot help but sympathise with those fleeing the Taliban regime - but Taliban is not the only group in that unhappy country prone to fanaticism and violence. Just as Trotsky was quite as bad as Stalin when he exercised power, so the losers in other revolutionary struggles are often quite as bad as the winners. When we screen prospective asylum-seekers we need to assess the risk in allowing entry. This is no failure of compassion, but merely good sense. To appeal to the much overused analogy with Jewish refugees from Nazism, the Jews had persecuted nobody, either individually or as a group. Defeated militia men, by contrast, are not acceptable refugees.
The greatest danger springing from the assault on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon is that it may destabilise international politics. Already there is talk of counterattacks on countries believed to be harbouring, or assisting, international terrorists. The US bombing of Libya is a precedent for this. The US events, it should be remembered, were not a matter of one state attacking another. Neither was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. But such events can be an encouragement to states to act rashly.
While the US has been concerned with the national missile defence system to protect itself from attacks by rogue nuclear states, it has largely overlooked an alternative threat, which might be called that of the rogue non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The same anti-American terrorist approach seen in Muslim fanatics can also be seen among some left-wing fringe groups.
The days of the Baader-Meinhof gang or the Japanese Red Army Faction are long gone, but the mindless violence typical of them has been re-emerging on the fringes of the anti-globalisation movement. Capitalism, one caller to the ABC said yesterday, is responsible for many more deaths than occurred in the US terrorist operation.
How many rogue NGOs will be present at CHOGM in Brisbane next month?
ppmcg@ozemail.com.au
Globalism has to be debated in public squares not in closed boardrooms.
I fear loss of sovereignty with Globalism and the ability to make decisions locally regarding local commerce. With Globalism there is also a tendency to adopt political correctness and ignore regional and cultural differences. In short there are some legitimate complaints against it, or against its present evolution.
I'm up early this morning here in Seattle, I just can't stop thinking about the loss of more than 20,000 innocent persons at the hands of monsters. The shock is turning to rage. Our world will never be the same.
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