Lessons from the last war on terror

The last American war on terror failed to catch the perpetrators and its flailing ruthlessness instead eroded trust in government. The present war is heading in the same direction: as the World Economic Forum reports in its run-up to Davos, a year of fighting terror has produced a world in which most people - including Americans - mistrust their government and do not believe it represents them. This will worry enlightened minds hoping for democracy's success; it also stands, like the last war, to cost a great deal of money without improving security.

For 150 years, the US has benefited from the trust of the world's peoples, who, facing a choice of where to send their capital and labour, more often than not send it to America. And the US economy repays their trust: invested money yields good returns; settled migrants do likewise and often become American citizens to boot. The exception to this rule was the age of autarky that arose in the 1910s and 1920s in the name of fighting off terror.

For the US it began when an anarchist murdered President William McKinley in September 1901. The world had seen four similar assassinations in the previous decade, along with a rash of random street bombings. The shadowy international network of terrorists shared explosives recipes and the conviction that, in the words of the bomber Emile Henry, "il n'y a pas d'innocents" in the modern world.

Theodore Roosevelt, McKinley's successor, declared war on anarchism, starting with an investigation into the control of immigration. Thus began an effort, popular among labour unions and other race-baiting constituencies, to turn the war on terror into an opportunistic war on foreigners. Congressional commissions and their expert witnesses derided the "quality" of immigrants, chided them for an insufficient desire to Americanise and lashed out at intellectuals who professed support for a cosmopolitan tolerance. A 1903 law prohibited the immigration of anarchists and the commissions began looking into more restrictions.

The cosmopolitans had the figures on their side: the globalisation of capital markets and decades of mass migration disproportionately favoured the US economy, whose extraordinary productivity attracted overseas investment. But, fearful of a world everywhere collapsing into violence, Congress continued to shut the golden door, passing laws beginning in 1917 that - with increasing obviousness - correlated the desirability of an immigrant with the lightness of his skin colour.

The Department of Justice decided it could detain and deport immigrant radicals without the bother of indictment or trial. During the Democrat administration of Woodrow Wilson, A. Mitchell Palmer, the attorney-general, made his name by rounding up "undesirable aliens" to ship overseas.

But the terror did not stop. Indeed, it ratcheted up in explicit reaction to the government's behaviour. A 1919 letter-bomb campaign targeted official supporters of deportation; in July a man blew himself up trying to kill the attorney-general. Palmer struck back, detaining and deporting more foreigners, herding more than 800 on to ships and bidding them good riddance.

And the terror did not stop. Late in 1920 a bomb went off in Wall Street. "There was no objective except general terrorism," a paper reported. Palmer identified the explosion as part of a plot to undermine American capitalism and vowed to expose it.

Yet two decades of eroding civil liberties, restricting immigration and increasing federal police power had not reduced terror but instead increased Americans' mistrust of their own institutions. This trend focused ultimately on the trial of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, immigrant anarchists, for two murders during the robbery of a shoe factory. Sacco and Vanzetti were rough customers, possibly involved with the 1919 bombings. But persuasive evidence never surfaced for the murders they were charged with, though the government prosecuted and electrocuted them anyway. This indiscriminate zeal increased public conviction that, as attorney Clarence Darrow said, "prejudice and passion" were guiding the government's actions.

The shutting-down of immigration and global trade in the 1920s reduced the flexibility of the markets' natural responses to crises and a distrusted government could offer no leadership. The movement of global resources that benefited America stopped after 1929 and the nation sank into depression.

When globalisation did return it aided the US again. Immigration was liberalised in 1965. Capital inflows ultimately exceeded outflows, making the US the world's biggest debtor in 1986. And trust in the security of US investment kept money and migrants pouring in, fuelling the long boom.

Now that trust has faltered and, rather than repair the breach, the US government is repeating past mistakes, setting aside the liberties that support faith in American institutions in favour of a show of strength directed at foreigners. Many have been detained. Apart from Richard Reid - who pleaded guilty - none has been convicted. Mistrust of government is rising. This terror-fighting strategy did not work before and it is not working now.

The writer is associate professor of history at the University of California, Davis

The thing I find frustrating about an article like this is that I have no faith anymore that university professors -- and certainly not ones from UC Davis -- will not lie to me to sell me their agenda.

It's bad enough we see history being re-written before our eyes by liberal partisans in the media... look at this sentence today from a Reuters story:

The 54 were condemned in 10 states including Illinois, where State Governor George Ryan this month took the unprecedented and widely lauded step of commuting the sentences of everyone on the state's death row, declaring the execution system "broken."

Is "widely lauded" a fair characterization of the reaction to Ryan's action? Or is that a liberal ax-grinder sending bullsh*t into the future, where it will show up in history books?

The Ryan thing just happened, so I know how disparate the reactions were. Therefore I know the news story is grinding an ax, and falsely.

What do I know about events in the McKinley Administration? Not much. Could this author be pulling the same stunt? Sure could. These days, university professors publish whole books full of fraudulent scholarship to promote their agendas; why should I trust this article?

The extent to which leftists have introduced lies as a form of argument really angers me. It makes political discourse so much more difficult. Perhaps this guy's article is 100% BS-free. But thanks to his academic buddies who tell me that people in 18th Century America did not own guns, and that a woman is killed and eaten by her husband every ten seconds, I can't believe anything they write.

Perhaps this guy's article is 100% BS-free.

Nick! You need to tune up that BS-meter! Mine was ringly loudly all through the very first paragraph:

BS! BS! BS!

This will worry enlightened minds hoping for democracy's success; it also stands, like the last war, to cost a great deal of money without improving security.

Yeah, right. We've destroyed the terrorists' main nest in Afghanistan, driven them pretty much underground, foiled dozens (if not over 100) terrorist plots on US interests, arrested or killed hundreds of 'em, there hasn't been a major terrorist attack on the US since 9/11 and yet we "haven't improved security." What a load of horse dung.

Not to mention that anarchism did die off, apparently around 1920, even though immigration was not re-liberalized until 1965. Well, what the hell killed it???

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