THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 37, February 17, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
INTERNMENT: A TOOL IN THE WAR ON TERROR?
A BRIEFING
By Michelle Malkin
INTERNMENT AS A MEANS OF DEALING WITH AMERICA'S INTERNAL ENEMIES IN THE WAR AGAINST ISLAMIST TERRORISM:
THE NEED TO DETAIN ISLAMIST INFILTRATORS & THEIR SYMPATHIZERS & SUPPORTERS, CONFINING THEM TO
WELL-GUARDED INTERNMENT CAMPS FOR THE DURATION OF THE TERROR WAR -- "POLITICAL CORRECTNESS" & CIVIL RIGHTS
ABSOLUTISTS' OPPOSITION TO RACIAL, ETHNIC, & RELIGIOUS PROFILING MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO JEOPARDIZE HOMELAND
SECURITY OR AMERICA'S EFFORT TO WIN THE TERROR WAR & ENSURE OUR NATIONAL SURVIVAL
FULL STORY:
Millions of American schoolchildren have been taught that there was no evidence of ethnic Japanese disloyalty or espionage before,
during, or after Pearl Harbor; that Franklin D. Roosevelt was hoodwinked by bigoted military leaders into taking draconian measures;
and that the absence of espionage convictions of ethnic Japanese "proved" that the West Coast evacuation and relocation of ethnic
Japanese was unnecessary and motivated primarily or exclusively by racism and wartime hysteria.
ATTACKS ON INTERNMENT POLICY
My book debunks these deeply held myths regarding the moving of 112,000 ethnic Japanese from the West Coast of the United States
to the interior of the country on Roosevelt's orders in February, 1942. The order affected first-generation Japanese resident aliens and
U.S.-born Japanese-Americans, as well as a relatively small but significant number of non-Japanese residents (non-citizens and citizens
alike).
"Internment" is actually a precise legal term for the centuries-old, worldwide practice of detaining non-naturalized immigrants during
wartime. During World War I, some 6,300 European enemy aliens in America were interned by the War Department in prison barracks
at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, Fort McPherson, Georgia, and Fort Douglas, Utah. During World War II, more than 31,000 enemy aliens
from Axis nations were interned at Department of Justice camps — nearly half of whom were German or Italian.
Civil liberties absolutists have invoked the socalled Japanese-American internment to attack virtually every homeland security
initiative against Islamic terrorism taken by the Bush administration to protect America from murderous Islamic extremists. When the
Justice Department asked Arab and Muslim foreigners to volunteer to help provide investigative leads, commentator Julianne
Malveaux complained: "It's beginning to look like the Japanese internment." When two men were removed from a Continental Airlines
flight in December, 2001, based on the plane crew's security concerns, the ACLU compared it to "the Japanese internment issue."
Even within the Bush administration, Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta (who was evacuated as a child to a relocation camp
during World War II) has absolutely opposed any use of racial or ethnic profiling.
Misguided guilt about the past continues to hamper our ability to prevent future terrorist attacks. We cannot win the War on Terror
as long as we keep learning the wrong lessons about World War II.
PARALLELS WITH WORLD WAR II
There are parallels between World War II and the War on Terror, but the anti-profilers and internment alarmists fail to make the proper
comparisons. The Japanese espionage network and the Islamic terrorist network exploited many of the same immigration loopholes
and relied on many of the same institutions to enter the country and insinuate themselves into the American mainstream. Members of
both networks arrived here on student visas and religious visas. Both used spiritual centers — Buddhist temples for the Japanese,
mosques for the Islamists — as central organizing points.
Both used native-language newspapers to foment subversive tendencies. Both leaned on extensive ethnic-based or religious-based
fundraising groups for support — kais for the Japanese, Islamic charities for Middle Eastern terrorists. Both had operatives in the U.S.
military. Both aggressively recruited American citizens as spies or saboteurs, especially (but not exclusively) inside their ethnic
communities. Both were spearheaded by fanatics with an intense interest in biological and chemical weapons.
The Roosevelt administration supported many national security measures — not just the West Coast evacuation and relocation —
that took race, ethnicity, and nationality into account. Before Pearl Harbor, the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy
informed the President "that they were instituting a program of employment discrimination on a racial basis whereby they would
assure that future civil service vacancies in defense installations in Hawaii would be filled by ‘selected citizens of unquestionable
loyalty, rather than by citizens generally of alien extraction whose loyalty may be questionable.'"
Ethnic Japanese were barred altogether from working within naval reservations. Immediately following the Pearl Harbor attack, about
half of the nation's Nisei draftees were discharged amid espionage and sabotage concerns, no doubt because MAGIC messages had
revealed Japanese spies had infiltrated the military. The rest were reassigned to noncombatant and non-sensitive duties. Soon after,
the military stopped inducting Nisei. The creation of a segregated combat unit later permitted the demonstration of Nisei courage and
loyalty to the world. That unit was barred from the Pacific theater of operations.
With few exceptions, Nisei volunteers were prevented from choosing the branch of service they preferred. The Navy, Marines, Coast
Guard, Merchant Marine, and Army Air Corps, for the most part, did not accept Nisei into their ranks, except on temporary duty as
Military Intelligence Service specialists. With virtually no exceptions, Nisei soldiers were barred from participating in any
cryptographic operations.
It was prudent, while fighting a war against Japan, to apply heightened scrutiny to ethnic Japanese in the military. It is also prudent,
while fighting a war against Muslim extremists, to apply special scrutiny to Muslims working in sensitive areas, including law
enforcement, the prison system, and the Armed Forces.
The Islamist infiltration of key institutions is as perilous now as the infiltration of Japanese loyalists would have been sixty years ago.
America's military and civilian commanders made no apologies for putting security over diversity during World War II. Yet, out of fear
of being labeled jackbooted racists, today's politically correct Pentagon and prison officials have rejected singling out Muslim soldiers
and clerics for extra scrutiny.
NEW ARGUMENTS AGAINST PROFILING
In the wake of September 11, savvy opponents of profiling have shifted away from arguing against it because it is "racist" to opposing
it on alleged national security grounds.
University of Toledo professor David Harris, for example, makes the bizarre case that allowing profiling based on race, ethnicity, or
religion would "enlarge the suspect pool," requiring "all of those in the suspect category . . . to be stopped, questioned, searched, and
investigated, even when their behavior would not have pointed to any reason to do this." But allowing airport security officials to take
a passenger's ethnicity into account is not a mandate to stop every person of that ethnicity. Profiling is just one discretionary
investigative tool among many to narrow the suspect pool, not to expand it. It is far from an infallible aid, but if law enforcement officials
were permitted to use only foolproof techniques, they would be left with no tools to fight terrorism at all.
As for the claim that profiling alienates minorities, the argument conveniently ignores post–September 11 polling that showed broad
support among minorities, including Arab-Americans, for heightened scrutiny of those who appear to be of Middle Eastern descent. A
poll conducted in October, 2001, found that more than half of Arab-Americans agreed that law enforcement officials are justified in
asking extra questions or conducting extra inspections of people who appear to be Middle Eastern. Separate polls showed strong
support for racial profiling of Arab-Americans among blacks and other minority groups.
On this issue, civil rights absolutists argue out of both sides of their mouths. They condemn homeland defense measures that use
narrowly targeted criteria such as nationality (e.g., the special registration program, which required temporary visa holders from
Muslim-dominated countries deemed to be of "elevated national security concern" to submit to fingerprinting, photographing, and
stricter exit controls). Yet, the civil rights absolutists complain just as bitterly when the government eschews narrow profiling policies
in favor of broad security programs (such as the Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening System, for citizens and non-citizens
alike, to be used at airports).
They argue against racial profiling in favor of behavioral profiling. But when airport officials announced the adoption of behavioral
profiling measures at Boston Logan (from which two of the September 11 terrorist flight crews departed), American Civil Liberties
Union official Barry Steinhardt complained that it "likely will result in new forms of racial and ethnic profiling."
Some might argue that profiling is so offensive to fundamental American values that it ought not be done, even if it jeopardizes the
nation's security. Yet, many of the ethnic activists and civil liberties groups who object most strenuously to the use of racial, ethnic,
religious, and nationality classifications during war strongly support the use of similar classifications in peacetime — to ensure
"diversity" on college and university campuses, to guarantee business contracts for minorities, and to achieve socially engineered
"parity" in police departments and public works projects.
Encouraging public colleges and universities to assign "plus" factors to individuals according to their skin color is praiseworthy, in
their view. But allowing an airport screener or consular official or deportation officer or FBI agent to assign "negative" factors on
the same basis is a human rights abuse.
CONCLUSION
The civil rights opponents of profiling have never met a "compelling government interest" for using racial, ethnicity, or nationality
classifications they didn't like — except when that compelling interest happens to be the nation's very survival.
We are at war with stateless enemies abroad and Islamist infiltrators at home who will not stop plotting to kill us, unless we kill
them first overseas and nab them preemptively on our own soil. Both my first book, Invasion, and my latest book arrive at
the same conclusion: Political correctness is the handmaiden of terrorism.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Terrorism & American Homeland Security
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and author of two books, of which her latest is In Defense of Internment (New York:
Regnery Publishing, 2004). In it, she provides a defense of "threat profiling" already taken or contemplated since September 11, 2001.
Ms. Malkin's earlier book was Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our
Shores (New York: Regnery Publishing, 2002). Her syndicated column appears in nearly 200 papers nationwide. Ms. Malkin
addressed and presented her briefing to the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia, on December 2, 2004.
The foregoing briefing by Michel Malkin was originally published on the Internet website maintained by the
Middle East Forum.
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
February 14, 2005
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