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Selling War and Sleeper Cells

I’ve reached another birthday. Happy Birthday to me. Last year at this time, I wasn’t sure I’d make it another year. It’s hard to juggle life, kids soccer games and career goals when geo-political events tend to get in the way.

As we know, the United States went to war, but here we are a year later and Afghanistan is all but forgotten. Technically, we’re still fighting. But who takes the Taliban seriously? The Taliban’s toast. The TVs are back on in Kandahar!

Osama bin Laden is another story. The military can’t find him, and it’s really not fair because everyone in power feels deprived of a victory dance down 5th Avenue, parading Osama’s head on a stick.

The U.S. is used to fighting nation-states, not international terrorism, so naturally, our leaders feel they must keep fighting, especially after they’ve pumped up our war industry with steroids. So we go down the list and now our sights are set for: Iraq and Saddam Hussein?

That’s soooooo 1991.

President Bush continues to make his case that Saddam’s our monster. Sez the prez: He’s got nuclear material the size of a softball!!! But frankly, it doesn’t sound so convincing that the U.S. should make a unilateral, pre-emptive strike. If Saddam’s got softballs, we might take the first pitch. But go it alone — without a U.N. coalition? No.

If Bush is doing this all for political reasons because elections are around the corner (could war be his October Surprise?), then maybe he should just go back to proposing the old standard — a tax cut. We’ll even read his lips, just like Daddy.

That way we lose fewer lives, all around. That is, of course, still the bottom line.

I teach part-time at a small East Bay college. Most of the students hadn’t even bothered to catch President Bush’s speech because they were all working overtime. How else are you going to pay for a $25,000 a year college education on a $5.00 an hour job?

Most of the guys, oddly, weren’t concerned about being drafted.

That meant the loudest voices of pacifism came from future widows, all of whom watched Bush’s every word. “My boyfriend’s in the military,” said one. “His life’s at stake.”

Only by putting men on the frontlines can the U.S. make Saddam’s threat real.

It could be Bush’s self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the meantime, there definitely is a “war” being waged here. But it takes shape as a war on democracy. If you’re Muslim, Arab or South Asian, consider your diminished liberties. Everything you do may be “observed.”

As reported in the New York Times, the FBI is “trying to make an open book” of the lives of young Muslim men in the U.S believed to be involved in so-called “sleeper cells.” They’re those waiting for orders to wake and carry out the dastardly deeds of terrorists.

But to root them out means 24-hour monitoring of telephone calls, e-mails, internet use, credit card spending, travel and religious worship.

It means recruiting friends, relatives and acquaintances to inform on these people, the majority of whom could be innocent.

This past week in Lackawanna, New York, five out of six Muslims suspected of being “sleepers” were denied bail. What did the men do? According to their defense lawyers, they happened to have emails and videotapes that discussed such things as suicide bombing. Not your standard bedside reading these theoretical screeds. Prosecutors said they were handbooks. But they are documents that anyone could get on the internet. The documents also referred to an “enemy.” But the enemy referred to was “Russia,” not the United States.

Is this the kind of evidence that poses a real threat to America?

Perhaps as real as Saddam Hussein.

Officials tell reporters that as far as terrorism goes, most of the men being targeted by the FBI now are “wannabes.” In other words, they couldn’t carry Mohammad Atta’s jock strap.

Sure, some may have gone to a camp in Afghanistan, but from the sound of it, it could be like a bunch of guys attending a Giants spring training fantasy camp. You’re not going to see them at the major league level anytime soon.

And yet, despite nothing more concrete than that, it was all enough to deny bail this week to Shafal A. Mosed, 24; Yahya A. Goba, 25; Yasein A. Taher, 24; Faysal H. Galab, 26; and Mukhtar al-Bakri, 22. All of them Yemeni Americans.

Bail was given to 29-year-old Sahim Alwan, though he is banned from any computer or telephone use, and the “jewelry” he must wear will track his every move.

No computer or telephone? Can anyone live without a computer and telephone these days. Patrick Henry would have demanded death.

At least the six in New York have been named. 1,000 other Muslims, Arabs and South Asians are currently being held in American jails, their identities concealed. That’s national security in these modern times, when “almost guilty” is good enough to take you down. And we’re worried about sleeper cells?

Worry instead about Americans asleep while freedoms are slowly stripped away.

Tipping welcomed: Reach Emil Guillermo at emil@amok.com.