WASHINGTON, June 17 (UPI) -- The UPI think tank wrap-up is a daily digest covering brief opinion pieces, reactions to recent news events and position statements released by various think tanks. This is the first of two wrap-ups for June 17.
Institute for Public Accuracy
(The IPA is a nationwide consortium of policy researchers that seeks to broaden public discourse by gaining media access for experts whose perspectives are often overshadowed by major think tanks and other influential institutions.)
WASHINGTON -- $10,000 fine for taking medicine to children
While the Bush administration signals it is moving toward an all-out attack on Iraq, it has fined a Seattle resident, Bert Sacks, $10,000 for his admission that he took medicines to Iraq. Sacks decided to respond on Monday June 17 at a news conference at the National Press Club.
-- Howard Zinn, widely read historian who has authored numerous books including "A
People's History of the United States" and "Terrorism and War."
"The punishment of a citizen for engaging in a humanitarian act -- bringing medicine to people in desperate need -- should not be accepted in a society claiming to believe in justice. To disobey a law, when that law violates a fundamental human right, is part of the American democratic tradition. We now honor those who, before the Civil War, disobeyed the Fugitive Slave Act and helped black people escape from slavery. We honor those black people in the South who disobeyed the law in order to protest against racial segregation. The right to food and medicine is something guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Eleanor Roosevelt helped frame in 1948, and to which our nation is a signatory. Any law or regulation which eliminates that right does not deserve to be obeyed, and those today who bring food and medicine to people in need should be honored, not punished."
-- Bert Sacks, the first American to be fined by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control for his admission that he brought medicines to Iraq. Monday marks the last day the government gave Sacks to comply. Sacks has recently returned from another trip to Iraq.
"I have traveled to Basra, Iraq, where we delivered some of our medicine. The antibiotics we brought saved lives, especially the lives of young children who are most vulnerable to illness from unsafe water ... How can I ask the government which deliberately bombed civilian infrastructure during the Gulf War -- knowing it would create conditions of unsafe water and doing so as a tool of coercion -- how can I ask this government for permission to bring medicines to those still in need? ... A person alleged to have committed the same violation with respect to other countries, Cuba for example, is entitled to a hearing. With respect to Iraq, it appears that I am not. If I'd received a $100 traffic ticket, I'd be entitled to a hearing before a judge, but with this fine of $10,000, I am not."
-- Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, a group with which Sacks has traveled to Iraq.
"We will continue resisting economic warfare by sending delegations to Iraq and, if need be, taking up residence in Iraq in advance of and during any new massive military assault against Iraqi civilians."
-- Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the recent article
"Spinning 'Smart Sanctions.'"
"The new 'smart sanctions' proposal ... recently passed by the U.N. Security Council was largely crafted for spin purposes. While providing a new rhetorical device to claim that sanctions are not hurting Iraq's population, the bottom line is it won't do much to help the existing disastrous situation."
The Reason Foundation
LOS ANGELES -- Terror Made Easy
by Jesse Walker
One of the most popular destinations on the Web right now is a blog entry that features two pictures. One is a photograph of Abdullah al Muhajir (Jose Padilla), the man recently accused of plotting to detonate a radioactive "dirty bomb" on American soil. The other is a sketch of John Doe No. 2, the mysterious figure who many believe was an accomplice in the Oklahoma City bombing.
Some people doubt that there was a well-developed dirty-bomb plot, and some people doubt that John Doe No. 2 even exists. Placed side by side, though, the faces do look like one of those separated-at-birth gags.
The blog includes a place for reader comments. The most compelling: "This is very interesting. Of course, lots of people look like this."
Lots indeed. There are three levels to the present terrorist threat. The first consists of the conspiracy behind the Sept. 11 attacks and their potential sequels. The fight against it is supported by virtually everyone, in concept if not in all the particulars.
The second level is the much larger world of Islamists with a beef against America. The response to those angry foreigners has been divided between those who would make the United States more imperial, sending troops to every restless corner of the Muslim world, and those who would make the U.S. less imperial, on the grounds that it's better not to make enemies than to attempt to corral them all.
It is entirely possible to be hawkish when it comes to the first level and dovish when it comes to the second, just as one can believe it possible to destroy a particular drug cartel without also thinking the larger flow of drugs can be stopped.
And then there's the third level: not a specific faction of terrorists, but the stark possibility of terror. The most unnerving talk around the al Muhajir case involves the alleged ease with which anyone can make a dirty bomb -- presumably so called because, unlike other bombs, it leaves a mess. Whether or not you buy the idea that it's a cakewalk to construct a radioactive weapon, the notion that it might be a simple task rings true for a lot of Americans. After all, just last year a handful of thugs managed to murder 3,000 people at once with a few box cutters. Since then, destruction on a much smaller scale has been wrought not just with rare strains of anthrax, but with a Cessna and some easy-to-build pipe bombs. Interestingly, none of the latter perpetrators are tied to al Qaida.
In the weeks after Sept. 11, commentators dreamed up dozens of other ways that terrorists might kill Americans, from deliberately tainted meat to carefully placed truck bombs. In Israel, meanwhile, suicide bombers have reminded us the damage that can be done with nails. In a digital society where ones and zeroes can be rearranged to represent almost anything, the bits that make up the concrete world can similarly be refashioned into weapons, even weapons of mass destruction.
You can't fight this threat with the standard hawkish strategy. You can't fight it with the standard dovish strategy either. There's no single source to target, no single grievance to mollify. You can only try to make your society as resilient as possible, to minimize the damage attackers can do and maximize the opportunities for other citizens to stop them.
Among other things, that requires a devolution of power. But this brand of terrorism is itself an example of devolved power: the power of terrible destruction, once monopolized by the nation-state, now in the grasp of small groups. If there's a solution to that paradox, it's been as elusive as John Doe No. 2.
(Jesse Walker is an associate editor at Reason magazine.)
