EVEN THE harshest critics of the United States and its foreign policies would have felt much sympathy for the people of that nation when in a matter of an hour and a half on September 11, 2001, three terrorist strikes hit at the symbols of its economic and military might in New York City and Washington D.C. A fourth strike was averted when an aeroplane crashed, in still unclear circumstances, in Pennsylvania. But in the events of that fateful day, more than 3,000 people, mostly Americans, were killed and many others physically and emotionally scarred for life. Indeed, the feelings of sympathy would have run deep because many people from other nations, including Jamaica, were killed. America's vulnerability was exposed on live television broadcasts worldwide.
Since then, the Bush administration has drafted and implemented a raft of legislation and measures ostensibly to crack down on potential terrorists and avert any recurrence.
Some of these measures have created little more than additional inconvenience and a testing of travellers' patience as they go through a host of security checks, not only at U.S. airports but elsewhere in the world as governments tighten security.
In the United States itself, however, there is much concern that some of the measures to "secure the homeland" constitute serious threats to civil liberties and have opened the door to the abuse of the rights of people who are not even remotely connected to terrorism.
Of particular concern are the measures contained in the Patriot Act which critics say is so broad in its definition of terrorism domestic and international as to grant new powers to law enforcement officials to side-step or avoid entirely many traditional controls on the surveillance, investigation, arrest, and prosecution of civilians residing in the United States.
To make matters worse, amid the climate of fear and renewed patriotic fervour, relatively few people will want to put themselves out on a limb to defend the rights of people about whom they might know little.
The Bush administration will of course argue, that it has the right and responsibility to defend the American people. We concede that it is hard to expect any Government to be soft on people who would exploit any kinks in its armour. We caution, however, that there must be a scrupulous commitment to fairness. The attacks of September 11, 2001 did not happen in a vacuum. Hatred for things American have often grown out of the experiences of abuse and exploitation by American big business and governments.
When people feel that they are the subject of unfair treatment and, worse yet, targeted for their religion or ethnicity, the seeds for further and deeper hatred will germinate.
The Americans were caught off-guard by the weapons used two years ago. Ensuring the future security of its people and infrastructure is an imperative but not at the expense of the rights of others. If Washington persists in its actions, unperturbed by the voices of caution, it may yet find the message coming in another form, that might will not always triumph over determination.
September 11, 2001 was a watershed in U.S. history and has changed it and the world. Time will tell whether the change is for the worse, for all of us.
