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WEST VALLEY CITY —The deputy legal director for the ACLU believes post-9/11 security policies specifically target Muslims, and that the intelligence community has taken training cues from bigots, not experts.
And unlike the era where Japanese Americans were detained in camps during World War II, he sees detainment, surveillance and other infringement policies staying in the extreme in the decade following 9/11 becoming "the new normal."
"While President Obama uses the rhetoric of human rights, his administration is continuing to become more entrenched," said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the ACLU and director of the ACLU's Center for Democracy, which houses the agency's work on national security; human rights; and speech, privacy and technology.
Jaffer spoke Saturday night at the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake's Khadeeja Islamic Center.
He urged Muslims to vote and participate in public events, including demonstrations, but said they should not band together as Muslim or Arabic-sponsored groups to oppose government or societal injustices. "Choose something less selfish" rather than representing a Muslim bloc. "You have to think of other people's rights" as well, he said.
Choose something less selfish. ...You have to think of other people's rights.
–- Jameel Jaffer, ACLU
Jaffer credited the Obama administration for releasing memos that discussed and sanctioned torture among detainees in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp after 9/11, but suggested President Obama spent considerable political capital in doing that, setting him at odds with the CIA specifically and the intelligence community as a whole.
He suggested presidents' effect on human rights issues, in the arena of national security, can be limited by the fact a successful president may be in office eight years, but the mindset moves on a different track within the CIA and FBI, where careers can last 30 years.
He said Muslims have balked at careers in the United States' intelligence community because training materials have labeled Islam as incompatible with democracy. He believes FBI training materials for at least the past decade have drawn on the expertise of bigots, not individuals with expertise in Middle East culture. "And I suspect the CIA's training materials are worse."
Methods of detention and interrogation Jaffer said follow the structure of the Geneva Convention do not work in today's global war on terror because, unlike a traditional war, there is no geographical boundary to the warfare and no way to define an end to the conflict. "Wherever the terrorists are, that's where the battlefield is," he said, as if referencing the government mindset. "That means we're talking about indefinite detention."
Even worse are the targeted killings carried about by Predator unmanned aircraft, because an unfounded detention can end. "But there is no appeal from a Predator drone," he said, referring to three American citizens killed by CIA-directed drones in Yemen during the past month.
He warned that as other countries develop drone warfare capabilities, they too could use a similar rationale to conduct strikes on their enemies outside the boundaries of their own country, perhaps inside the United States.
Email:sfidel@ksl.com
