- That the Revisionist-Zionist extremist Daniel Pipes has
fond visions of rounding up Muslim Americans and putting them in concentration
camps isn't a big surprise. That a mainstream American newspaper would
publish this David-Dukeian evil is. Of course, this is also a man that
President Bush appointed to a temporary vacancy at the United States Institute
of Peace, after the Senate understandably balked at a regular appointment
for him.
-
- Pipes's little project requires him to attempt to justify
the internment of American citizens (of Japanese ancestry) during World
War II, a violation on several grounds of the Bill of Rights. I hope Asian-Americans
realize that a key wing of the Republican Party, i.e. the Neoconservatives,
wishes them ill.
-
- If the American yahoos ever start putting people in concentration
camps, I think we may be assured that they won't stop with the Muslims
or the Asians, and Mr. Pipes will come to have reason to regret his imprudence
and, frankly, his demonic implication.
-
- Juan Cole is Professor of History at the University of
Michigan
-
-
Why The Japanese Internment Still Matters
- |By Daniel Pipes
- Star Telegram - Middle East Forum
- 12-30-4
-
- For years, it has been my position that the threat of
radical Islam implies an imperative to focus security measures on Muslims.
If searching for rapists, one looks only at the male population. Similarly,
if searching for Islamists (adherents of radical Islam), one looks at the
Muslim population.
-
- And so, I was encouraged by a just-released Cornell University
opinion survey that finds nearly half the U.S. population agreeing with
this proposition.
-
- Specifically, 44 percent of Americans believe that government
authorities should direct special attention toward Muslims living in the
United States, either by registering their whereabouts, profiling them,
monitoring their mosques or infiltrating their organizations.
-
- That's the good news; the bad news is the near-universal
disapproval of this realism. Leftist and Islamist organizations have so
successfully influenced public opinion that polite society shies away from
endorsing a focus on Muslims.
-
- In the United States, this intimidation results in large
part from a revisionist interpretation of the evacuation, relocation and
internment of ethnic Japanese during World War II.
-
- Denying that the treatment of ethnic Japanese resulted
from legitimate national security concerns, this lobby has established
that it resulted solely from a combination of "wartime hysteria"
and "racial prejudice."
-
- As radical groups like the American Civil Liberties Union
wield this interpretation, in the words of columnist Michelle Malkin, "like
a bludgeon over the War on Terror debate," they pre-empt efforts to
build an effective defense against today's Islamist enemy.
-
- The intrepid Malkin, a specialist on immigration, has
re-opened the internment file.
-
- Her recently published book, bearing the provocative
title In Defense of Internment: The Case for Racial Profiling in World
War II and the War on Terror (Regnery), starts with the unarguable premise
that in time of war, "the survival of the nation comes first."
From there, she draws the corollary that "Civil liberties are not
sacrosanct."
-
- She then reviews the historical record of the early 1940s
and finds that:
-
- * Within hours of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, two U.S.
citizens of Japanese ancestry, with no history of anti-Americanism, shockingly
collaborated with a Japanese soldier against their fellow Hawaiians.
-
- * The Japanese government had established "an extensive
espionage network within the United States" believed to include hundreds
of agents.
-
- * In contrast to loose talk about "American concentration
camps," the relocation camps for Japanese were "Spartan facilities
that were for the most part administered humanely." As proof, she
notes that more than 200 individuals voluntarily chose to move into the
camps.
-
- * The relocation process itself won praise from Carey
McWilliams, a contemporary leftist critic (and future editor of The Nation),
for taking place "without a hitch."
-
- * A federal panel that reviewed these issues in 1981-83,
the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, was,
Malkin explains, "Stacked with left-leaning lawyers, politicians,
and civil rights activists -- but not a single military officer or intelligence
expert."
-
- * The apology for internment by Ronald Reagan in 1988,
plus the nearly $1.65 billion in reparations paid to former internees,
was premised on faulty scholarship. In particular, it largely ignored the
top-secret decoding of Japanese diplomatic traffic, codenamed the MAGIC
messages, which revealed Tokyo's plans to exploit Japanese-Americans.
-
- Malkin has done the singular service of breaking the
academic single-note scholarship on a critical subject, cutting through
a shabby, stultifying consensus to reveal how, "given what was known
and not known at the time," FDR and his staff did the right thing.
-
- She correctly concludes that, especially in time of war,
governments should take into account nationality, ethnicity, and religious
affiliation in their homeland security policies and engage in what she
calls "threat profiling."
-
- These steps may entail bothersome or offensive measures
but, she argues, they are preferable to "being incinerated at your
office desk by a flaming hijacked plane."
-
- Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum. www.DanielPipes.org
-
- (In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this
material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving the included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with
the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed
or sponsored by the originator.)
-
- http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/307138.shtml
|
