Life or Liberty

February 24, 2005

The Magic of Internment

Michelle Malkin appeared on KPCC to argue that the internment and removal of Japanese from the West Coast in World War II was justified. Author Eric Muller represented the opposing view; you can give a listen at the link above.

Now US News and World Report columnist John Leo has written in support of the internment. He concludes:

Malkin’s point is that if the threat to the survival of America is severe enough, some civil liberties must yield. She is right that the internment issue is currently being wielded as a club to prevent reasonable extra scrutiny of suspect Arabs and Muslims. But the twin towers were not brought down by militant Swedish nuns. It is always reasonable to look in the direction from which the gravest danger is coming. It’s also reasonable and important to open an honest discussion of internment, past and present.

This echoes what Malkin says is the reason she wrote In Defense of Internment:

My aim is to kick off a vigorous national debate on what has been one of the most undebatable subjects in Amerian history and law: President Franklin Roosevelt’s homeland security policies that led to the evacuation and relocation of 112,000 ethnic Japanese on the West Coast, as well as the internment of tens of thousands of enemy aliens from Japan, Germany, Italy, and other Axis nations. I think it’s vitally important to get the history right because the WWII experience is often invoked by opponents of common-sense national security profiling and other necessary homeland security measures today.

All of this is supposed to sound reasonable, or rather, anyone who rejects on principle the internment of people based on their national origin is made out to be unreasonable. If people read Malkin's book so they can "get the history right," we'll stop opposing "common-sense national security profiling"

The main difficulty of responding or engaging with these views is they're so vague. WHICH "common-sense" measures are we talking about? WHAT are the revisionists proposing we do to "suspect Arabs and Muslims" that we aren't already doing?

I just have to return to the brilliance of that phrase of John Leo's:

She is right that the internment issue is currently being wielded as a club to prevent reasonable extra scrutiny of suspect Arabs and Muslims.

"Reasonable extra scrutiny of suspect Arabs and Muslims?" But that's not profiling. When someone's a "suspect," it means there's a reasonable suspicion of that individual not based on their race or ethnicity. No one's saying we should not follow the law and apprehend people based on individual evidence. But internment and profiling throw that all out the window. Leo's sentence taken literally doesn't make sense, but through its imprecision creates the idea there's a class of "suspect Arabs and Muslims" -- that ALL Arabs and Muslims are inherently suspect. And that we're being stopped from "scrutinizing" them by this faceless anti-internment mob.

WHO are these "suspect Arabs and Muslims?" WE ARE GOING AFTER SUSPECT AND NON-SUSPECT ARAB AND SOUTH ASIAN MUSLIMS.

If internment revisionists won't clearly say what they mean and what they want done, there's no way there can be a reasoned debate about proper national security measures. All that's clear so far from their irresponsible history and sloppy fearmongering is that a reasoned debate is not what they really want.

Anyone interested in this topic, check out Eric Muller's site. You'll find some freelance revisionists posting there too, so there's access to both sides.

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