Will Americans embrace democracy or fear in the 2006 elections?
By ROSS T. RUNFOLA
Published in The Buffalo News, 9/10/2006

Little did I know, when I accepted an offer from Oxford University to deliver a paper on the treatment of Muslims and Arabs after 9/11 at a Round Table on terrorism, that I would witness the very racism and terrorism examined at the forum.

Within a few hours on the morning of Aug. 10, though, the tranquil and wonderful moments provided by my generous Oxford hosts at their Lincoln College forum on global security would be replaced by a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach as memories of 9/11 burst to the surface. The reality of a more immediate threat - the foiled plot to blow up airplanes leaving London for the United States - made the detachment of our academic discussions appear irrelevant.

The Round Table experience was so intellectually stimulating that I almost regretted not attending Oxford University. My presentation focused on the treatment of Muslims and Arabs after 9/11 as part of a tradition of systematic abuse of vulnerable groups during periods of national crisis.

I emphasized Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Haynes Johnson's argument that there is a symbiotic relationship between the "freewheeling" politics of fear used in the 1950s by anti-Communism Sen. Joseph McCarthy and President Bush's politics of division regarding the war on terror in the 2004 election, which engulfed Muslims and Arabs in its wake.

Bush's simplistic and inflammatory rhetoric concerning his war on terror helped re-elect him in the first election after 9/11, but made some Americans consider Muslims and Arabs the new "they" to their "we." Fear-mongering was used by Bush, Republican candidates and especially the president's designated attack dog, Vice President Cheney, who was McCarthyesque in stating that anyone who votes for the Democratic candidate, John Kerry, casts a vote for the terrorists.

After waiting 12 hours for my flight to depart at Heathrow, I thought the irony was striking: After delivering a paper on the treatment of Muslims and Arabs after 9/11, I am in the middle of London's 9/11. What happened next convinced me that irony does not adequately explain what was occurring.

A distinguished-looking African-American man about 40 sat next to me on the plane. He appeared even more stressed than the rest of us. I soon found out why. Mr. Ali sadly told me he had been on a flight to the United States the night before but was escorted from the plane in handcuffs, not by British intelligence but by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

After being removed from the plane without explanation, he was taken to an isolated area at Heathrow and left. In his words, "I was frightened. I thought I was going to be jailed or shot." A Homeland Security official finally came and told him orders came from Washington to pull him from the plane because he fit the profile of the hijackers.

This is as ludicrous as what happened to many innocent Muslims and Arabs who were detained after 9/11 in the United States. The suspects in London were largely around 21 to 23 years old, British citizens and Muslims living in London. My seatmate was middle-aged, a U.S. citizen, a Christian, an engineer living in a tony section of Houston with a wife and two children in college who were about the same age as the terrorists.

Upon hearing why I was at Oxford, Ali asked why I thought he was treated like a criminal. I told him there was no logical reason except his being profiled because his last name is Ali and he is African-American. I then explained a major part of my paper examining the racial profiling and detentions of 1,200 largely Muslims and Arabs after 9/11 with no access to a lawyer, in violation of the due process clause of the Fourth Amendment.

Warming up to the question, I said that aside from the relocation to concentration camps of 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II, the 9/11 detentions are perhaps the darkest period in American constitutional history.

Ali was not surprised. What saddened him was the impact on his family, who considered themselves good Americans. As we warmly shook hands to say goodbye, Ali said he knows what it must feel like to be an innocent victim of 9/11.

I was shocked but not surprised upon arriving home that in his first public message to the American people, President Bush linked the London plot to the "war on Islamic fascists." This phrase is a stark example of the president and many Republican candidates continuing to use the threat of terrorism prior to elections. Unfortunately the phrase demonizes all Muslims, since it implies that it is the religion and not the ideology that threatens the United States.

The elections of 2006 offer a convenient divide for examining the "Two Nations" of John Dos Passos. Will voters learn about the importance of truth and tolerance from the manipulation for political gain by Bush after the tragedy of 9/11, or will they succumb once more to fear?

Ross Runfola is an attorney and professor of social sciences at Medaille College.