Civil Liberties as an Antidote to Violent Extemism

[katty]

excerpt:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2006/05/civil_liberties_as_an_antidote.html

Civil Liberties as an Antidote to Violent Extremism

"I believe that the hard-won Constitutional freedoms enjoyed by Americans, along with our unparalleled commitment to civil liberties embedded in law, work against the development of domestic terrorist networks that could be exploited by foreigners," testified Gannon, who is now a Vice President at BAE Systems Information Technology.

Secrecy News asked Dr. Gannon to elaborate on this point.

"Americans have unparalleled Constitutional and legal protections to express grievances and to openly criticize government at all levels," he replied in a May 6 email message.

"This doesn't mean that terrorists wouldn't try to operate here. It means that the terrorists or other extremists would find less fertile ground to build networks in the US because local support would be harder to come by and because local opposition would be more certain."

"In this sense, our liberties are a powerful antidote to violent extremism."

"This is not an academic point for me. It is an observation from a career of watching the domestic consequences of repressive regimes elsewhere in the world--including US-friendly Islamic governments such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt," Gannon wrote.