The day will come, I'm sure, when civil liberties in this country are so eroded that this country will become unrecognizable. If you have read any of the books recently issued about the Bush administration which report the behind-the-scenes strategies of the reactionary ideologues in Washington, this prediction will not come as a surprise.

In his new book, The One Percent Doctrine by Ron Suskind, the author explains the motivating force behind U.S. foreign policy since September 11: we must respond decisively and with great force even if there is a one percent chance that a rogue government or terrorist might get its hands on weapons of mass destruction. This explains the Iraq War: of course there was a one percent change that Iraq had WMD's. There is a one percent chance of anything happening at any time. But a one percent chance is what now drives U.S. foreign policy. Paranoia reigns supreme at the White House, according to Suskind, and the one percent doctrine can produce whatever war you want.

The one percent doctrine can also produce strict rules on civil liberties. Associated Press reported over the weekend that "U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill."

When scared, the American public will put up with just about anything. In World War II, the government rounded up Japanese Americans and threw them into internment camps in California for the duration of the war. The Supreme Court said this was legal. The places were hell-holes. According to Wikipedia:

According to a 1943 War Relocation Authority report, internees were housed in " tar paper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind." The spartan facilities met International laws, but still left much to be desired. Many camps were built quickly by civilian contractors during the summer of 1942 based on designs for military barracks, making the buildings poorly equipped for cramped family living. In other areas, the internees had to build the barracks-like structures themselves.
To describe the conditions in more detail, the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in northwestern Wyoming was a barbed-wire-surrounded enclave with unpartioned toilets, cots for beds, and a budget of 45 cents daily per capita for food rations. Because most internees were evacuated from their West Coast homes on short notice and not told of their destination, many failed to pack appropriate clothing for Wyoming winters which often reached temperatures below zero Fahrenheit. Many families were forced to simply take the "clothes on their backs."

The phrase "shikata ga nai " (loosely translated as "it cannot be helped") was commonly used to summarize the interned families' resignation to their helplessness throughout these conditions. Although that may be the view to outsiders, the Japanese people knew that, in order to prove themselves as "loyal citizens", they must do what was asked of them by their government.

It's hard to imagine the government getting away with this today, but if we suffer another terrorist attack, who knows? What if the American people were able to give their true opinions about civilian roundups, without fear of any stigma associated with proposing draconian solutions?

Here's the rest of the AP story on confining enemy combatants in the U.S.:

According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute." Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda ."That's the big question ... the definition of who can be detained," said Martin Lederman, a law professor at Georgetown University who posted a copy of the bill to a Web blog.

Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force Judge Advocate, said the broad definition of enemy combatants is alarming because a U.S. citizen loosely suspected of terror ties would lose access to a civilian court — and all the rights that come with it. Administration officials have said they want to establish a secret court to try enemy combatants that factor in realities of the battlefield and would protect classified information.