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Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 323.32910973 EAN: 9781565848009 ISBN: 1565848004 Label: New Press Manufacturer: New Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 256 Publication Date: 2003-09-26 Publisher: New Press Studio: New Press
Customer Rating: Summary: Some good points, but flawed Comment: Professor Cole, whom I read frequently in the Nation, makes a strong case that our government is violating people's civil liberties in the name of national security. He goes through American history and mentions such incidents as the Palmer Raids and the Japanese internment to show how the U.S. government has been abusing its power for many years.
Cole savages the Bush administration for its policy of mass arrests of Arabs on flimsy grounds. Page 30 is the most damning, I'll briefly quote:
In June 2003, the inspector general of the Justice Department issued a scathing report. It revealed that over 700 foreign nationals were arrested on immigration charges from Sept 2001 to August 2002. Of these, not one was charged with any terrorist crime, and FBI officials cleared virtually all of connection to terrorism.
Cole makes the salient point tha detaining people based solely on ethnicity is not only unfair and unconstitutional, it is counterproductive. Muslim communities often regard the government as an enemy when it arrests scores of people on mere suspicion. The book makes a strong case and I would recommend it highly to any citizen concerned with maintaining freedom in America post 9-11.
I have two major problems with the book, however. One, the author is too quick to dismiss racial profiling as an effective anti-terror tool. The fact remains that the vast majority of terrorists are Arab males. To ignore that fact seems absurd and dangerous. While Cole is right that we should not overrely on racial profiling, he goes too far in completely opposing it.
My other objection is that Cole takes a politically correct view on terrorism. He does what so many liberals do- excusing terrorism as a symptom of poverty and Western repression. This is the weakest argument of the book. Cole doesn't see that Islamic fundamentalism is the real cause of terrorism, not poverty. Most of the 9-11 hijackers and other Al-Qaeda members- not to mention bin Laden himself- are in fact financially well off. As Samuel Huntington and other scholars have shown, religious fundamentalism in the developing world is not primarily a movement of the poor and uneducated. For more on the causes of terrorism, see Sam Harris' excellent book The End of Faith.
Notwithstanding these flaws, I still recommend reading this book. Customer Rating: Summary: A must read Comment: A previous reviewer stridently denounces Cole's supposed reliance on "fabricated instances of government abuses." I wonder if he or she has even read the book, which is based on a law review article with several hundred footnotes. Perhaps he thinks all of the citations are to the liberal mainstream media and so cannot be trusted? The "Constitution is very clear about citizen/non-citizens," the previous reviewer also writes. I agree. The Fifth Amendment says, in relevant part, "no person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." Person, not citizen.
The Supreme Court has resoundingly rejected the position that a state of war is a blank check for the President. The rule of law and the due process requires, at a minimum, that unlawful combatants be given a fair opportunity to rebut the basis for their classification as such before a neutral and independent decisionmaker, not a sham status review tribunal.
As citizens in a representative democracy, it is our obligation to be informed of what is being committed in our names. Cole's book offers a terrifying and timely glimpse into how the Administration is pursuing the global war on terrorism.
Customer Rating: Summary: Hidden Agenda at work Comment: Cole, a known anti-American radical, has outlined a dangerous proposal based on fabricated instances of government abuses. The Constitution is very clear about citizen/non-citizens. If he wants non-citizens to share the same rights as citizens, then he should support initiatives to topple dictatorships, or at least, trade up in them. Customer Rating: Summary: A thought-provoking study of civil rights challenged Comment: David Cole's Enemy Aliens is a powerful testimony to the challenged freedoms which have taken place since 9/11. The rapid emergence of double standards in the war on terrorism is explored in a hard-hitting title which documents statistics about those being held prison without civil liberties rights, and the prevalence of ethnicity-based detentions justified as security measures. A thought-provoking study of civil rights challenged. Customer Rating: Summary: An Excellent Book Comment: Professor Cole writes an excellent book, hitting many points that are usually left out. He examines the way Arabs and Muslims are being treated today post-9/11 and parallels it with our nation's past abuses of foreigners, bringing in examples of the Japanese internment during WWII and many others. Professor Cole is dead on when he writes about the loss of legitimacy faced by law enforcement in the Muslim community, stepping into a mosque shows it to be quite evident. Cole's analysis of what the United States should be doing to make our country safer rather than an indiscriminate dragnet of immigrants shows the professor's wisdom. This book was recommended to me by Wayne Cornelius, Director of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego, an expert in his field...a recommendation that I would like to pass on.
As part of the war on terrorism, the federal government has detained over 5,000 foreign nationals, engaged in guilt by association and ethnic profiling, and conducted secret searches and wiretaps without probable cause of criminality.
These measures have been sold to the American public on the grounds that they affect only foreign nationals. In Enemy Aliens, award-winning author and civil liberties lawyer David Cole argues that in balancing liberty and security we have consistently relied on a double standard, imposing measures on foreigners that we would not tolerate if applied more broadly to us all. Cole warns that while such a double standard is politically easy (the 20 million non-citizens living in the US can't vote), it is constitutionally suspect, counterproductive as a security measure, and ultimately illusory, because history shows that acceptance of such treatment for outsiders paves the way for similar measures against American citizens.
Coming on the heels of his multi-award winning No Equal Justice, which exposed race- and class-based double standards in the criminal justice system, Enemy Aliens brings Cole's keen intelligence, constitutional acumen, and personal litigation experience to bear on the character of constitutional freedoms in the war of terrorism.
