Low turnout at a panel discussion last night about the war on terrorism seemed to some participants to be an indicator of the growing apathy amongst Americans toward the issue.
Allan Stam, a government professor and panelist, began his remarks by saying, "The size of the audience is reflective of the national mood." In contrast to the overflow crowds that showed up to hear panelists speak about the war on terrorism in October, Thursday's panel drew only about 40 people.
A second panelist, history professor Ronald Edsforth, agreed with Stam and suggested that the American people were already "numbed out on this war."
Government Professor Angelia Means joined Stam and Edsforth in Filene Auditorium to deliberate on, "The War Against Terrorism: At Home."
Discussing democracy in war and what it takes to sustain support for war over time, Stam highlighted the need for the Bush administration to maintain both domestic political support and the support of its allies abroad.
He then stressed two major policy dilemmas that the U.S. will have to address in the immediate future: first, that the more successful the U.S. is in eliminating future attacks, the less of an issue such attacks will be, and secondly, in war, an increase in cost equals a decrease in public support.
According to Stam, these costs take three forms: military casualties, civilian inconvenience and economic expenditures.
Although he believes that Americans will continue to tolerate inconvenience "as long as the perception of the threat is real," Stam was less convinced about the ability of the American public to endure continued economic losses.
Means addressed the question of how a terrorist should be treated by a constitutional democracy, pointing that it is first necessary to consider the status of the accused terrorist.
While a U.S. citizen is entitled to be tried in a U.S. court with the full scope of his constitutional rights available to him, dealing with a non-citizen resident alien is "more complicated."
In such cases, Means worried that "people are being detained against whom no public evidence had been presented." That, she said, is a violation of due process, which can lead to racial profiling.
The problem of what to do with a non-citizen terrorist is also difficult, but it is a problem, that must be addressed, since "in the context of globalization we don't expect to find terrorists only in a foreign land," Means said.
Whatever solution is selected, the most important issue for Means is that the accused be granted the basic norms accorded by democratic countries.
Just the fact that the issue of what to do with terrorists is being discussed represents to Means "a shift in the way democracies think about war" so that war is no longer seen as "a substitution for the adjudication of law."
Edsforth, a visiting professor of history and the coordinator of the War and Peace Program, was the last to speak. He was also the most cynical of the three.
Although Edsforth called the war "a just war, a good war" he also suggested that the Bush administration is attempting to recreate the Cold War by presenting it as a struggle against evil. He commented on the return of the "imperial president," George W. Bush, and suggested that the media is shaping this war much the same way as it did with the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s.
Edsforth agreed with Stam on the hardship of sustaining a long war, but pointed out that Bush has, from the beginning, told the public that the war would not end quickly.
He did this for a number of reasons, according to Edsforth: to prepare the public, to dispel all doubts about the legitimacy of his administration and to set up a domestic political structure in which it is difficult to pass unpopular legislation.
He also suggested that the number of civilian casualties being reported by the American media was vastly misleading -- a few hundred as opposed to the 3,700 being reported by foreign outlets.
Means rejected Edsforth's pessimistic reading of the situation. She also pointed out that tens of thousands of civilians would have to be killed to even begin to equal the number of casualties sustained by Afghani citizens under the Taliban regime.
Stam also took issue with Edsforth's idea of the Cold War mentality, finding optimism in the low number of casualties which he described as "without precedent."
