-Caveat Lector-
www.dailytelegraph.com/opinion
Suppose we won the war but lost our freedom
By Robert Harris
News: Judgment day for law against blasphemy
ONE evening in August 1942, as Adolf Hitler took dinner with his
staff, his thoughts turned to the likely shape of the world after a
German victory. Could this empire of his actually endure? He was
confident it would: "People sometimes say to me: 'Be careful! You
will have 20 years of guerrilla warfare on your hands!' I am delighted
at the prospect! . . . Germany will remain in a state of perpetual
alertness."
This remark, contained in Hitler's Table Talk, made a great
impression on me when I first read it 15 years ago (I used it as an
epigraph to my novel Fatherland) and it has acquired still greater
resonance since September 11. At the moment, Western leaders
are talking about a campaign against terror that might last 50
years; Hitler guessed that the Third Reich's struggle to suppress
terrorism would last even longer: "We may have a hundred years of
struggle before us; if so, all the better - it will prevent us from going
to sleep!"
Obviously, there isn't much comparison between Hitler's definition of terrorism and
ours. He was envisaging a threat emerging from those nations that he had conquered in
the East and subsequently filled with German settle
rs. And his police methods would have been immensely more brutal than those of
America: the Luftwaffe wouldn't exactly have been dropping peanut butter and chocolate
bars over its target zones, and Ribbentrop certainly wo
uldn't have been working night and day to restore a democratic government.
Nevertheless, there is a slight sense - how can one put it
delicately? - that the Führer was on to something. All governments,
be they elected or imposed, strive ceaselessly to maximise their
power, and never is this more easily done than during wartime. In
Britain, as A J P Taylor observed in English History 1914-1945, this
process began during the First World War, when "the state
established a hold over its citizens which, though relaxed in
peacetime, was never to be removed and which the Second World
War was again to increase".
Terrorist wars are, if anything, even more insidious, for there is
never any definite victory after which pre-war conditions can once
again prevail. The conflict is endless: populations, in Hitler's lip-
smacking phrase, must always "remain in a state of perpetual
alertness". If the Government's proposed new powers of arrest and
detention, interception and suppression are pushed through, we
may take it as absolutely certain that the rights that are being
taken away will never be restored. That is the lesson not only of
1914 and 1939, but of 1911 (the Official Secrets Act) and 1974 (the
Prevention of Terrorism Act).
All this comes at what may be a turning-point in human history.
One of the most successful weapons of the Afghan war is
something called a Predator UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle),
operated not by the American military but by the CIA. This missile-
armed, pilotless spy plane flies quietly and slowly through enemy
airspace and transmits pictures back to US Central Command in
Florida and to the CIA headquarters in Virginia.
It was a Predator that, on the first night of the war, took a
photograph of Mullah Omar's car fleeing Kabul (a photograph of the
numberplate was later dropped over Taliban positions as part of
America's psychological warfare operations). It was also a
Predator, we are told, that last week followed Osama bin Laden's
deputy, Muhammed Atef, to a hotel where he met the senior
leadership of al-Qa'eda. CIA officials watched the pictures, waited
until everyone was inside, and then called up three F-15s to
destroy the hotel.
The point here is not the destruction of Mr Atef and his chums, for
whom few need shed a tear, but the sophistication of American
technology, of which the Predator is but one example. Total
surveillance cover, the ability to intercept every satellite phone call
(and, in the West, every cell phone conversation, too), infra-red
imaging, computerised voice- and image-recognition, near-
instantaneous data retrieval - whatever is going on in Af
ghanistan, it is certainly not the sort of war we are used to. Every commentator on
this conflict - and I write as one who supports it - seems to have got it wrong.
What's frightening isn't the prospect of the Americans b
ecoming bogged down, as in Vietnam; what's frightening is the almost contemptuous ease
with which they are winning it.
And what can be done on the battlefield can be done with equal efficiency on the home
front. I do not mean that David Blunkett intends to have Predators cruising up and
down above British motorways (although I wouldn't pu
t it past him), but rather that the new technologies have the potential to destroy
human privacy, and the Government now means to exploit the situation under cover of
fighting terrorism.
For example, the proposed emergency regulations will oblige internet service providers
to keep details of all their customers' internet traffic and email messages and pass
them to the police, for criminal as well as terro
rist investigations. At the same time, confidential records collected by one branch of
government will now be made available to other investigators.
Minor matters, you might think. But add this to all the other Orwellian manifestations
of modern life (DNA testing, surveillance cameras, computerised credit card
transactions: the list is at once trivial and overwhelming
), add it to the erosion of individual liberty that has been the pattern of the past
87 years, and add it, finally, to the prevailing atmosphere of war hysteria, and one
has a recipe for a kind of technological totalitari
anism.
It would be a peculiar paradox if, supposedly in defence of the supreme Western ideal
of personal freedom, we allowed the creation of a society in which personal freedom
was permitted only under Home Office licence. Yet s
uch may be the price of our "state of perpetual alertness".
Diehards kill four journalists
Blair faces backlash as alliance delays aid
EMI in a spin as poor sales lead to loss
Honours even in Valley thriller
Good at being bad
News - City - Crossword - Alex - Matt
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2001.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
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In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
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"Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe
simply because it has been handed down for many generations. Do not
believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do
not believe in anything simply because it is written in Holy Scriptures. Do not
believe in anything merely on the authority of Teachers, elders or wise men.
Believe only after careful observation and analysis, when you find that it
agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all.
Then accept it and live up to it."
The Buddha on Belief, from the Kalama Sutta
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A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
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It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that
prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell
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"Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas through any media and regardless
of frontiers."
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
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"Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will
teach you to keep your mouth shut."
--- Ernest Hemingway
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