The list of terror

In our post-9/11 world, no one is surprised by the U.S. government anymore. No one is safe, and “everyone is a terrorist” seems to be the message they want to send to us. Even so, I was surprised to hear recently that they had gone so far as to put Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela on the terrorist watchlist.

True, Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist during his 27-year prison term, having protested against the apartheid regime of South Africa. The terrorist group, the African National Council, has since turned into a success story, going from a violent terrorist group to a peace keeping activist group, and finally listed as a political party of South Africa. Since the days of the ANC, Mandela won the Nobel Peace Prize, became the first black president of South Africa, and is about to celebrate his 90th birthday.

If peaceful people appear on the U.S. government’s terrorist watchlist, who isn’t on the list? Was Mother Theresa on it? Princess Diana? Any other people who have won the most prestigious international award for doing the “best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses”?

The situation involving Mandela has been corrected, but even U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted that the situation was “embarrassing.” It seems as if there is no real monitoring system for the terrorist watchlist. Perhaps names are added, but never removed, and possibly never even monitored to begin with.

That being the case, we could theoretically wage war on a country or group of people that had a rough patch 30 years before, but was only now brought up in conversation. It’s like Big Brother is watching us but he has an IQ of only 80.

The whole point of having a Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) is to actually screen people who might seriously be dangerous. Realistically, there are two ways to combat terrorism. The first is to lower the number of people who are likely to become terrorists. The second is to combat terrorist acts. The first method would be the most effective, because removing the potential of a terrorist is a lot less work than constantly tracking one terrorist’s planned attacks. A great example of this would be Osama bin Laden. If he had never become a terrorist, the United States wouldn’t constantly be trying to stop all the events he could be planning.

Since the FBI won’t reveal who is on the list, including not letting you know if you’re on it too, in a way, we just have to trust it. But wouldn’t a real terrorist use an artificial name or fake ID? How many real terrorists are getting busted at airport security?

In 2006, a 4-year-old boy was stopped from boarding a plane because he had a similar name as someone on the terrorist watchlist. The man on the list was, needless to say, much older than 4. I understand that we need to be cautious in order to prevent some major attacks, but I am curious how many real terrorists are stopped or deterred by this system.

In fact, experts claim that more Americans die from automobile accidents each year (an estimated 43,000) than from terrorism attacks, not to mention how many people die from obesity and cigarettes. So we put all of this money into creating a database for “our own good,” and focus attention on putting peacekeepers such as Nelson Mandela in it, when our country is being slowly killed on its own.

The events of last week have just proven how inefficient our “efficient” terrorist watch system really is. If Nelson Mandela can be put on the list, how can any of us be sure that our names don’t appear beside his? We can’t. The Big Brother of the United States has again pushed the limit and overreached absurdity, which, sadly, is not surprising.