Within an hour of hearing about the attacks on Spetember 11th, I figured out that Ashcroft and company were going to use the attacks to curtail civil liberties, the same way the Reichstag fire was used by the NSDAP at the beginning of its reign of terror. And lo, Congress came to pass the "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001." Now the Act is up for (partial) renewal, and there promises to be an actual debate about it, unlike the first time.

All of which got me thinking, what would have happened if Bill Clinton had pursued the militia movement the same way Bush is pursuing terrorists? Not that I'm such a big Clinton fan, but let us pause to consider how he handled a terrorist attack versus how Bush has handled 9/11.

Would conservatives be so quick to approve the sweeping powers given to the FBI in 2001 had they been targeting a (right-wing) radical movement with thousands of American members? I went looking for a recent calculation of the U.S.'s arrest/conviction ratio in the War on Terror, but the Justice Department has refused to release comprehensive numbers, and various departments are giving conflicting figures. So, let's sort out some floors and ceilings: at the peak of the militia movement, there were 858 anti-government terrorist groups in America. Let's assume that each group had an average of, say, ten members, so that gives us about 8,580 actual terrorists.

The low range of potential arrests could have been 61,497 citizens (based on Ashcroft's 2004 testimony to Congress of 179 convictions since 9/11 and the Bush administration's claim of 1,283 such arrests in 2003 alone). A high range could have numbered 1.7 million, given our detention of 5000 people on Guantanamo and about 25 convictions on Al-Qaeda terrorism charges (as opposed to Ashcroft's count of 179, which included non-terrorist crime convictions of terrorist suspects). One wonders what how the right-wing blogosphere would have reacted to a middle range of 888,000 arrestees, or the authorization to use torture on 'enemy combatants.' Would they have stopped at "jack-booted federal thugs?"

Obviously, these numbers aren't definitive, but it does give you an idea of the difference between treating terrorism as a crime and using it as an opportunity to leverage unpopular foreign and domestic policies. In fact, Clinton did pass an anti-terrorist legal reform bill in 1996, but somehow it didn't seem to tread on our civil liberties in the same way as the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act.

My feeling about this is the fact that the terrorist boogeymen aren't white goes a long way towards fostering acceptance of Bush's policies. Can you imagine the coverage on Fox News if the government arrested a million white people on terrorism charges?

Debate me if you want, and I welcome statistical corrections to my arrest/conviction ratios, if anyone has them.