Strangers By Daylight

In May, thousands of police, doctors, firemen and dozens of local, state and federal agencies responded to a simulated explosion in Seattle and ‘discovery’ of germ-warfare toxins in Chicago to test their responses. Code name: TOPOFF 2. The exercise was planned but it still tested skills. Meanwhile, a state-of-the-art control centre is up and running in Washington to coordinate the mobilisation of 8,000 doctors and nurses and shipment of 50 tonnes of supplies anywhere in the US in seven hours. Citizen corps councils are operating in 40 cities to help out.

Land and sea borders are tighter, the free-wheeling security at US airports a myth of the past. Airports will soon be equipped with "biometric" identifiers which can literally read your eyes and recognise a facial twitch—all under the innocent-sounding US-VISIT programme. This, in addition to the regular racial profiling of Muslim travellers. Foreign students are under special scrutiny with 6,000 universities gathering information on them to feed a national computer data bank under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVIS) launched this February. This massive multi-agency attempt to secure the vast landmass of the US is being directed by the new department of homeland security. Codenamed Liberty Shield, it is meant to make America safer.

But two years after 9/11, do Americans feel safer? While praising the efforts at home, however patchy, they are less sanguine about the outcome of foreign adventures. Iraq and Afghanistan—the two countries President George Bush attacked to "break the back" of Al Qaeda and prevent weapons of mass destruction from getting into the wrong hands—are both dangerously unstable. After thousands of Iraqi deaths and nearly 300 US soldiers killed and over a thousand injured, the fact that both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are alive and planning revenge doesn’t instil confidence in Americans. Ominous messages from Bin Laden released periodically form an uncomfortable segment of post-9/11 life.

A CBS poll last week showed a majority of the Americans (55 per cent) believe removing Saddam was a worthwhile effort but only 47 per cent think it was worth the cost. Bush’s approval ratings are down from the high 60s in May to 53 per cent as Americans grow more sceptical of his reasons for declaring war on Iraq, according to a Newsweek poll. When asked whether the war had been effective in fighting terrorism, only 45 per cent agreed; 38 per cent said the war had actually increased Al Qaeda’s power by inspiring a new generation of terrorists.

Mary and John Seibel, in their 40s, live in the suburbs of the US capital, and typify the mixed response. Mary has been stopped at airports because she had one-way tickets but still approves of extra security measures. "They have taken some good steps to improve air security but I wonder what happens if you have a certain kind of name. The procedures are not always consistent and it will take time to remove all the kinks in the system." She has grown tired of the fear-mongering and all "those codes" they declare, sending people off to buy duct tape. "It gets scary when they talk of smallpox and biological agents." Bush’s "us vs them" mentality leaves Mary cold. "We are on the wrong track. We should try to understand why there is such hatred against Americans."

John, a lawyer by training, dismisses the security apparatus as "cosmetic" and insists that something more fundamental has changed in the psyche of Americans. They no longer consider themselves immune from terrorist attacks. Frequent air travellers like him are "now much more willing to be combatants". But the cumulative effect of multiple searches, racial profiling and other official intrusion into private life greatly bothers him. "It is very difficult for me to give up my civil liberties for greater security. You feel safer, but at what cost? They can find out what you’re reading. It’s frightening."

This new snoopy US has a different pulse, a quickened beat. It wants to eavesdrop, search personal records. It wants Total Information Awareness—a programme so controversial it had to be renamed Terrorism Information Awareness by the Pentagon. Critics say the Bush administration seems determined to drill holes into the country’s cherished template of civil liberties. The tool is the omnibus usa Patriot Act which allows for secret investigations, secret searches, secret deportations so long as it is a "terrorist investigation". Hurriedly passed by a frightened Congress within weeks of 9/11, activists say the Act is Big Brother in action.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Arab American groups filed a lawsuit in July against parts of the Patriot Act they find especially egregious. With hindsight, more than 300 members of the House of Representatives have joined them. Attorney general John Ashcroft, a hardliner, insists the Patriot Act is an essential tool in the war against terrorism. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures, he says. But many intellectuals and some in his own Republican Party strongly disagree. Jim Cornehls, a University of Texas professor who has pored over the complex legislation, says it is a building block for a police state. The new, broader definition of terrorism can include organisations like Greenpeace because any act "dangerous to human life" can be considered. Even civil disobedience, as practised by Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr, could be questioned.

The Iraq war, waged against the will of most of the world, has to be repeatedly justified by Bush’s cabinet because the results are so stark. True, 39 of Iraq’s 55 "most wanted", including Saddam’s sons and Chemical Ali, have either been captured or killed. But the attacks by disgruntled Baathists and opportunistic jehadis are on the rise. After weeks of splitting hairs, Pentagon’s man on the ground, Gen John P. Abizaid, admitted that terrorism was "emerging as the number one security threat".

Bush’s "bring ’em on" swagger seems increasingly misplaced. E.J. Dionne, a scholar of government studies, said the recent attacks in Iraq have blown up "the pretensions of an arrogant strategy that assumed the US could do nation-building on the cheap". He and others constantly make the case for more US troops and international help. Thomas Friedman, a very influential columnist in the mainstream media, last week called for an "emergency policy lobotomy" in Iraq. Even William Kristol, leader of the pro-Bush neo-conservative brigade, is baffled. "Certainly, US efforts in Iraq since the end of the war have not been a failure. Iraq hasn’t descended into inter-ethnic violence. The Arab and Muslim worlds have not erupted in chaos or anger, as so many of our European friends confidently predicted. But the absence of catastrophic failure is not, unfortunately, evidence of impending success." He called for a "generational commitment" to West Asia like the one made to Europe after World War II.

The question: Can the region bear so much America? The decidedly American face of the occupation has a high price. Virulent anti-Americanism is on the rise in Arab and Muslim countries, according to a global poll released in June by the Pew Research Centre, Washington. A survey of 16,000 people in 20 nations showed that 60-80 per cent of the people in Egypt, Jordan, Indonesia and Pakistan have an "unfavourable" view of the US. They also trust Bin Laden more than Bush to do the right thing. "There is a great deal of collateral damage to public opinion from the war in Iraq," said Andrew Kohut, the Pew director. "Antagonism toward the US has both deepened and widened." This is hardly cause for comfort.

A growing number of experts are blaming Bush for "losing the peace"—Afghanistan is once again Taliban-infected and, post-war, Iraq is in flames. Three massive bombings in August with more than 150 killed have shaken the confidence of even the ardent. The road map for West Asia has vapourised and the Taliban is confidently regrouping, even issuing press statements against the "infidels". But before the Hamid Karzai government could take full reins of a devastated Afghanistan, Washington was making the case against Iraq. In deadly irony, the stated but highly questionable reasons for the Iraq war may now be coming true. With borders unguarded, jehadis are pouring into Iraq and joining hands with angry Baathists, say intelligence reports. Iraq wasn’t a hub of terrorism as Afghanistan or even Pakistan, but it may soon become one. The WMDs, if they exist, are today more likely to get into the wrong hands. This will not raise the safety index at home.