John LeBoutillier
Wednesday, Oct. 17, 2001

Thoughts that we all drove from our conscience before the attacks are now front and center in many of us.

A chain of events that seemed almost impossible five weeks ago now becomes a very real possibility.

1) The "Lock 'em all up" Scenario: If another attack happens inside the U.S. - or if the ongoing anthrax scare can be traced to someone inside our country - and if that person or those persons are Arab/Muslims, a previously unthinkable discussion is going to move front and center in our national dialogue.

We will then hear calls for 1940s-style 'internment camps' for all Arab/Muslim men. Already pollster John Zogby has found that 34 percent of New Yorkers favor internment camps! A third of the people in America's most liberal state favor locking people up just because of their ethnic background - even if they are U.S.-born citizens!

Another major attack by 'sleeper agents' already inside the U.S. and woe to any Arab man inside this country.

Even liberals who for decades decried the locking up of Japanese Americans during World War II are now at least privately discussing this latest option.

Funny, isn't it, how all their high-minded preachings go right out the window when they are under attack?

A solution to this problem - short of the internment camps? The Arab/Muslim community here in the U.S. needs to police itself. Responsible leaders need to let their co-religionists know that they better weed out suspicious characters and report them - before another attack.

2) Nuclear War: Since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989 the thought of a nuclear conflagration had disappeared.

But suddenly - since September 11 - a scenario is developing that could quickly bring about this dreaded event. It could be triggered in a number of ways, but the most likely two are:

A) Pro-Taliban fundamentalist radicals run a coup in Pakistan and take over there. A New Gallup poll shows that 84 percent of the Pakistani people support Osama bin Laden. A high percentage of the Pak military is fundamentalist, too.

Should such a coup occur, then we are in Big Trouble. The radical fundamentalists would then control the sizeable Pakistani nuclear arsenal. Do you doubt that Osama's followers - or Saddam - if they got their mitts on nukes would use them?

And what would India do if it suddenly saw its archrival destabilized? Would it move in and try to pre-empt a nuclear attack?

B) Another scenario is that Osama bin Laden's forces already have a crude nuclear device - and may use it somewhere. Perhaps it is already 'planted' with a controlling cell ready to be activated upon Osama's capture or death.

Would we then not retaliate in kind - before more such bombs are detonated?

3) "Drug 'em": The 600 detained Arab suspects, or 'material witnesses,' have disappeared into a black hole. What is happening to them? Who is representing them? Are their rights being protected?

All these questions are being raised now in the press. But more and more people are saying this: "I hope we are pouring sodium pentathol into them to find out - before it's too late - what and where the next attack is."

Most Americans would not have thought that way prior to September 11. But we can quickly go on a slippery slope away from American values and respect for the rights of all people. That is what fear and anger can do to us all.

Anger over what has already happened and fear of what may come have made the previously unthinkable now entirely thinkable. And that is the real definition of terror.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
War on Terrorism