Except the NYT says the Euros haven't been whacked by the cluebat...yet.
Despite Terror, Europeans Seem Determined to Maintain Civil Liberties
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN
BERLIN, July 8 - From the 9/11 attacks through the Madrid bombings, Europeans have refused to sacrifice civil liberties in the fight against terrorism, sharply criticizing the United States for restricting its citizens' rights for the sake of security. Even with the London attacks, there is little indication that this philosophical divide is narrowing.
Certainly some European counterterrorism experts believe that Europe's determination to preserve open borders, ease of movement and civil liberties has been what one German expert on terrorism, Rolf Tophoven, calls "a gift to terrorists." It is all too easy for jihadists, once they are inside the European Union, to move from one country to another, the experts say, propagating their views and setting up groups sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
But from the early signs, Europe will not change course.
"I don't think the attack in London will change European policies," Mr. Tophoven said.
For one thing, it is too early to make the case that the London attacks were the product of open borders or too much tolerance of fanatical Muslim activity in Britain.
"If it turns out that the guys who did this were carrying French passports and they came from outside to do this special job, then there may be some feeling about the borders being too open," Gary Samore, a terrorism expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, in London, said in a telephone interview. Investigators, though, lean toward the theory that the London attacks were the work of terrorists already in Britain.
In general, Mr. Samore said, British police intelligence has been very good at keeping tabs on Muslim radicals inside Britain and has succeeded in foiling earlier terrorist plots.
"MI5 has very good relations with the British Muslim community, and it's developed a good network of informants, and they've penetrated the radical groups," Mr. Samore said, referring to the British domestic intelligence service.
Without more evidence it is impossible to know if there was a failure to gather intelligence on groups in Britain, or whether outsiders aided or directed the attacks, going to the country for that purpose.
But whichever turns out to be the case, experts say, radical Muslim communities have been established in several European countries since well before the current wave of Al Qaeda-inspired attacks, and that makes the situation in Europe different from that in the United States.
For the United States, there was a logic to the post-Sept. 11 toughening of immigration procedures, subjecting foreigners to rigorous questioning, general suspicion and even fingerprinting, which has prompted great unhappiness among European visitors. For Europe, with a sizable radical Muslim population already in place, it makes far less sense.
If potential terrorists are already inside the country, then the best way to prevent terrorism is to do what Britain was already doing, which is to keep close tabs on them.
As in the United States, there is a debate in Europe about the relative weight that needs to be given to civil liberties on the one side and law enforcement on the other. But Europeans are generally more inclined to err on the side of civil protections, because they are convinced that taking too severe a line only makes matters worse.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict further divides European and American attitudes. Europeans are far more sympathetic to the Palestinians and prone to anti-Israel attitudes than Americans, and they have therefore tended to see a certain kind of Muslim radical oratory as the natural response of peoples with legitimate grievances.
By and large, Europeans oppose the American war in Iraq, which many say is responsible for increasing the terrorist threat against them. Political leaders in Europe diplomatically avoid criticizing the United States, but it has surely not been lost on ordinary Europeans that the countries attacked, and threatened by attack, are those that have supported the American war in Iraq.
"What we are witnessing in London is the terrorist answer to an imperialist politics," Ernst-Otto Czempiel, a political scientist at Frankfurt University and founder of the Frankfurt Peace Research Institute, said in an interview, giving voice to a widespread European opinion.
"To use military force against terrorism and to see it as a prolongation of the Soviet Union or of Hitlerian aggression is not only wrong politically but wrong practically," Mr. Czempiel said. "Bush has produced the opposite of what he intended to do."
In European intelligence circles, the fear is spreading that Iraq is becoming another Afghanistan, drawing in jihadists who receive training in bomb-making and other terrorist techniques and then infiltrate Western countries, Mr. Tophoven said. "There aren't a lot of them, not even hundreds," he said, "but a few of them are enough to cause harm."
The debate about civil liberties versus strong, intrusive security measures is not restricted only to Europe, of course. In Washington, President Bush is pressing Congress to renew the USA Patriot Act, the broad anti-terrorism law that was passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. But the measure has run into roadblocks on Capitol Hill.
The reauthorization bill has yet to come to a vote in either chamber. But last month the House approved a spending measure that stripped the act of a provision making it easier for federal investigators to review the records of bookstores and libraries.
European countries have passed no equivalents of the Patriot Act, but they can nonetheless claim considerable success for their reliance on ordinary police work and intelligence, despite the Madrid and London bombings.
The British police claim to have derailed several previous bomb plots. And in Germany, radical Muslims are under close surveillance, their homes, offices and computers subject to searches by the police in regular raids. Some organizations suspected of fanning hatred have been banned, and a few suspected extremists have been expelled.
Moreover, Germany is the only country to bring people accused of being members of the Sept. 11 terrorism team to trial. But both cases have foundered, not because of some excessive civil liberties scruples on the part of the Germans, but because the United States refused to provide records of its interrogations of terrorist leaders.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/international/europe/09liberties.html
