The afternoon of Dec. 30 brought news that eight American CIA agents and four Canadian soldiers at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan had been killed by a suicide bomber.
The attack culminated in a dining room or the gym at the base. With each loss of those who serve our country, we may honor their sacrifice by considering the nature of the missions they perform, the many risks they accept, and the burdens imposed upon their families.
As often as we do so, we less seldom consider the “mission” and the risks to civilian citizens which are also imposed upon us by the existence and the perpetuation of a free and open democratic society.
The terrible loss of eight CIA agents is an infrequent occurrence for the CIA. The CIA has had 90 stars on its Memorial Wall at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va., representing CIA agents killed in the line of duty. Despite frequent dangerous encounters, these servants of freedom have been elusive targets for America’s enemies. Yet even elusive targets, protected by the maximum of resources, have vulnerabilities — perhaps, in this case, including treachery.
Civilians also have vulnerabilities. Terrorists and other criminals have always exploited vulnerabilities. Why do we lock our doors and windows? It is not because a determined assailant or thief cannot breach a lock. It is because they usually seek a vulnerability — perhaps of one of our neighbors who is less careful.
The most repressive societies and tyrannical governments have never eliminated the vulnerabilities of their citizens. Our society, as long as it remains a society that continues the heritage of our founders, has even greater vulnerabilities to criminals. We strive to reduce those vulnerabilities while continuing to be a free and open democratic society.
We accepted the ubiquitous use of tamper-resistant packaging after the 1982 Tylenol tampering murders. Fortunately, that adjustment was effective without coincident constitutional conflicts.
We have endured a large number of other terrorist attacks in the United States: the Olympic Park Bomber, the Oklahoma Murrah Federal Building bombing, the two World Trade attacks in New York and those in Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, serial murderers such as the Zodiac killer, and cultural crimes such as the murders of civil rights workers. The complete list is much longer than the short (but significant) selection that I cite. We have managed to respond to such acts without — so far— voiding the freedoms which many others have fought and died for.
We have, at times, made serious errors which had to be corrected. We incarcerated Americans of Japanese ancestry during WWII. We presently have more than 100 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centers within the United States.
These “subfield offices” seem to be routinely used for detention of suspected illegal entrants to the United States. Because they operate as undisclosed locations, without normal facilities to house and care for detainees, all detentions have been secret until recently. We now know that at least one U.S. citizen, born in North Carolina, was detained without right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
Such challenges to our constitutional freedoms must be acknowledged and resolved. We have several challenges (such as the ICE example) that are a legacy of our terrifying experience on Sept. 11, 2001.
We must not continue to allow paranoia to dictate that we can no longer be a free and open democratic society.
Eight American CIA agents and four Canadian soldiers deserve a legacy of freedom.
Jim Stone lives in Joplin.
