Josh Gerstein notes Sarah Palin's statement that "acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them," and writes:
There is a simplistic appeal to that blame-only-criminals-for-the-crime formulation, but it is certainly not one that American society has adopted in the context of the war on terror. The U.S., instead, has put in place a series of measures and pursued a series of criminal prosecutions that seek to hold accountable those connected in a variety of peripheral ways with those who commit terrorist acts.
Gerstein refers specifically to Wendy Kaminer's citation of the Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project case, in which the conservative wing of the Supreme Court (and Justice John Paul Stevens) abandoned the broad interpretation of the First Amendment it employed in Citizens United, criminalizing "advocacy performed in coordination with, or at the direction of, a foreign terrorist organization," because "providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization -- even seemingly benign support -- bolsters the terrorist activities of that organization." Of course prosecution of such advocacy depends on the group's political connections.
Material support charges have been a boon to prosecutors, since nearly half (170) of the 337 terrorism related cases since 9/11 have involved such charges. Our selective understanding of collective guilt doesn't just shape our policies; it shapes how we see just about everything -- as Greg Knauss tweeted earlier today, "If crimes 'begin and end with the criminals who commit them,' I think Sarah Palin just endorsed a mosque near Ground Zero."
It's a clever quip, but when you think about how casually conservative political leaders hold Muslims collectively responsible for terrorist attacks -- the entire concept behind Peter King's Muslim HUAC hearings -- it's genuinely disconcerting. Acts of "monstrous criminality" are individual only when the individual doesn't fit the profile of particular political bogeymen. It's not just Muslims; if the shooting in Arizona had been perpetrated by an undocumented Latino immigrant we'd be having a very different conversation right now.
