opinion

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC last week, it is inevitable and even understandable that governments and people all over the world are now more security-conscious.

This is simply the natural and right response because we are all human beings, whatever our colour, creed, culture, language and ideology may be.

As a result of the heightened security-consciousness, security in airports and seaports are tightened, and the armed forces and other organs and personnel of internal security have also been conditioned into high alert modes.

All responsible governments are expected to do these in order to safeguard the physical and psychological well-being of their citizens.

Socially responsible people, especially frequent air travellers, must also accept a certain degree of inconvenience as a trade-off for collective security against barbarism.

Critical moments

However, it is also one of those critical moments in the history of humankind for the modern and civilised societies to also guard against opportunistic and crooked authoritarianism that is lurking behind the scene and attempting to exploit the genuine fear of the people to achieve their petty, partisan and anti-democratic interests.

Modern and civilised societies must not, in the midst of anger and fear, themselves degenerate into barbarism. Otherwise, the just cause which is essential for maintaining and raising social morale would be lost and there would be no more distinction between civilisation and barbarism.

For these considerations, the US Secretary of State Colin Powell must be commended for declaring at the outset that the government of the United States is not after Muslims per se, but only those cowardly terrorists.

Socially responsible politicians, journalists and opinion leaders all over the world should heed the call to target only those who are responsible for the despicable crime against humanity in the US, and not to promote, in any way, the consciousness of guilt by association, or worse still, guilt by propagandistic insinuation.

We must not repeat the tragic and McCarthyist folly in the early years of the Cold War when innocent people and legitimate dissidents in the US, Malaysia and all over the world were unjustly accused of being "communists", "fellow travellers of communists", "communist agents" or "communist sympathisers" just because they were critical of some policies of the governments, or were ethnically Chinese or Russians, or simply had friends, neighbours or relatives who were "communists", real or merely suspect.

Guilt by association or by propagandistic insinuation go against the civilised, modern and democratic values, and the spirit of the rule of law we all uphold as the distinction between us and those cowardly barbarians.

'Our bastards'

Wrong and unfounded allegations against innocent people would only breed more grievances, discontent and hatred, to be built up for future expression, in one form or another. The US must not, at this moment of anguish and anger, breed another generation of "our bastards".

Indeed, the United States has shown by example that security-consciousness and determination to fight against terrorism is compatible with preserving civil liberty and human rights.

There is no declaration of general-purpose emergency, and there is also no massive and indiscriminate detention without trial. Of course, both Republicans and Democrats still debate in the Congress and Senate. The same can also be said of the mature democracies in Europe and Japan.

Thus, while there is a genuine need for the US to mobilise as much worldwide support as it could, it should also be principled enough to guard against some crooked-minded "allies and friends" who are attempting to exploit the current situation to gain US support, direct or indirect, for their domestic anti-democratic and authoritarian scheme.

The United States should not be misrepresented by "our bastards" again.

JAMES WONG WING ON, chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia, is a former Member of Parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh Chinese daily. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew, he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.