German Government Divided Over Anti-Terrorism Strategy

The recently foiled terror attack in Germany--involving several Turkish extremists and, very disturbingly, two German converts--has triggered another acrimonious political debate about how far the government can go to fight terrorism and protect the homeland. For example, does the (conservative) German defense minister have the authority to order the downing of a hijacked civil airliner even if it means the killing of innocent passengers on board? (Back in March 2006, when this issue first erupted following a Constitutional Court ruling prohibiting such shoot-downs, I wrote a DAILY STANDARD piece about the dangers of "Flying Blind in the Post-9/11 World.") And what of those who spend their summers at terrorist training camps in Pakistan learning Bomb Making 101 (like several of the recently detained terrorists did): should German laws be changed so that anyone who attends these training camps can be charged with membership in a terrorist organization? Is it necessary to prove that these folks had the premeditated intention to use their new skills to commit terrorist attacks in the future? Also, should German security agencies have the authority to install spyware on the computers of suspected terrorists to track their online movements? Finally, at a more abstract level, how real is the threat of nuclear terrorism and the use of a "dirty bomb"?

Much of the current controversy centers on the long-standing left/right divide over the appropriate balance between security and civil liberties, a battle that is also being waged here in the United States. In the German context, however, calibrating the government's response is made particularly difficult by the country's long shadow of history. Since the end of the Nazi dictatorship, successive generations of German political leaders, as well as large segments of the general population, have consistently put a premium on the far-reaching protection of civil liberties by agreeing to strictly limit the state's domestic security and surveillance competencies. For sure, during the Red Army Faction's left-wing terrorist campaign against top-level government and business officials back in the 1970s, West Germany passed expansive anti-terrorism legislation, most of which still remains in force today. Yet while these new police and security measures helped defeat the RAF group's old-style terrorist tactics, they are hardly a match for today's breed of doomsday Islamists willing to use any weapon--including nuclear, biological, and chemical devices--to cause wanton mass destruction.