What if Joe Stack Were a Muslim?

Let's play a little game of hypotheticals. Imagine for a second that Joseph Stack III - the crazed man who flew an airplane into an IRS office building in Austin, Texas last week - were actually a Muslim man with a Middle Eastern-sounding last name. Now imagine that rather than a suicide mission, he actually managed to survive the crash and authorities were able to apprehend him into federal custody. Finally, imagine that this Muslim bomber came from a little-known country in the Arab world, where he was a devout student of Islam before making his way to the United States.

How do you think pundits, politicians, and the Obama administration might be reacting right now if the above scenario actually played itself out? This is a new America under the leadership of President Obama and governed by the rule of law, a far cry from the days when our hypothetical terrorist would have been shipped down to Guantanamo, tortured, and held indefinitely.

Right?

There's no chance that President Obama would work closely with Senator Lindsey Graham in the aftermath of the attack to draft new legislation allowing the alleged terrorist to be held indefinitely without trial, or that our pilot would join the ranks of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and fail to get a civilian trial in the United States.

Surely, there is no way that the Obama administration would react to the attack by enacting new racial profiling laws that require passengers flying to America from 14 different largely Muslim countries to be subjected to enhanced scrutiny and full-body pat downs at airports across the country.

It's totally inconceivable that the President would even consider extending the provisions of the USA Patriot Act that allow the government to operate roving wire-taps, spy on foreigners living or traveling in America, or search any individual's personal, business, or even library records.

And there is absolutely no way that Obama would respond to conservative pressure in the aftermath of the attack by supporting targeted assassinations and launching cruise missile strikes from U.S. warships against suspected terrorists living in the bomber's country of origin. Obama simply would not try to expand the war on terrorism to yet another country in the Arab world, knowing that the civilian death toll of U.S. drone strikes far outweighs the potential benefit of killing a handful of suspected terrorists.

By now I'm sure you catch my drift. The most alarming part about Joe Stack's politically-motivated attack on the IRS office last week has been the deep reluctance on the part of the media and Washington policymakers to label the incident an act of terrorism. Though Stack's actions very much fit the definition of "terrorism" in the most classic sense, federal officials have failed to call the incident a terrorist attack and consider the act to instead be merely a "crime." There is no question that had Stack been a Muslim acting on behalf of al Qaeda and using the justification of Islam, rather than the ideology of the Tea Party and leftist populism, to support his actions, he would have been considered a terrorist of the highest order.

Troubling as this double-standard is, Stack's unfortunate actions shed light on a far more problematic reality: in the aftermath of the Fort Hood attack in November 2009 and the Christmas Day bombing, the mood in the U.S. has once again turned in a more sinister direction for Muslims and Arab Americans, and the Obama administration has been unable to distance itself from the deplorable tactics employed by the Bush administration in the fight against terrorism.

That former vice president Dick Cheney's admission last Sunday of his unshakable love for waterboarding has gone virtually unchallenged by the mainstream media is a sad reflection of the mindset of the majority of Americans, a regrettable indicator that the country remains trapped in the Bush administration's paradigm that civil liberties are expendable in the fight against terrorism.

Just as the Bush administration used 9/11 as the justification for tossing aside the constitution and international law, so too has Obama responded to the Fort Hood attacks and the Christmas Day bombing by enacting new racial profiling laws at America's airports, announcing his plans to hold prisoners indefinitely, and expanding the war on terrorism abroad to Yemen. In his desire to bridge the ever-expanding divide between liberals and conservatives, Obama has caved on the very principle that set him apart in the 2008 elections: his understanding that the rule of law, and not continued warfare and violence, is the most potent weapon in the fight against terrorism.

In the coming weeks, Joe Stack will most likely become the hot topic of debate in households across America, with mainstream media outlets debating back and forth his motives for carrying out his fateful suicide attack. More than anything, however, Stack's actions should serve as a powerful moment of national introspection, an opportunity for our country to examine not only his individual motivations for violence, but also the deep relationship of his actions to our nation's treatment of Muslims and Arab Americans and our policies on national security and civil liberties.

Rest assured, if Joe Stack had survived his suicide attack last week, he would have been given a civilian trial in Texas courts, and afforded the right to make his case before a judge and jury. There is no reason why simply because their names are more difficult to pronounce, Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan - also an American citizen - or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Umar Farouk Muttalab should not be entitled to the same fate.

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