Phoenix man Eric Harroun, who served in the Army from 2000 to 2003, was arrested Wednesday upon returning to the U.S. from Turkey, where he had described to FBI agents his bizarre journey to the front lines of Syria's civil war with fighters from the al-Nusra Front, a designated terrorist organization also referred to as al Qaeda in Iraq.
Oh, I'm not talking about the accused Phoenix man. If he did what he is accused of doing (and what he boasts of doing) he's either a traitor (for fighting with al Qaeda, notwithstanding that we want Assad's regime to fall) or in desperate need of mental health professionals. Or both, of course.
But I'm not talking about that as what is dangerous. We can deal with him.
No, this is the dangerous part:
The criminal complaint against Harroun says federal officials believe they have probable cause to believe Harroun "conspired to use a weapon of mass destruction," meaning the RPG. He will remain in custody pending a preliminary hearing in early April, federal officials said.
How does this even make sense? An RPG is a rocket-propelled grenade. Originally just an anti-tank weapon, it has evolved to be an anti-personnel weapon, too, providing light infantry with their own light direct-fire artillery support.
Recall that we passed crimes against using WMD after 9/11, in the fear that jihadis might use chemical, biological, or even atomic weapons in extreme scenarios (even if the latter was "just" a dirty bomb that spread radioactive material with a conventional explosive). WMDs meant those types of weapons.
As if simply killing several thousand people wouldn't rack up the prison time or electrical voltage enough. And as if a statute would deter a jihadi.
But aside from those considerations, the statutes were written so poorly that any very conventional method of killing people can be described as a "weapon of mass destruction." I worried that rather than being used against real al Qaeda plotters, that ordinary criminals would be charged using the statutes. Which is ridiculous. An RPG is not a WMD.
And if an RPG is a WMD, then Saddam Hussein most definitely had lots of WMD in his arsenal at the time we invaded. Lots.
And thus our laws are twisted out of reality. The intent of the law was to stop chemical, biological, and atomic weapons. You'd hope that prosecutors would use a little common sense when they compile the charges. But in practice, there is no such thing. In practice, a very sad man is charged with a crime that should have been reserved for real terrorist jihadis plotting against us.
Laws need to be written very carefully. The collateral damage for poorly worded laws can be great.
And more important, laws should be really necessary in the first place. Why we needed specific statutes for killing or attempting to kill lots of people with a particular type of weapon is beyond me.
So this is what we got. A glorious triumph of the state in defeating our jihadi enemies out to kill us in our homes with WMD. I feel safer already.
