Second Thoughts.(Brief Article)

From Tony Blair to George W. Bush to Gerhard Schroder, everyone agrees that the war on terror won't be won solely in the mountains of Afghanistan. This is also a fight on the home front. Across Europe, governments are following America's lead: arresting suspects, freezing bank accounts, trying to break up terrorist networks. And as in America, they're rushing to enact a whole book of new laws they say will help them to better do the job.

But hold on. In the United States, Attorney General John Ashcroft is under fire for the plan to create secret military tribunals and, as many Americans see it, infringe on basic civil rights. And so it is in Europe. Last week in London, in a telling reversal of fortune, Tony Blair's efforts to muscle a radical package of antiterror measures into law backfired spectacularly when the package was carpet-bombed in the House of Lords by naysayers from both the political left and right. Among other things, the far-reaching legislation would allow prosecutors to jail or indefinitely detain without trial any foreigner suspected of terrorism. To many Britons that smacked of Star Chamber justice, a violation of centuries-old civil rights. It's all well and good to ride roughshod over the Taliban, a majority seems to be saying. But let us not be tempted by such "illiberties" at home.

Britain's House of Lords wasn't the only arena of dispute. Last week also saw an angry row between Italy and the rest of the EU over the so- called common arrest warrant, one of several tough measures to jointly fight terror. The idea: to codify 32 offenses for which a suspect can be arrested anywhere within the Union, speeding extraditions and eliminating bureaucratic roadblocks in dealing with transnational crime. Fair enough, but Rome wants the list pruned to 16. It has yet to say precisely why, but one reason must surely be the measure's scope: overreaching and indiscriminate, as Italy's Justice minister put it.

That could describe a lot of legislation wending its way through European parliaments. Spain has targeted an aggressive legislative campaign against the Basque terrorist group ETA. France has given the police broader powers to search private property with police warrants. Germany has abolished laws conferring special protections on religious groups, making it possible to ban extremist Islamist organizations, and is loosening restraints on wiretapping and electronic surveillance. Some such initiatives are clearly necessary. Yet critics are beginning to speak out. Slow down, they say. Let us be more ...