Tag: freedom

What to do about Syrian refugees?

When frightened most people take or support steps to reduce risks to their security even at the expense of their liberties or other normally valued principles. Failure to do so might even be considered foolish if such steps might actually increase their safety. On the other hand, we regularly accept small risks in exchange for more interesting lives. The fact that 92 people died every day on average in the U.S. in traffic accidents in 2012 (about the same number who died from falling) has not kept most of us home, where we would have faced the risk that an average of 7 people per day died from home fires.

I am prompted to return to this subject (for an earlier blog see: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/are-we-becoming-a-nation-of-cowards/) by a recent Bloomberg poll in which the majority of adult American’s surveyed (53%) following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people said that “the nation should not continue a program to resettle up to 10,000 Syrian refugees.” Leaving aside that this is an almost unnoticeable share of the more than 3 million Syrians who have fled their country and the 6.5 million displaced within Syria, and leaving aside the causes of the horrors from which they are fleeing, are we justified in refusing to accept refugees if it makes us safer? But before taking that on, we should have a clear understanding of whether it is likely to make us safer.

The concern, of course is that among these poor desperate souls, terrorist might pose as refugees in order to gain entry to the U.S. (or Europe) in order to wreak havoc. Despite best efforts this possibility cannot be ruled out any more that we can rule out dying by fire if we lock ourselves in our homes. But the recent Paris attacks were carried out by French and Belgian citizens, not refugees. “Then there was the curious case of the Syrian passport found near the body of a suicide bomber. Who takes a passport to a terrorist operation? Someone who wants it to be found.” (Frida Ghitis, CNN, November 18, 2015: http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/18/opinions/ghitis-isis-self-destructive/index.html)

Gaining entry to the U.S. as a political refugee is a time consuming and difficult process. I have written a number of letters in support of applications by Iraqis and Afghans I have worked with and that is a very small part of what is required. Ms. Ghitis’ very interesting article continues: “The Paris operation had multiple objectives. The passport was a way of provoking the West to turn against refugees. The attack sought to provoke France, NATO and Europe to fight ISIS and the public to turn against the Muslim population and against refugees. ISIS wants a war between Islam and the rest of the world, with Muslims on its side, as a way of creating and expanding its so-called ‘caliphate.’ ISIS wants the world’s Muslims to feel they are at war with the modern world. It also wants to stop the flow of Syrians to the West, because it’s more than a little embarrassing that Muslims are fleeing its utopian Islamic ‘state.’”

In short, the risks of terrorist attacks (or attacks by deranged students at schools, etc.) in the U.S. come almost totally from our own citizens, just as do virtually all other crimes, violent or otherwise, in the U.S.  We call their perpetrators criminals and have vast and expensive programs to minimize such acts and to protect us to the extent compatible with our values from the crimes that nonetheless still take place. Aspects of these programs are the promotion of respect for the rights of others and for law and order and addressing and minimizing injustices toward individuals or groups that might provide the basis for grievances and hostility. For the rest we rely on the police to maintain order and arrest those who persist in crime (violent or otherwise). Crime and its perpetuators have always been and always will be with us. Some approaches to containing them have worked better than others and we should continuously strive to find the most effective balance between our freedom and our security.

So will ending the already negligible immigration of Syrians or Muslims improve our safety? If anything at all, it will worsen it by alienating and angering some of the almost 3 million Muslim’s already living here. The cry by some Governors and Presidential candidates and others to close the door to Muslims is much more likely to turn an American Muslim into a terrorist than to prevent one from entering the country from abroad. Thus these ugly cries by understandably frightened people fail on all counts (the promotion of American values and the promotion of security).

We need champions of the “Land of the free, home of the brave.” We have been the “Home of the free because of the brave;” not the brave young men and women sent off as cannon fodder to fight wars all over the place by deranged neocons but those brave enough to stand tall for the values of human respect and freedom that have (and hopefully still will) define America.

 

Are We Becoming A Nation of Cowards?

“No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”

James Madison, April 20, 1795

Osama Bin Laden’s vendetta against the United States grew out of his anger over our stationing American troops in his home country of Saudi Arabia. Imagine for a moment what might be his most cost efficient weapons for hurting the U.S.  What might give him the biggest bang for the buck? Shutting 19 American Embassies and related diplomatic facilities in the Middle East for at least a week on the basis of intercepted communications between al-Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri in Pakistan and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, who heads the al-Qaeda franchise in the Arabian peninsula, would be high on the list. Such reactions to intel, which could well be a deliberate planted by clever Arabs, must have the ghost of Bin Laden laughing hysterically (if it is possible to imagine Bin Laden laughing at all).

I still carry in my travel bag a nail clipper missing the little nail file that a Miami airport guard broke off as a potentially dangerous carry on weapon not too long after 9/11. It has taken 12 years for our government (the Orwellian named Department of Homeland Security) to figure out a way for me to board planes without taking out my computer and taking off my belt and shoes. At least the perpetual alert status of code Orange has been dropped.

These are minor inconveniences compared to the cost and danger of the billions and billions of dollars spent by NSA and others to invade our privacy (for our own good, of course) in order to better search for needles in hay stacks that might detect plots to harm us (such as the Boston marathon bombings—Upps). We are assured that these data will never be searched by a rogue bureaucrat looking for dirt on political enemies. We are reassured because our political leaders never lie to us.  For example, when National Intelligence director James Clapper informed a Senate Intelligence Committee last March that the government was not “wittingly” collecting information on millions of Americans, he later justified the lie by saying that it was the least dishonest statement he was comfortable making.

Gregory Johnsen, an expert on Yemen at Princeton, recently noted the unrealistic and dangerous expectations of the American public (at least as our government sees or would like to see them):“Unfortunately the way we in the US have talked about the terror threat as a society AQAP [Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] doesn’t have to be particularly good or even successful to constitute a serious threat.  As a society we in the US seem to have a zero-tolerance approach to terrorism instead of weighing its risks against other potential threats.  In such an environment any threat from AQAP could be considered serious.” (reported by Foreign Policy Magazine)

I am not one to see conspiracies everywhere, but this latest scare is a nice distraction for recent revelations of potentially dangerous and at a minimum wastefully expensive government over reaches in the name of keeping us safe (Snowden’s NSA and other revelations). This mornings Washington Post has two op-ed pieces on this subject that you should read. The first by Eugene Robinson, “The New Al-Qaeda Menace” /2013/08/05/, is correct in my view. The second (just below it) by Juan Zarate and Thomas Sanderson,  “Adapting to Terrorism 2.0”,  is down right scary. George Orwell’s big brother could not have made the case better for bigger and more intrusive government for our own good. Are they deliberately trying to destroy our liberties or are they over zealot fools. Probably the latter.

Over the centuries our young men and ladies have risked and often lost their lives to keep us free. How ironic that in the name of keeping us secure our liberties are being increasingly eroded and threatened. It is worth reading a more extensive excerpt from James Madison’s prescient April 20, 1795 “Political Observations” quoted above:

“Of all the enemies of true liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

“War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.

“In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people.

“The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manner and of morals, engendered in both.

“No nation can preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

“War is in fact the true nurse of executive aggrandizement. In war, a physical force is to be created; and it is the executive will, which is to direct it.

“In war, the public treasuries are to be unlocked; and it is the executive hand which is to dispense them.

“In war, the honors and emoluments of office are to be multiplied; and it is the executive patronage under which they are to be enjoyed; and it is the executive brow they are to encircle.

“The strongest passions and most dangerous weaknesses of the human breast; ambition, avarice, vanity, the honorable or venal love of fame, are all in conspiracy against the desire and duty of peace.”

–James Madison, from “Political Observations,” April 20, 1795 in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison, Volume IV, page 491.

Protecting our Civil Liberties

Richard Nixon reminded us of the great dangers to our cherished liberties inflicted by the powers available to our government. Remember his “enemies list.” Or if you are too young to remember it real-time, hopefully you have read about it (Watergate!! Remember?). Nixon was forced to resign because of it.  It was a victory of our free press.

Or if you want something more recent, what about “Filegate.” According to Wikipedia: “The White House FBI files controversy of the Clinton Administration, often referred to as Filegate, arose in June 1996 around improper access in 1993 and 1994 to Federal Bureau of Investigation security-clearance documents. Craig Livingstone, director of the White House‘s Office of Personnel Security, improperly requested, and received from the FBI, background reports concerning several hundred individuals without asking permission. The revelations provoked a strong political and press reaction because many of the files covered White House employees from previous Republican administrations, including top presidential advisors. Under criticism, Livingstone resigned from his position. Allegations were made that senior White House figures, including First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, may have requested and read the files for political purposes, and that the First Lady had authorized the hiring of the underqualified Livingstone.”

I feel bad using the above example after Bill Clinton’s wonderful article in today’s Washington Post calling for the repeal of DOMA, which he had signed into law in an earlier time.

Any power that government has can potentially be abused, so our Constitution strictly limited them and required checks and balances on their use. When I was in college – U of C Berkeley in the mid 1960s—George Orwell’s 1984 was still several decades in the distant future. Big Brother (an all-powerful government that looked after our safety and its own), with its ability to spy on our every activity to ensure that we behaved in the country’s (i.e. the government’s) interest, was a fictional nightmare that we couldn’t imagine happening in America.

Then came 9/11 and the Patriot Act. The American Civil Liberties Union flagged three powers in the Act, even after it was renewed in May 2011, that go too far:

“The three expiring provisions of the Patriot Act give the government sweeping authority to spy on individuals inside the United States, and in some cases, without any suspicion of wrongdoing. All three should be allowed to expire if they are not amended to include privacy protections to protect personal information from government overreach.

                  Section 215 of the Patriot Act authorizes the government to obtain “any tangible thing” relevant to a terrorism investigation, even if there is no showing that the “thing” pertains to suspected terrorists or terrorist activities. This provision is contrary to traditional notions of search and seizure, which require the government to show reasonable suspicion or probable cause before undertaking an investigation that infringes upon a person’s privacy. Congress must ensure that things collected with this power have a meaningful nexus to suspected terrorist activity or it should be allowed to expire.

                  Section 206 of the Patriot Act, also known as “roving John Doe wiretap” provision, permits the government to obtain intelligence surveillance orders that identify neither the person nor the facility to be tapped. This provision is contrary to traditional notions of search and seizure, which require government to state with particularity what it seeks to search or seize. Section 206 should be amended to mirror similar and longstanding criminal laws that permit roving wiretaps, but require the naming of a specific target. Otherwise, it should expire.

                        Section 6001 of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, or the so-called “Lone Wolf” provision, permits secret intelligence surveillance of non-US persons who are not affiliated with a foreign organization. Such an authorization, granted only in secret courts is subject to abuse and threatens our longtime understandings of the limits of the government’s investigatory powers within the borders of the United States. This provision has never been used and should be allowed to expire outright.”

Now our government has hinted that it might have the power to undertake extra judicial killing of Americans on American soil via drone attacks. I have been stunned in recent years at the relatively quiet acquiescence of many Americans to these dangerous extensions of unchecked or under-checked government powers. They happily send their neighbors’ sons and daughters to far off lands to fight “our” enemies and to sometimes die there, while not having the courage to tell our government here at home to back off.

Today’s “The New Yorker” headlined “The Borowitz Report” with: “Poll: Majority of Americans Opposed to being Killed by Drone.” This is meant to be satirical, of course. But until Rand Paul filibustered in the U.S. Senate against the confirmation of John Brennan unless the government would state clearly that it would not target Americans in the U.S. without due process, you might have thought that Americans didn’t care much. Earlier this week Attorney General Eric Holder “wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a drone strike against Americans on U.S. soil. But he said the administration wasn’t planning on such a strike and would use the option only under extreme circumstances.” (CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/us/drones-five-things/index.html)

Following Senator Paul’s filibuster the Attorney General sent a new letter to the Senator stating:

“It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: ‘Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?’ ” Holder wrote. “The answer to that question is no.” (CNN)  This is a small but important victory for restraining Leviathan and protecting our liberties and it has taken a long time. I wrote on this same subject almost exactly one year ago: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/extra-judicial-killing/

Thank you Rand Paul.

I have spoken out in defense of our constitutional liberties on a number of occasions as well, including: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2012/09/15/further-thoughts-on-free-speech/,   https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2012/09/29/freedom-of-speech-final-thoughts-for-a-while-at-least/

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance”