Arizona: Making It Illegal To Be Here Illegally

Those wicked hate-mongers in Arizona have struck again. On April 23, Governor Lucifer – er, Jan Brewer, signed SB 1070, aka the Anti-Illegal Immigration Law. In this infamous piece of legislation, the Arizona congress had the gall to require Arizona law enforcement agencies to actually enforce federal immigration laws. Where do they get off treating illegal aliens as criminals? I mean, just because they are here illegally doesn’t mean they are breaking the law… er.. um.. well.. it’s just mean!

The arguments against the law stretch the definition of ridiculous. With a straight – and usually feverishly red – face, we hear spokespeople actually claim that this law discriminates against those who break it. After all, nearly 100% of our country's prison inmates have been convicted of a crime. Coincidence? Clearly our justice system is slanted against criminals!

Most protesters have not read the law or do not understand what it actually says. Some have so distorted the Constitution that they have lost all reasonable perspective on its intent. For example, Constitutional rights were never intended to protect non-US citizens. And if you look real close, there is nothing in the Constitution that guarantees Americans the right to privacy, which is the sacred basis claimed for most of the liberal howling today. Sure, the 4th amendment provides protection against unreasonable search and seizure, but when a state has a US Census estimated 500,000 illegal alien inhabitants, that statistic becomes a very serious backdrop for determining what is ‘unreasonable’.

Sidebar: It strikes me as incredibly unfair that our presidential primary system, for both parties, chooses Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina as a proxy for the rest of the US in determining who the best candidate for president would be. This may have made sense 100 years ago, but where does illegal immigration rank in the top 50 problems in any of those states? By the time Florida, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California have their presidential primaries the candidates have been chosen and immigration has barely been mentioned much less debated as a serious policy initiative. States that allocate a big chunk of their budget dealing with the problem have a much different perspective. Arizonans got tired of dealing with federal government apathy and decided to take their own action! If nothing else, it brings national attention to a problem that has been long overlooked.

Arizona’s Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik wrote an impassioned letter in the Wall Street Journal bemoaning the ‘mistake’ that Arizona made with the law. In a rambling, incoherent string of oxymorons, he described how his officers have been dealing with illegal aliens for years, but now they will be burdened with a task they are not staffed or resourced to complete. This would make sense if any part of the law actually required officers to be on border patrol. But instead, it only requires them to check individuals for proper ID who have already been stopped for reasonable suspicion, which federal law already requires. The Sheriff also warned about the violation of legal citizens’ constitutional rights if his officers had to demand proof of citizenship. He never mentioned how his officers determined that all those illegal aliens they dealt with in the past were actually illegal aliens, or why all of a sudden it will be harder for his officers to identify them. The Sheriff has a valid point that the federal government should be shouldering the responsibility to protect our borders, and they have not been doing it. But he is hard pressed to make sense of the argument that enforcing federal law is out of bounds for his officers.

Our civil liberty zealots want to pretend that this is the first time law enforcement has been required to use ‘reasonable suspicion’, and that they will clearly resort to Gestapo tactics if given the opportunity. Every day, police officers are required to use good judgment to detect ‘suspicious’ behavior or circumstances. Of course, we can find examples of abuse. But these are the exception rather than the rule. We cannot reasonably argue that society would be better served with no law enforcement (although many appear to try). Given our extremely porous border security and the indisputable and timely evidence that our country has enemies bent on producing mass American casualties and destruction, I personally would gladly show my ID if it meant stopping a potential terrorist or criminal from carrying out their mission. Heck, I have to practically strip at the airport to avoid the suspicion of transporting dangerous materials, and I can’t carry a bottle of water with me. I willingly accept this as the price of keeping our nation safe. You don’t hear me screaming about my constitutional rights being violated.

And this is the evidence of the insanity of the outrage. It’s not about keeping America safe; it’s about leveling the playing field. Americans are perceived to be privileged, and non-Americans are underprivileged. Until we all suffer equally, some will argue that the system is unfair. But this is like saying France is biased towards French people, and Germany is biased towards Germans. Someone please point to the nation on earth where blacks or Hispanics have more opportunity for prosperity than in America? All we ask it that everyone pursue their prosperity in a lawful way that is fair to everyone else who follows the law. But instead of listening to a privileged American, see what this Hispanic said about the law on a web post:

“

I am a second generation Hispanic immigrant and I applaud Arizona, finally a State has made the hard choice to hold the Federal government accountable for enforcement of Federal Immigration policy. This law will not be found unconstitutional as it mirrors the Federal law; the only real change is that a citizen can file a lawsuit against anyone who restricts the enforcement of Federal Immigration laws.
A person who is a legal resident of this state may bring an action in superior court to challenge any official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state that adopts or implements a policy or practice that limits or restricts the enforcement of federal immigration laws to less than the full extent permitted by federal law. If there is a judicial finding that an entity has violated this section, the court shall order that the entity pay a civil penalty of not less than one thousand dollars and not more than five thousand dollars for each day that the policy has remained in effect after the filing of an action pursuant to this subsection.
Bottom line is it is time to stop punishing those who abide by the law, and start punishing those who break the law. If you legally come into this country you don’t get free medical and free education, but if you come into this country illegally you do. …this [is] a very simple situation, either you respect the laws of this country or you don’t, if you don’t then don’t come here….”

Having said that, most of us got here because our ancestors had the good sense and ambition to come to America from wherever they were, and took advantage of the opportunities available to them. Let’s face it; it ain’t because we did something to earn it. (Although if you served in the US military, you have a strong enough case.)

But ask yourself this: If you were born in Mexico, and just across the border is the greatest country on earth that will provide the chance to earn a decent wage for a day’s work, get your kids an education and medical care, find refuge from the abject poverty and crime you live in, wouldn’t you consider a run for the border? Especially if you knew there was a good chance you wouldn’t get sent back? I go against the grain here, but we need to have some compassion for those who are legitimately trying to get a better life and work for it. We’ve turned a blind eye to illegal immigration for decades now, so share some responsibility for the problem. More on this in another post, but let’s not mix the message for today.

There is nothing un-American about enforcing American Federal immigration policy. If you disagree with what Arizona has done, you really need to think though your argument. Seventy percent of Arizonans disagree with you.

Contentment and Complacency

Heard a message in church yesterday about contentment. It centered on one of the most misunderstood verses in the bible, Philippians 4:11: “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am in, therewith to be content”. This was written by the apostle Paul while in prison. It is often used as a bludgeon to make Christians feel guilty if they aren’t brimming with joy every minute of every day or do not allow themselves to be trampled by anyone with a purpose. But even a cursory analysis reveals that there is clearly a context for Paul’s comments. In fact, Paul may have been the most discontent character in the New Testament. Not content with his profession as a tent maker, Paul embarked on multiple missionary journeys to spread the gospel. He was imprisoned, shipwrecked, beaten, stoned and eventually executed for his ambitions. He was repeatedly not content that his previous mission was enough; he still had more to accomplish. How many people do you know who are so discontent with the current state of affairs that they are willing to endure these hardships, not to mention death, to improve them?

Webster defines content as this: ‘to limit oneself in requirements, desires, or actions’. It’s hard to think of any worthwhile effort in history that was accomplished by limiting oneself in requirements, desires or actions. Women were not content to be denied the right to vote, and blacks were not content to be slaves in America. Martin Luther was not content with the doctrine of the church, so much so that he defined and posted 95 theses describing how it needed to change. Mother Teresa was not content that so many children in the world lived in poverty. Abraham Lincoln would have never become president if he had been content with any of his prior political defeats. Without some level of discontent, nothing would ever get invented, improved, cured or accomplished.

So what was Paul talking about? He recognized that stressing about things he couldn’t change was counterproductive. He believed there comes a point where you’ve done all you can do and then the matter is out of your hands. He later talks of running the good race and fighting the good fight. Paul understood that contentment comes from knowing that you are doing the right things, not necessarily from your circumstances or environment. He also understood that contentment is far different than apathy regarding the world around him. Unfortunately, we seem eager to substitute complacency for contentment.

Our pastor blurred these definitions as well. He attended the prayer breakfast in Washington DC and reported that the top prayer request from President Obama is to mend the deep divisions in our country, starting in Washington. He encouraged us to ‘stop forwarding emails’ and furthering the divide. As utopian as it sounds to have universal harmony, some things are worth fighting for, even at the expense of harmony. This subtlety eludes many of us, especially meek Christians. I’m sure plenty of ministers admonished their parishioners to embrace harmony and peace back in 1776, declaring that all this talk of independence was selfish, sinful, and insubordinate to the governing powers. Where would we be today if we followed that advice?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating a revolution! But we do need to understand that conflict alone is a poor indicator of selfish or separatist behavior. But alas, guilt is an addictive power that some just can’t resist dispensing. Too many ministers measure their effectiveness only by the level of conviction they can generate on Sunday morning. And too many Christians let themselves be bullied into complacency by a religious authority figure under the guise of promoting harmony.

True enough, some seem to go hunting for conflict and even gin up their own when needed. This is, indeed, a big problem with politics today. We’ve become so reflexively opposed to anything coming from the ‘other’ side that we will kill good ideas just because they came from the wrong party. If you can pile up enough defeats for your opponents, you win by default. (See the argument against a 2 party political system in a previous blog about the Massachusetts election). And there are enough bible thumpers who long for the return of the crusades so they can justify their hatred with righteous indignation. But there has to be some middle ground where the average middle-class American draws a line and says this is enough, I will not bend further just to avoid a conflict.

A society’s culture is defined by the values of its people, but only the ones vocal enough to defend their views. We have seen how a very small percentage of the population (think gay rights) can shape public policy by vocalizing their agenda with targeted campaigns. We run the risk of allowing traditional Judaeo-Christian values to become obsolete because leaders shame their people into avoiding conflict. It’s instructive to remember that Jesus didn’t die of old age surrounded by friends. He died at the hands of those offended most by his values. It’s no coincidence that they were religious leaders too.

Haitian Relief and the Guilt Tax

I’ve been wrestling philosophically for a few weeks about the situation at Haiti. Obviously, the imagery is heartbreaking to anyone with an ounce of humanity. We see new widows mourning their husbands, new orphans mourning their parents, homes and buildings in ruins, crowds mobbing aid workers for food…truly the picture of need and desperation.

The appeals for aid have been frequent. Michelle Obama has appeared on public service spots asking Americans to contribute. Celebrities appeared on a telethon, some even answering phones to take pledges. Musicians re-recorded “We Are the World” as a benefit for Haiti. Employers, churches and schools have all initiated collections for contributions to Haiti. While money is clearly needed to recover and rebuild, how much money is enough? How are we really helping the people of Haiti?

Recall the tsunami relief fundraising for Indonesia a few years back. Tens of millions of dollars were raised and sent to the victims of that natural disaster. What happened to it? How was it spent? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? Recall also the massive collections for those who lost family in the 9/11 attacks. Some received enough to be set for life; never having to work again. Was this the goal of the fundraising?

This is a sensitive topic. Nobody can question how much is enough without being accused of weighing human life and tragedy against a dollar value. Yet pragmatically, it’s fair to ask what kind of help these victims of disaster need.

In the case of Haiti, an objective analysis would show that although their quake was no more powerful than the one which shook Northridge sixteen years earlier, the devastation was incomparable. Its not just luck; the US has agreed to adopt building codes and safety standards that minimize our vulnerability to these events. Haiti has not. One could argue that Haiti is too poor to afford the cost of safety standards, and that we should not expect a society as poor as theirs to be held to the same standards. But why are they poor? Why are African nations poor? What is it fundamentally about the makeup of a society that determines whether it is poor or prosperous? Is it simply the luck of the draw?

That is a deep and wide philosophical question that reasonable experts can disagree about. But one thing we know is that unlike hurricane Katrina, a farmer’s field is not destroyed by an earthquake in Haiti. Yet the farmer might as well abandon his fields when truck loads of food show up as humanitarian aid. We have completely destroyed the market for his crop. Who would pay local farmers for food when they can get it for free from the sympathetic Americans? Same can be said of local merchants for food, shoes, clothes, etc. We roll in with the benevolent dump truck, drop millions of dollars of goods off, then leave feeling satisfied that we have ‘given something’. But have we really helped the people of Haiti or merely succeeded in setting their economy back another decade?

Corruption in Haiti’s government is another root cause of their poverty. When aid does arrive, politicians can funnel it to their own districts to boost their reelection chances, or take outright bribes from the highest bidder. Politicians spend generations in office, claming to be concerned about the welfare of the Haitian people but neglecting to change their perpetual poverty. Yes the Hatitians need medical care from international volunteers, but they really need functioning hospitals and full time doctors. They need food, but they really need farmers. They need the proverbial fish, but they really need to learn how to fish for themselves.

But our concern, our outpouring, our sacrificial giving for victims fades just as the headlines of the incident. Are Indonesians better off today than they were before the Tsunami? Will Haitians be better off in 2011 than they were 3 weeks ago? Do we really care? We’ve done little or nothing to really improve their quality of life past the current crises, or to help them avert the next one. Yet as long as we give something, we feel better about ourselves. We have fed our conscience and can go back to our own endeavors.

This is also a fundamental motivation behind the green movement. People feel guilty about enjoying luxuries that they didn’t earn, conveniences that they didn’t create, and freedoms they didn’t fight for. They don’t understand it, but they have a nagging feeling that if they don’t pay some guilt tax that they are no more than spoiled rich brats. And the earth makes the ideal candidate to save: voiceless and apolitical. It doesn’t fight. It doesn’t ‘take’. It is the perfect victim that deserves our sympathy. Ironically the inhabitants of poorest countries, who green advocates claim will be helped most by global agreements like the Kyoto Treaty, can’t even imagine the benefits their great-grandchildren would reap because they need to focus all their attention on surviving for another day. Yet we tell ourselves that we have their welfare at heart. If we were really interested in helping them, we would be more engaged in solving their political and socio-economic problems than addressing hypothetical problems in the next century based on increasingly shady science.

But this is easier said than done. There is a fine line between helping and meddling. Imposing our own social infrastructure and values looks ominously similar to imperialism and indoctrination. Principles of a thriving society cannot be imposed onto a populous that is not mentally and emotionally vested in its own future. Rather, it is a fabric weaved from the common values and efforts of people who believe in something greater than basic survival. They understand that law and order, education, commerce, health care, and democracy are worth working for and defending. They elect leaders who share these values, shun corruption and put words into action. And they measure their progress, correcting course as they go. Fledgling societies will make mistakes, encounter setbacks, and face resistance from the old guard who benefited from their helplessness. We will help the Haitians most by teaching them to help themselves.

So there it is. I’ll stop short of saying that giving humanitarian money or aid is disingenuous, or that we shouldn’t do it. Jesus helped people without regard for their past or future actions. We would do well to follow that example. But there is a slippery truth hiding somewhere in here. Guilt is a powerful force that drives social behavior. We can and do find grand ways to feed that beast and make ourselves feel good about it.

The Massachusetts Election

Media people scrambled to find new words to describe Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts special election last night. Ted Kennedy had held the seat for 47 years, which made the election of a Republican even more surprising. Democrats tried to downplay the significance, blaming everything from the weather to their candidate, to the old standby, George Bush. Republicans tried not to crow too loudly as they spun this as a referendum on Obama and government health care. Both sides miss the point.

Tuesday’s election provided a rare example of the two biggest drawbacks of a 2-party political system.
1: Conventional Washington thinking says: “If our side got more votes, it means the voters support what our party is doing”. Wrong. Sometimes voters have to choose between a poke in the eye or a punch in the gut. Choosing to avoid a punch in the gut does not mean they want a poke in the eye, it just means they can’t find a better option. And in the Massachusetts election, voters chose an unknown, relatively green candidate not necessarily because they believe in (or even understand) what he represents, but instead because they don’t want another politician who is more interested in the party line than their state’s own economic crisis.

Washington is so immersed in party politics that everything has to be red or blue. There are only 2 sides of the aisle, and if you aren’t on one side you must be on the other. Voters are tired of this. And sometimes we throw our congressmen out on this principle alone.

2: All elections have 2 parties. I don’t mean democrat and republican, but incumbent and challenger. The challenger always has the same message: “Your life sucks and is getting worse”. The economy is in the toilet, you’re going to lose your job (if you haven’t already), your kids will be on welfare, we aren’t safe from our enemies, and the earth will melt. “Can we stand x more years of this?” is a staple phrase in every challenger’s campaign. Challengers don’t have to tell you how they will fix things, or why their plan is better, or even if they have a plan. If they succeed in making you depressed and fearful enough, they will win by default as ‘the other option’. Given our nonstop campaigning and 24x7 news cycles, this constant bombardment of negativism can’t help but demoralize our country and destroy national pride. If voters had three choices, candidates would be forced to differentiate themselves. Simply being ‘the other guy’ would not be enough anymore because there is more than one ‘other guy’ for voter’s to choose from. Challengers would have to come up with a positive agenda rather than simply trashing their opponents and the country.

But these subtleties escape most politicians. They are tone deaf to the American people they claim to represent and try to cast everything into the template of their party politics. The Massachusetts vote was not about rejecting Obama, rejecting healthcare, or even a vote against democrats. The one voice that I’ve heard who seems to get it is Obama himself. “The same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office," he said. "People are angry and they're frustrated –“. Yes. The voters are frustrated. They are angry at elected officials who don’t pay attention to their electorate. In 2008, incumbent party voters stayed home in droves, challengers had an easy time convincing people they were miserable, and the mushy middle liked the idea of Hope and Change, which sounded so much better than More of the Same. This week, Massachusetts voters followed a similar score. Incumbent voters either stayed home or voted against a candidate who seemed blind to the unemployment and tax problems in their state. Challengers smelled blood in the water and got worked into a frenzy. Independents voted for something to change.

The Massachusetts election is a bellwether for 2010, not for Democrats or Republicans but for incumbents and challengers. The party who understand this best will find new jobs in D.C this fall.

MLK's Dream

Today is Martin Luther King’s Birthday, which means schools, government employees and bureaucrats get the day off but most of us have to work. And if history serves, it will be a day for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to race to the nearest camera and remind everyone just how evil and oppressive white slave owners are today. And by white slave owners today, I mean Caucasians.

I believe MLK was a legitimate martyr for civil rights, speaking out even after being threatened. His ‘dream’ was spelled out in the now famous I Have a Dream speech. But his legacy has been perverted by activists like Jackson and Sharpton, who are less interested in an equal society than in whipping up blacks into frenzy for political gain. It’s no coincidence that both men are reverends; after all nobody can dispense guilt like a man of the cloth. Reverends are granted authority to rail about the 'sins of the past' and point a righteous finger at evil, whatever they define it to be.

No doubt, someone today will make a speech that includes the phrase: “We’ve come a long way, but there is still a lot left to do”. How ironic if these words come from a black president.

Look, I’m not going to say there is no racism in America or that everyone is treated equally everywhere. But I’m also not willing to apologize for being born white, and I believe that we do have people and places in America that really are colorblind when it comes to race relations. I remember when my young son asked me ‘why is it that some people don’t like blacks?” Racism didn’t make any sense to him. He wasn't born with a bias, and he didn't absorb one from his environment. He saw people as people, and skin color had no more meaning than hair color or eye color. But we never seem to get credit for this from the self-appointed African-American rights spokesmen. Instead of seeing racism as a problem to be solved, they foster oppression as an identity to be embraced by blacks who then need strong civil leaders (coincidentally like themselves) to lead them. Thus, an oppressed, angry mob is their power base and they have a vested interest in preserving the status quo. Racial harmony makes activist leaders like Jackson and Sharpton obsolete, which means they would have to get real jobs and do something meaningful to get on TV.

Here’s a segment of the historic MLK “I Have a Dream” speech, given on August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
….
And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!


Notice that he didn't dream about a future with black activists injecting racism into every public discussion, he didn't dream of a college fund specifically for negroes, and he didn't dream of a TV station that was just for black entertainment. He dreamed of a day when we stop talking about skin color as an identity trait that prevents us from trusting, serving, living, working and rejoicing together. Thanks to relentless efforts from the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the black community can be assured that MLK’s dream will always remain just that: A dream.

Black, White and Waste of Time

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is under fire for comments revealed in a newly released book “Game Change”. Back in 2008, Reid was quoted as saying candidate Barack Obama in 2008 ‘could benefit from being light-skinned and not having a Negro dialect unless he wants one’.

Assemble the firing squad! Everyone grab a torch and head for the streets! Really? What is it in that sentence that makes one a racist; the word ‘Negro’? Be serious. Look, I’m no fan of Harry Reid, especially after he bribed Ben Nelson of Nebraska to secure his vote on the health care bill, but we average Americans are tired of this feigned outrage every time someone screams racism.

Shelby Steele, one of the most articulate writers of our time, made a provocative observation in the Wall Street Journal in July 2009. Steele, a black man, recalled a day as a boy in a barber shop in the South. A picture was being passed around of a young black man who had been beaten to death by an angry mob who believed him guilty of raping a white girl. There was no trial, no due process, no witnesses or public defenders. All that was needed back then was for a white girl to point at a black male and say “Rape!” and the verdict was in. Steele goes on to draw a parallel using the arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. by Cambridge police last July to show that in the 21st century, any minority can simply point at a white person and say “Racism!” and they are presumed guilty.

Racism is treated with even more disdain than child molestation or mass murders. Nothing else gives people license to vent all the pent up rage and frustration they accumulate by holding in their prejudices. No poisonous vitriol is too harsh, no punishment too great, and no response too disproportionate for the evil wretch branded a racist. If you doubt this, think for a minute of the most forbidden word in the English language. It’s not the F-bomb, or cursing, or any George Carlin’s 7 Words You Can’t Say on Television. It’s the “N-word”. We can’t even say it when we are talking about how the “N-word” has been used in history or how it appears in dialog today. It’s always just the “N-word”. In the OJ trial, Detective Furman was demonized and discredited by F. Lee Bailey because, at some point in his life, in some unknown context, he dared to utter the “N-Word”. If you say it once, you are a racist for life and can never be redeemed. Racial activists have the right- no the obligation, to hate, disregard, spit on, and ridicule you forever. You should not be allowed to hold a job nor ever appear in public again. We even let murders out on parole occasionally, but not “N-word” violators. They are the worst form of human scum we can imagine. Unless, of course, you are black an then you can use it as a term of endearment, a reference to friends, family, or pretty much any way you wish with impunity.

So, it’s obvious why Harry Reid’s critics are trying so hard to get the racism label to stick to him. It worked against former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. He mentioned in a 2002 farewell address to Senator Strom Thurmond that the country would have been better off if they had elected Thurmond president back in 1948. Well, any thinking person knows that he could only be talking about the pro-segregation position that was one of dozens of planks on Thurmond’s platform 50+ years earlier. Lott was clearly a racist bastard, and the democrats demanded that he surrender his position as Majority Leader. It worked. Never mind that 9 term Democratic Senator Robert Byrd was the hood-wearing Exalted Cyclops of the Klu-Klux-Klan in his 20s. Somehow he has been granted amnesty by the same lynch mob who demanded Trent Lott’s ouster.

And this is the heart of the matter. Republicans want to point out the double standard that is being applied depending on which side of the aisle you’re on. But this is a silly way to do it. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and no good purpose is served by demanding Senator Reid resign in the name of racial harmony. Republicans need to take the high road on this one and point out that although Reid’s remarks could be misapplied by those trying to exacerbate race relations in the US; a more mature society won’t play this ‘gotcha’ game. Congress needs to be occupied with much more serious issues.

Connecting the Dots

President Obama reported last week that US Intelligence agencies “failed to connect the dots” that should have prevented Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab from boarding a NW Flight and attempting to detonate a bomb on Christmas day.

“The U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots, which would have placed the suspect on the no-fly list”
Barack Obama, Jan 5. 2010.

I’m not going to pile on the ‘blame Obama’ bandwagon, as if he should have been at the Northwest Airlines gate himself, frisking each passenger before boarding. The problem is more complex than this. If the “connecting the dots” phrase sounds ominously familiar, it’s because it was the catch-phrase of the year after 9/11. Even as late as 2007, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell resurrected the claim saying "9/11 should have and could have been prevented" after all; the authorities simply "didn't connect the dots."

Since finger pointing makes good news copy, we hear a lot more about who to blame for failures that how to prevent them. So we never really spend much time thinking about what it means to ‘connect the dots’. As mentioned in a previous post, we seem much more concerned about protecting the sensibilities of terrorist groups than protecting Americans. Former US Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff told National Public Radio:

“Racial profiling in law enforcement is not merely wrong, but also ineffective. Race-based assumptions in law enforcement perpetuate negative racial stereotypes that are harmful to our rich and diverse democracy, and materially impair our efforts to maintain a fair and just society.”

In other words, connect the dots only if it doesn’t inconvenience or offend a specific group. I halfway expect to hear the ACLU protest our prison system because it unfairly discriminates against criminals. Clearly, this isn’t a very realistic way of addressing a very real problem.

One of the key findings of the 9/11 commission is that the US Intelligence community demonstrated a lack of imagination when trying to recognize terrorist threats. President Bush took this advice to heart. In a commencement address to West Point on June 1, 2002, he made this timeless but incredibly under-reported quote:

"If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long…. The work ahead is difficult. The choices we will face are complex. We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries, using every tool of finance, intelligence, and law enforcement. Along with our friends and allies, we must oppose proliferation and confront regimes that sponsor terror, as each case requires. Some nations need military training to fight terror, and we’ll provide it. Other nations oppose terror but tolerate the hatred that leads to terror, and that must change. We will send diplomats where they are needed, and we will send you, our soldiers, where you’re needed."

This is how Bush defined ‘connecting the dots’. But Bush’s biggest failure was in public relations. He allowed this critical policy debate to be hijacked by the left, who reduced it to a bumper sticker to make it easier for the mind-numbed public rail against. The Iraq war was not about oil, nor was it about revenge for 9/11, and only partially about WMDs. Although, those are the responses you would hear most often if you surveyed 1000 people about the rationale behind it. The action against Iraq was about connecting the dots. Iraq had a regime that openly sponsored terrorism, that had publicly rejoiced at the American death and destruction of 9/11, that had internationally confirmed supplies of biological and chemical weapons, that had used them against the Kurds and left indisputable evidence of the carnage, that had attempted to assassinate a former US President, and that had defied 17 different UN regulations that required inspections of their weapons facilities. Those are some big dots that can reasonably be connected to define a threat against Americans. And yet we see such vitriol launched against President Bush for doing exactly what President Obama calls for, ‘connecting the dots”.

In hindsight, our spy information was faulty. Saddam Hussein did not have huge stores of WMDs, even though his generals and the rest of the international community believed he did. It was a bluff Saddam staged to scare Iran from picking a fight. Congress (who had confirmed the threat when voting for US Military intervention) later tried to dodge responsibility by creating new bumper stickers: “Bush Lied People Died”, “End This War”, “No Blood for Oil”. They and the media were so eager to stir up a lynch mob that they completely drowned out the public debate that we should have had, and still need to have: How should we respond to the next threat to America? Only the hopelessly naïve would think that 9/11 is the last terrorist act that would ever be planned against the United States. And we can't just dismiss intelligence information that identifies a threat in Iran, Yemen, Afghanistan or elsewhere. But we clearly can't start wars everywhere we suspect something might be happening. What should we be doing? How can we trust our intelligence information? How should we be connecting the dots?

Most political figures argue one extreme or the other, either screaming that the US will become another Nazi regime using the ‘threat of terrorist activity’ as a justification for going to war against anyone we didn’t like, or warning against a naive, pacifist complacency that would embolden our enemies to conceive, train, and carry out attacks of even greater carnage against us. We clearly need something in between. And the real tragedy is that we are so caught up in partisan politics that we only allow ourselves to see what is good for our side, not what is good for America. None of us want to be the next generation of Nazis. And none of us wants to bury friends and family killed by the next terrorist attack that could be prevented if we weren’t so worried about being politically correct. There is a balance to be struck in connecting the dots and our elected officials have lost sight of the real goal. It’s time we reined them in and reminded them why they were elected. Let’s end this childish demagogy agree on doing what is right for America. This issue is too important to be obscured by party politics.