Taming the Security State: Picking up Eisenhower’s challenge

Presidents aren’t moral leaders and don’t even run Washington. Obama has killed people in the line of duty and is doing things now that he scorned as a Senator 6 years ago. Furthermore, whistle-blowers as well as the President’s best intentions are driving the debate. Nevertheless, this may be the right time and Obama may be the right President to respond finally in a significant way to Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the growth of the security state in his remarkable Farewell Address of January 1961.

Obama has plenty of political capital to spend on taming the security state and ending what he’s called disdainfully the “borderless war on terror.” Far more than he spent boldly in his first term nationalizing GM and Chrysler, supporting gay marriage, and, by executive order, creating a path for young illegal immigrants eventually to become American citizens.

Three and a half years before his own Farewell Address, Obama has already formally acknowledged that he’s uncomfortable with the emergency powers he’s inherited. He has set down the warrior mantle that served so many presidents too well. Now, Obama—with vigorous allies on both the left and right—had better make sure that he doesn’t end up meekly passing them on to the next president, whomever that may be.

It is not clear whether Edward Snowden's leaks have compromised US intelligence effectiveness. (Conceivably, there’s an international terrorist cell out there that actually thought it was operating outside the reach of US and allied government surveillance.) What he has done, however, is clear.  

We now know what we can’t un-know: All three pillars of the US constitution—with allied cooperation—have constructed the necessary technical infrastructure to monitor discreetly all our associations, and our personal, political, and business utterances.

It is beside the point to say that the Executive Branch presently is not using this awesome machinery unilaterally and that Barack Obama is only concerned with potential terrorist activities. Presidents come and go. And Congress has a terrible record of going along whenever the Executive invokes national security concerns.

Washington is awash with people who think they’re at war with political extremism as well as political terrorism.

The US Constitution wouldn’t have separated the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government if the Founding Fathers believed that only prudent, civil people would get their hands on power. Furthermore, they never envisaged that those three power centers would only be independent of one another in public, and that in private they could act as one.

It’s ironic: Obama wins on the economy and gets a Nobel Prize for peace, a constitutional lawyer overseeing the creation of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan.

Obviously, Obama will take his time before responding to Snowden, libertarians, civil rights advocates, Senator Rand Paul, and probably others. After all, he has to run as well as tame the security apparatus. Nevertheless, his government has diminished our freedom to think and associate freely. Unless he takes action—ideally, along with a decision from the Supreme Court—he will end up legitimizing the accumulation of a rainy day file on everything we do.

This wouldn’t harm vacuous, harmless people or their pursuit of happiness. However, those with new things to say, with grievances, with extreme views and rude opinions would lose their privacy to the brutes and nervous bureaucrats listening in.

Terrorism, sociology, and personal freedom

It’s human to look for connections. We do it when we hear that a friend has cancer. And we do it every time an individual—or two brothers in Boston—go out and succeed in killing total strangers. Raising concern for the “root” causes of violence if you’re a Canadian Liberal, or the possibility of bureaucratic negligence if you’re an American Republican, is unsurprising; it’s human nature, it sounds constructive, and it is widely associated with analytical and sophisticated thinking.  

Nevertheless, liberal-minded people as well as libertarians should actually be comforted by Barack Obama and Stephen Harper’s focus on the crime of terrorism and the resolve of their governments to punish those individuals found guilty of willfully taking their politics out on the lives of others.

Harper’s complaint about “practicing sociology” was partisan and, consequently, politically untimely. And Obama’s reluctance to talk about “radical Islamists” is being exploited by his opponents. Nevertheless, is it reasonable—and, more importantly, is it safe—to imply that the bombings at the Boston Marathon on April 15 just might not have happened: if our national governments paid greater attention to minority-group individuals, their politics, and their grievances, or, on the other hand, if they more aggressively monitored edgy individuals and damned extreme rhetoric and radical movements?

Should our governments connect what people think and how they express themselves peacefully—in a free society—with acts of premeditated violence?

The implications of choosing "yes" are not any safer than lashing out emotionally.

Should we contemplate shifting our alliances in the Middle East in the hope of mollifying potential domestic terrorists? If America drives some individuals crazy, should Canada try to be less American? Should all of us be less hostile toward the political and religious points of view we despise in order to avoid terrorist violence?

In democracies, minorities—gays and French Canadians, for instance—can persuade majorities to retreat from and surrender old policies by persuading them that those old policies are unjust. Is terrorism simply politics on speed?

Senator Lindsey Graham wonders whether the US security behemoth “let its guard down” in Boston because it did nothing about the Tsarnaev brothers even though the older brother, Tamerlan, had already said hateful things on YouTube about living in a nation of “Christian infidels.” Yesterday, the New York Times ran a profile of his younger brother, Dzhokhar. It found hints of a “dark side”; a smart, promising, popular 19-year-old who’d, nevertheless, “alluded to disaffection with his American life and the American mind-set.”

Keep digging. He may also be hooked on Wire and Mad Men.

Should Obama and Harper hire more sociologists, political psychologists, and computer engineers to daily monitor the private utterances and activities of a far higher percentage of American radicals and landed immigrants? If radical Islamist thinking causes middle-class North Americans to commit murder, do we make radical political utterances a crime too?

In a free country, a young man needn’t mask his “dark side.” Our governments shouldn’t be told by us to respect our privacy and, at the same, be expected to know what everyone is thinking—if they don't happen to think like us.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky spent a lifetime struggling to understand how individuals decide to commit cold-blooded murder. We shouldn’t ask our politicians, their scientists, or their unbelievably powerful computers to try to figure us out now.

Unpacking after a month in Rome

Some notes written in airports and cafés outside our 5th floor apartment just north of Piazza del Popolo. They offer little on the woes of Europe today. I didn’t take care only to be nice. They aren’t the “informal research” of an academic on sabbatical or an aspiring VS Naipaul from Toronto. Here and there, however, they might fuel an argumentative lunch.

We had a wonderful time and will go back. But we needn’t rush. Rome is eternal. 

March 30^th, Toronto —> Rome:

—Virtual boarding pass on iPhone worked at Pearson International, but they still treat me as an old guy.

—Thinking I’d like to write a post for my old friend Patricia Dumas. (I did, see April 10^th blog) It would defend "soft nationalists" in Quebec and elsewhere for that matter. Specifically, why should the ones in Quebec be treated as hypocrites and untouchables by federalists? After all, are there really any hard nationalists left in Canada?

April 1^st, Rome:

—Hotel Locarno as elegant and sexy as ever.

—Over-lit restaurants feel better when they’re full of Italians.

—Looked out over Piazza del Popolo from Canova Café, where Fellini also watched the crowds, met friends, and gossiped.

—Piazza del Popolo, the piazza of the people, is an immense oval dish that accommodates vast numbers of individuals—but not marshaled mobs. It‘s both a destination and an intersection; too big and too stimulating to allow you concentrate on anything for long. It can hold formal events and, at the same time, let you move around and see what’s going on. You’re in the audience and on the stage at once. Any hour of the day, workers hurry to catch the subway, young people wave to friends and take off, and buskers and peddlers hustle near the central obelisk and in the open spaces in every quadrant. Half a dozen Carabinieri shuffle about just off the Canova cafe keeping the peace by people-watching. Overlooking the square are three art-filled churches; on the square, private little dramas go on all day.

April 5th:

—The apartment property manager and I removed a bathroom cabinet door. It slapped like a rattrap if you weren’t careful. A neighbor complained about a loud noise and hearing furniture moving in the middle of the night. Our first neurotic Italian? No such luck. The manager thinks the complainant is another Canadian or, possibly, an American.

—Just read in FT: lawyers in the US use up 2% of US GNP; food just under 4%.

April 8^th: 

—Corner store clerk* filled our Whole Food bag; a pleasant moment for both of us.

*Louise disliked the above. “'Clerk' is the wrong word … people in that store believe in what they're selling and make it a point to be obliging … I was given tastes of various cheeses, which — granted — one also gets at cheese counters in Toronto's All the Best cheese (that guy has impressive knowledge). What stood out at Daniela's was the enthusiasm, even across the 5-foot-high food counter, a sense of physically willing me to like them. If I'd said I didn't like one or t'other, am sure Gianfranco would have burst into tears.”

April 27–28^th  (catching up):

—Our last weekend: sanacafé in Prati, the Borghese Gardens, Spanish Steps, Piazza Farnese, Piazza della Pace off Piazza Navona, Harry’s Bar, an expensive view of Rome at sunset from the top of the Eden Hotel, and gelato back at Canova. Racing the calendar carefully, like parting lovers.

April 29^th: 

—Rome’s downtown streets are too narrow to keep people and two-, three-, and four-wheeled vehicles apart or prioritized. (Here, hot doggers rent Segways; in Washington, they’re used by seniors.) Romans could wake up and have a functional, even brave government someday. But their streets will remain regulated by eye contact and quick wits.

—Rome isn’t racing to keep up, but it doesn’t resist much either. “No problem” is just as good as “you’re welcome." High-fives are common as well.

—Romans have been polishing their cosmopolitan ways for two millennia. They are warm and sophisticated but, also, tough-minded. They’ll tell you that they “love Rome” without caring what you think. They don’t show interest or compassion, however, toward panhandlers and the ragged peddlers from North Africa and India.

—These anxious men shadow the tourists in all the city’s famous squares, pitching silently for coins before the visitors find their next authentic Italian meal. Conceivably, for those hawking gay trinkets, the best thing about Rome’s brand is its power to draw affluent tourists from abroad.

—The most irritating tourist isn't American anymore. He's Russian. Unsmiling and gruff. "They think Italians should understand Russian!" a waiter complained in perfect English.

—There's nothing peculiarly bad about tourists. But, in their growing numbers and with their purchasing power, they oppress the Latin in the Romans. Smiles wane and the service becomes more rushed. The Romans lose their sidewalks; they can no longer see their Trevi Fountain; Bernini's genius is barely acknowledged by squirming tourists tossing coins at a fairy tale. Spectacular views are priced into the purchase of a plate of cheese and tomatoes.

—Little wonder Roman infrastructure struggles to keep up. The streetcars have automatic pay machines, but their use is optional; half their passengers walk past. (They never push, however.) From our 5th-floor terrace, I could count between 15 to 20 illegally parked vehicles any morning. I'm not a whistle-blower, but I'd check at noon, now and then, and find that not a vehicle had been hit with a ticket.

—Rome has changed but isn't catching up. The moped has been replaced by the Vespa and other bikes much more powerful. Young women have their own and are rarely seen clinging from the back seat. Young people are everywhere; very few are seen using computers; and babies are even scarcer. You can guarantee that free WIFI isn’t available where English isn't spoken, including neighborhoods with colleges and universities.

April 29^th, Frankfurt, a bracing morning stopover:

—A great international airport. Thousands of planes land and take off  for other cities in Europe and around the world. On the ground, however, their passengers are within the German state.

—German officials perform the same tasks as Italian officials. However they seem totally caught up in making sure they are behaving properly. They wait for a smile from their own conscience and never smiled at me. Their mental intensity leaves their fine bodies tagging along.

—Along its long corridors, sit 12 X 12 X 15 meter glass smokers’ boxes, compliments of Camel Cigarettes. In the business lounge, I couldn’t resist noting that foamy beer glasses were resting on 20 of the 30 or so coffee tables lined along its glass wall. (In the US, there’d be Starbucks, bottled water, burgers, and laptops.)

—At the four security and passport checks we had to finesse were numerous clocks to tell us how close we were to missing our next flight. Also, a short film replayed seamlessly, suggesting that all the passenger line-ups were populated by lovers who beam at uniforms.

—Bracing last note:

We were cut off at the last security line by a mobile transport vehicle carrying a dozen frail seniors. Someone said “Iran”; anyway, it was clear that they were unable to understand English or German.

Being fast-tracked didn’t include other benefits; they were not given the light touch.  

The men were asked repeatedly until they understood that they were required to take off their belts. One passenger was scolded by an official for hoisting his suitcase onto the carrousel and leaving it sideways rather than length-wise. The whole line waited for ages as a boyish official on an x-ray machine peered into ragged suitcases. He didn't appear to suspect anything; their strangeness just made him uncomfortable.

The entire party had less sophistication, social confidence, education, and latent menace than any one of the some 700,000 on the one watch list that we know exists. Yet, the security officials seemed intent to press, to see whether one of these confused individuals would do something self-incriminating: shout, walk away, or cry suspiciously. A security woman cracked the facade for an instant. When one passenger finally realized that he had to take his sweater off so they could have a closer look at something in his shirt pocket, she tossed him a thumbs up.

Canada is as safe as Boston. Lift the Border!

Is there any ideology or lunatic religious fringe on Earth that hates the 26-mile Boston Marathon—a race that honors that run from Marathon to tell the citizens of Athens that their young city and its democracy were safe? Likely not.

Nihilism, whatever its accent or distance from my particular way of thinking, is still nihilism. It can’t be streamed in high schools, vanquished by early childhood education, or caught by dogs or bureaucrats at the border. It’s not a menace that can be shot out of the sky by a new policy and a quarter-trillion-dollar budget.

Nevertheless, enough time has already passed for last week’s tragedy to be exploited to advance partisan and bureaucratic interests. Does an almost Orwellian security machine centered in the US and global in its reach need more money and a good shaking at the top? Could immigration reform—if not the constant, unrelenting flow of millions—be dangerous? Is this the time to enhance every border standing?

However last week’s murders are defined, murder and terrorism ("terrorism" for those who insist that that’s an under-used word) will continue. Still, this is a moment when people are actually looking for leadership.

To be bigger than a footnote, leaders could respond by being constructive.

My nomination is to concretely rebut reports that Obama’s bureaucracy is considering a border-crossing fee to help pay for the unnecessary bureaucracy that interferes with the land movement of millions of Canadians and Americans—that assumes that neither side is as good as the other side in maintaining domestic security, and that neither side has found a perfectible devise to detect and deter nihilists.

The wholly euphemistic Perrin Beatty of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce complained that a new border tax would “diminish a sense of ‘North American community.’” Surely, we need a more emphatic assertion of North American interests and ambitions.

A sense of community never built anything or solved an important problem. We have great cities and united nations today because leaders came forward before and said, “We live together; we share values and objectives; let’s get organized.”

I wouldn’t hold my breath or take an early flight home from Rome. But, I’d be impressed if either Stephen Harper or Barack Obama said: “Spending more money keeping Canadians and Americans apart is a distraction in fighting violence, and diminishes our economic and intellectual horizons. Twenty-four years ago, Europeans took down a murderous wall. It’s time to take down a ridiculous one in North America.”