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Re: (in)flaming

Hi,

So, as we dive deeper into the murky waters of politics, I'd like to offer up a
thought for consideration: this is potentially even more divisive and painful
than the "christian" debates that pop up here from time to time.  Chances are,
we all have strong feelings on these issues, and with the very real tragedy and
loss of life involved, it's very easy for feelings to run high.  I'm not sure
what the solution is, because I believe very strongly that these are important
issues to be talking about, whatever our respective positions are on the
subject.  However, if "talking with" crosses over the line into "preaching at",
let alone "yelling at", then I don't think any good can come of it.  I'm not
full of wisdom on how to avoid that state, except maybe it would help for us
all to stay humble and caring about each other.  I know that's hard, especially
when it's a topic that feels so urgent (lives at stake, and all), but I wanted
to get that intentionality out on the table.

I can understand profiling at airports for security screening.  I'm not
thrilled about it, but I understand it.  There's a limited amount of resources
and you can't search *everyone*, so mathematics say you want to optimize your
chances of catching the real bad guys.  Where I worry about profiling is when
prejudices dominate over real data.  Does a sikh get picked out because he
wears a turban?  From what I've read, white people in the US are far more
likely to be drug users and dealers, and yet black people are far more likely
to get profiled by the police, because the cultural stereotype supports that
image.  After Tim McVeigh was found to be behind the Oklahoma City bombing,
there wasn't a huge rush to arrest or question white males.

What troubles me most about the people detained by overstaying their visas is
that the FBI has admitted only a handful of them are being questioned with
regards to 911 and terrorist activities.  And yet hundreds of people are in
jail, without the right of habeus corpus.  If the authorities have no case
against them, why on earth should they be sentenced to nine months in prison
without trial?  Just because we're scared?  Is that right (as in just)? If they
are overstaying a visa, and there's no evidence they have any involvement with
terrorist organisations, they should be treated like any other person who
overstays a visa.  I'm pretty sure a German or a Brit who overstays a visa
would not get nine months in prison.  If they had evidence these people were
involved in violent crime, that would be different, but they've had nine months
to produce that evidence, and I think that's more than enough time.  If they
can't charge these people with anything, they should let them go.

It's frustratingly hard to try to bring up US foreign policy in this context,
because people always seem to see it as trying to justify or excuse the crime
that was committed on 9/11.  I see that act as a crime.  I don't think Al Queda
and their ilk should be legitimized by calling it a war.  I was asked what I
think should be done.  I think an opportunity was missed.  I was over in Europe
a couple months ago, and the general feeling I got from people was resentment:
that they offered the hand of friendship to the US when we were hurt, and were
spat on in return with a "do what we say or we'll bomb you, too" kind of
rhetoric.  I think the US should give up its role as sole superpower, give up
the military bases we have on foreign soil, accept the jurisdiction of the
international court, and stop acting like the rest of the world has to do what
we tell it to because we have the biggest dicks... sorry, guns.  It frustrates
me that we *talk* up all these wonderful values about democracy and human
rights, but we *act* like "might makes right".  We undermine the UN when it
doesn't follow US interests, we give the world court the finger when the US is
convicted of terrorist activities (as happened in 86 around our involvement in
Nicaragua).

Yes, Americans do many wonderful things all over the world, but human nature
tends to focus on and remember bad things, in general.  And when American
rapists in Okinawa go unpunished, when US weapons and money support ethnic
cleansing in Indonesia, when the US supports heinous criminals in positions of
power (under the dubious principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend --
you would think that after Saddam Hussein, Manuel Noriega, and Osama Bin Laden,
we would have learned the flaw in that approach, but we're still doing it in
Columbia and Indonesia today), it's hard to get people to remember the good
things that we do.  Heck, the US is the number one supplier of weapons in the
world.  We won't sign the anti-land mines treaty because we don't want the loss
in profits we get from selling the damn things.  (Look at the list of countries
that refused to sign the anti-land-mine treaty.  It's us and most of our
enemies.  I would rather not see the US on the same list as those guys.)  It's
hard to look at someone who has lost limbs to US-made land mines and talk about
the good that we do.

Someone asked if I wanted another Vietnam.  Of course not.  But I fear this is
going to end up being much worse than Vietnam, because at least that war had a
goal, as bad as it was.  This war, though, when will it be over?  When terror
is eradicated?  When evil is destroyed?  That's never going to happen.  I find
it really disturbing that the conservatives took their agenda and slapped the
"support the war" sticker on it, such that if you disagreed, you were
supporting the bad guys.  (I would have been just as disturbed if the liberals
had done it; in this case, last year, it was the conservatives) I hope you're
right that the analogy with Nazi Germany is flawed; I really, really do.  But I
have learned, espeically since I have *lived* in Germany (two years), not to
trust the feeling of "it can't happen here".  Given my experience in Germany,
had I been there in 1930, I would have been convinced "it can't happen here",
and I would have been horribly, horribly wrong.  Your logic sounds reassuring,
but there's never just one reason for why a society does what it does, and
American totalitarianism might look quite different than the German version.
Remember Rome was a republic for 500 years before it slid into dictatorship and
Empire.  We've just passed the 200 year mark; let's not get cocky.

I went to see a speech by Sherman Alexei (native american poet/author) a few
months ago, and he said that America is a great country.  It wasn't always that
way, and it had to be dragged kicking and screaming to live up to its ideals,
but the ideals are great.  We still need to stay vigilant to make sure our
country lives up to its ideals.  That's my take on it.  I don't pretend to have
all the answers, and I'm definitely open to listening to other points of view.
Hey, if this were a simple, easy topic, we wouldn't have to be talking about
it, right?


Yours in hope,
-- 
Don Smith                           Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment
donaldas at umich_edu                                 http://xte.mit.edu/~dasmith/

"Life is ... moments flabbergasted to be in each others' presence."  
        				     - "Speed" Levitch in _Waking Life_
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