R.P. Barr

Confrontation in Cambridge

 

 I wasn’t in Cambridge when Harvard Professor Gates was arrested in his own home.  However, while many are outraged, I tend to characterize the officer’s actions as unwise.  I reserve the right to become outraged as more is learned.  But, here is why I am more moderate in my views.

 Even before I got a badge of my own, I would tell anyone who would listen that a police officer is just another human being who happens to have a gun and a club (or chemical spray or a Taser), and is trained in how to use them.  The only thing standing between you and the receiving end of one of these enforcement aids is the officer’s self-control.  Like everybody else, officers have good days and bad, and you don’t know which he is having today.  Therefore, the correct behavior is to be as cooperative as possible with the aim of keeping this interaction as brief as possible and getting away with a whole skin.

 It is true that if the officer abuses his authority, he/she could be fired or prosecuted.  You, however, could be injured or worse.  It is far better to remember everything that is said and done, then save your arguments for court.

 As far as profiling goes, it has certainly existed in the past and probably persists in some pockets and individuals.  That said, there is no race, age, sex, religion, physical condition, profession, economic status, or educational attainment that is either inherently criminal or inherently innocent.

I was once called to an apartment where two post-middle-aged white men had been playing cards.  They got into an argument and the one in a wheel chair picked up a table knife and stabbed it deep into the thigh of the other man.  The assailant was not prosecuted, because the prosecutor did not believe that a jury would convict an old man in a wheel chair.  As a store detective, I saw a man on crutches steal an expensive overcoat.  He was also released.  While I worked for Customs, inspectors uncovered a ring of California “valley girls” that had been hired by Nigerian drug smugglers in an effort to defeat perceived profiling.  I could go on.  I could mention the millionaire beautician’s wife who walked into the store with her baby and proceeded to steal a stroller.  Or, the UN diplomat who, when shopping with his wife and teenage daughter, stepped into the men’s department and stole a sport coat.  The point is that a middle-aged black Harvard professor could be as innocent as he appears, or he could be—say--an abusive spouse, a child predator, or who knows what.

 He was breaking into a house where there had been a break-in reported in the past.  The officer was answering a 9-1-1 call.  That is reason for questioning.  Did the officer perform his duties professionally?  That is one question.

 Often times what an officer regards as a serious and professional tone of voice, the subject will regard as threatening and intimidating.  In any situation, officers know that losing control of the encounter could be fatal.  When the other person is also trying to take control, then things can escalate.

I once knew an officer who enjoyed goading suspects into fights.  It was stupid behavior and I was glad when he was fired.  I also know of instances where officers engaged in racial profiling—more, in my experience, from laziness than from bigotry, but the effect was the same.  And, officers have lost their jobs over it.

I have also known a few African-American individuals whose stress level goes through the roof when confronted by a white police officer.  These individuals do not follow my etiquette rules, but provoke and argue with the officer apparently to see how far they can push him.  It’s a way of exorcising their own fears and resentment.  While I can sympathize with the feelings that lead to this behavior, I have to say that it carries a high degree of risk.

And, incidentally, as almost every officer knows from experience, accusations of racism and other abuse  come from guilty individuals more often than from the innocent.

 So, was the professor inappropriately confrontational?  That is a second question.

 Even if he was, the officer should have known better than to arrest someone in his own home who had not committed an obvious crime.  The academies should include the lesson that an angry person cannot be taught anything.  Anger is corrosive and its own punishment.  If you can’t defuse it, just walk away.

 And, the professor should be aware that the next time someone breaks into his house, there won’t be a patrol car anywhere nearby.

A foreign affairs agenda for the new administration

At the top of the Obama’s foreign affairs to-do list should be 1) the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; 2) Israel and the Palestinians; 3) the rise of totalitarianism in Russia; 4) corruption and the Mexican drug wars. 

From Iraq to a hard place 

Iraq is or should be winding down. The Iraqi military is attaining adequacy. I don’t have a great deal of faith in the Baghdad government’s prospects for long term survival, but they may hold it together long enough for us to draw down our forces. 

Afghanistan, on the other hand, has defeated the best armies in the world, from Alexander the Great, to the British at the height of their powers, to the Soviet Union. It is true that we are there in support of the Karzai government, but there are Afghans (especially the Taliban), who do not recognize that regime. To date, the technology of modern warfare has not tipped the scales in our favor. I was impressed by a program that teamed a U.S. Marine Corps officer with a State Department official to provide cows to widows in Fallujah [NPR January 4, 2009]. Programs like that in Afghanistan, properly funded, may accomplish something that guns and bombs cannot. There are some projects there already, such as a soap factory in Kandahar that buys materials from local farmers, but more of these need visible military partners to improve the image of our forces. We also need to stop bombing weddings, etc. 

Another initiative would be to buy up opium from farmers and pay more than the Taliban-linked traffickers do. This would choke off a major source of Taliban and al-Qaeda income as well as give the Afghan farmers a more favorable view of the U.S. Once we have achieved our objectives in Afghanistan, we could offer alternatives to the farmers and wean them away from opium poppies. Meanwhile, we will have reduced the amount of heroin in the world more than any destination-country enforcement has done. 

Lessons from the ghetto 

Meanwhile, we have to tell the Israelis that they are behaving like Nazis. Of course, since they equate Nazism with extermination camps, they would object. However, they have seized property from Palestinians with no compensation, relegated Palestinians to perptual limbo in refugee camps, denied them the right of free travel and commerce, and periodically raided and terrorized Palestinians in their homes actions similar to what were once called “pogroms.” The totality resembles Nazi Germany in the years before their “final solution” was initiated. 

On CNN a week or so ago, an anchorperson asked a Palestinian spokeswoman for her take on the recent Gaza incursion. Among her charges was one that I regard as key. The Israelis did not support moderate Palestinians by allowing them to achieve anything in negotiations, thereby pushing Palestinian public opinion in favor of radicals like Hamas. When the anchorperson turned to an Israeli diplomat for his response, he said that Israel allowed protests over the incursion which made them a more moral regime than Hamas. He did not address the underlying problem of denying concessions in peaceful negotiations. 

The Israeli government has never seriously addressed the return of Palestinians to their ancestral homes or compensation to them for their property as Germany finally did for the Jews who were expelled by the Nazis. Although the settlements in Gaza were dismantled—unilaterally, not in response to negotiations—the settlements in the West Bank have increased. I propose that Israel simply tell the West Bank settlers that Israel is withdrawing all support in two weeks. The settlers can remain by pledging allegiance to the Palestinian state or they can come back to Israel. Of course Israel is going to do no such thing, because the ultimate goal is to insert so many settlers into the West Bank that becomes a de facto Israeli province. Since the state of Israel is the premiere example of successful illegal immigration, hard line planners see the ultimate ejection of Palestinians as do-able. 

Meanwhile, if negotiation and moderate Palestinians are able to show results, then Hamas and other extremists will lose support, and ultimately be reduced to a nuisance status. Indeed the rise of a moderate Palestinian government supported by free trade will transform the extremists into a Palestinian police problem. 

Neo-Stalinism 

Did you see where Russian television held a poll to name the most popular historic figures? Josef Stalin came in third. That was after they redrew the rules and urged voters to consider literary and scientific luminaries. Did you happen to note in December that the Dumas passed new legislation that makes any demonstration against the government treason? Passing any information of any sort to any non-governmental orgainzation that has offices outside of Russia is also treason. Charges of treason no longer qualify for a jury trial either. Add to that the use of gas supplies to bludgeon Russia’s neighbors, plus the invasion of Georgia in order to seize the enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the rise of a new totalitarianism is hard to escape. 

We need to help both Western and Eastern Europe find alternatives to Russian gas, or we will be sucked into a greater confrontation in the near future. 

Mexican refugees 

During 2008, the casualties of the drug wars in Mexico exceeded U. S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cities just below our border have the highest murder rates in the world. The Mexican government has not demonstrated an ability to control the criminality and corruption. If the U.S. does not provide real help, we will see a flood of refugees on top of the current illegal immigration flow. And we will be stuck with people who legitimately fear for their lives if they are returned home. 

Some people say that we should slam the door in the faces of Mexican refugees and insist that they manage their own affairs. The United States has not taken that position with any other nation on earth and we cannot do it with one of our two nearest neighbors. Besides that, the violence has already spilled over into cities on this side of the border. 

One move that could improve the situation would be to examine all exports and visitors to Mexico with the intensity that we examine imports and incoming visitors. Why? Where do you think Mexican gangs get their guns? Most are purchased here and then smuggled into Mexico. The Mexican government can’t control the influx of illegal weapons, and it is in our best interests to see it controlled. 

Let’s see how the new administration deals with these four hot points. The ones that Obama misses are sure to come round and bite him on the ass.

Let’s take the “con” out of the economy

During this good-will-to-men holiday season, I would like to take issue with the Republican trolls who require salary concessions of unionized auto workers as a condition of the bailout.  When people used to say this was the greatest country on earth, they meant that it was a place where ability, skills and intelligence counted, where salaries for working people were the best in the world.  Yet, here we are with elected representatives of the people insisting that factory workers accept pay cuts to qualify their employers for government loans while banking executives receiving taxpayer money are allowed to keep their salaries, bonuses and perks.  Bear in mind that the banking executives are largely responsible for not only the banking crisis, but for the auto crisis as well.

Obviously, the CEOs of American industry haven’t learned the lesson that an economy based on consumer spending cannot survive if consumers can’t afford to spend.  Driving down wages in order to compete with overseas producers, and moving production facilities overseas to make things to sell back home are not sustainable plans.

 It’s a sort of reverse Ponzi scheme.  In a Ponzi, one builds a pyramid higher and ever higher in order to take as much as possible before the inevitable collapse.  In the downward price/wage spiral, one shovels out the foundation to take as much profit as possible before the supported structure collapses. 

 I understand how the MBAs who are caught up in the madness of maximizing each quarter’s profits can outsmart themselves.  Government, however, is supposed to take the long view and protect the next generation.  We don’t expect politicians to see the future, but we can expect them to recognize greed and stupidity.  Well, maybe that’s too much, too.  That’s why we have career government experts in every possible field, to watch over the rest of us and prevent overreachers from getting carried away.

 The public should rise up when our watchdogs are underfunded or politicized.  We don’t, in large part because we don’t like oversight of our own affairs, and when corporate con men ask only to be allowed to run their own businesses without interference, we sympathize.  

Meanwhile, have you every watched the wild life documentaries that show a herd of a hundred zebras being stalked by one or two lions?  When the lions attack, the herd runs away and abandon the hapless zebra who was caught to be eaten.  Everytime, I shake my head in wonder.  Better him than me seems to be the attitude.  If the mass of zebras would only turn round on the lions they could stop the depredation.  By running away, the zebras are giving the lions permission to come again.

 If we want to stop the lions in business suits from eating our neighbors, we have to collectively turn on the predators and stomp them into irrevelavance. 

First, bring back the Customs duties that have been cut over the years, but this time use them to cover the difference between the wages paid the workers who make the products and the wages paid here for the same work.  Let manufacturers raise salaries in the third world or bring the jobs home.  Next, make health insurance similar to Social Security, i.e. every employer pays a percentage of wages into the insurance pool.  Like the uninsured motorists fee charged uninsured drivers in my state, do the same with health insurance charges to all employers.  Eliminate the benefit of stacking part-time employees into full time jobs.

My credit union did not suffer like the banks because it does not sell its mortgages to other institutions.  It is careful about who it lends to because it knows that it has to service and hold the loans it makes.  That should be the law for all lenders.  A company that makes its money by finding borrowers and then selling the loans does not have an incentive to be conservative. 

 Next, do away with insurance for bank loans, it only fosters recklessness.  Retail businesses calculate “shrinkage” or theft, into their profit calculation.  Let banks calculate in a percentage of their loans that will turn bad, and then work to keep that number down.  Put the effort at reducing losses on the front end where the borrowers are instead of at the back end where bookkeepers can only react to events.

 High wages benefit the economy and society.  Medical insurance for all would prevent the primary reason for personal bankruptcy.  That should be the mantra for the new administration.

Why they fight

Almaty in eastern Kazakhstan is a cosmopolitan city with a small-town feel. It is the economic and cultural center of that Central Asian republic. At the opposite extreme of the country, about as far from Almaty as Salt Lake City is from Baltimore, the atmosphere is quite different. I went to the southwest border where Kazkhstan touches its neighbor, Turkmenistan. We drove for hours surrounded by barren earth until we reached the small plank house that is the Customs post. Looking beyond the border, I wondered why anyone had bothered with a road. The land was as flat and smooth as a tabletop as far as the eye could see in all directions. I reflected that this must be one of the most remote places on the planet accessible by car.

While we met the officers and asked our questions, a speck appeared on the horizon and grew until we recognized it as an approaching bus. The passengers were workers whose jobs lay beyond the horizon in Turkmenistan and whose homes were over the edge of the earth on our side. The bus stopped and the driver got out. The local officers asked if I would care to look inside the bus. I climbed on board. The vehicle had all the amenities of an American school bus, but without the sparkle. It was winter so the passengers were bundled in blanket-like coats with rimless wool hats pulled down over their foreheads. The local Customs officer stepped up behind me to tell the crowd that I was visiting from the United States. Instantly, two dozen voices in unison shouted, “Santa Barbara.” --That defunct soap opera remained alive on Kazakhstani television and informed them about Americans.

I thought of this incident watching TV the other evening when Jon Stewart interviewed John McCain, and Stewart described anti-American terrorists as hating our way of life. Even on a comedy show, I expected better. “Hating our way of life” is propaganda spread by the Bush administration. “They hate our freedom.” Bullblossoms! If you hear anyone spouting this rubbish, please slap them for me—figurtively, of course.

There are three reasons for hating the United States.

First, is in my example from Kazakhstan. American culture is everywhere. More than once in a far away place, I walked into a café or restaurant certain that I was the only native English speaker there only to hear the house band singing an American pop song phonetically in English to an audience that didn't understand the lyrics. U.S. culture is everywhere. It is our biggest export. And, it changes the attitudes, expectations, and culture of the people it reaches. While most viewers and listeners are seduced by the appeal of our entertainment, individuals who want to hold onto their own traditions resent this intrusion. Our music and movies and television and online transmissions strike at the heart of foreign identities.

Second, we don’t have a history of behaving very well on the world stage, especially not recently. Many foreign folks want to like us, but every time our government turns its back on international agreements to go its own way, or the heavy hand of corporate America dumps products overseas that are banned here at home, we lose our fans. Pre-emptive wars don’t help either.

Finally, we are the last superpower. A man is often measured by his enemies. Small enemies make a small man. So, every despot and idealogue seeking to make a name for himself will challenge the United States. Vietnam taught the world—if not us—that they could do this successfully.

Look at Iraq and al-Qaeda. They’ve already won. Our military is seriously damaged—our traumatized soldiers are even killing themselves in record numbers. Our economy, thanks to the rise of oil prices, is under severe stress. Civil liberties have been curtailed. Our prestige abroad has fallen off the charts. It is all beyond Osama bin Laden’s wildest dreams.

People in the rest of the world have their own problems and they don’t give a damn about our freedom or life styles. However, the demogogues and wannabes will use our cultural exports and our blunders to scapegoat their local shortcomings, and they will challenge us to puff up their own importance.

Wars are no longer about centralized leaders with organized armies playing capture the flag. The battleground is as much about ideas and perceptions as it is about guns and bombs. We will never prevail in modern conflicts unless we acknowledge why the other side is fighting.

High Five or why you can’t win a war when you don’t know why you’re fighting

We have recently marked the fifth anniversary of the war in Iraq. Such milestones are a time to reflect on our memories.

I think back to September 2001 when I was asked to lead a training program to re-orient Customs field personnel to terrorism as the new priority. In preparation I went online to learn as much as I could about the subject. On October 26, 2001 The Times of London reported that Osama bin-Ladin and al-Qaeda had paid the Chechen rebels to secure nuclear or radioactive materials. George Tenet of the CIA was cited as a source. During the next two months there were reports of al-Qaeda links all over Europe, Northern Africa and Asia. Then, in December 2001, the London Observer ran a story saying that President Bush had ordered the CIA and the Pentagon to prepare plans to bomb Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

During that same period, I went to the Customs library in our headquarters and picked up a book that Bush was said to have read. Reviews on the back cover included praise from administration insiders Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. The book is called Study of Revenge, Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War against America by Laurie Mylroie, and was published in 2000 by the American Enterprise Institute.

Mylroie, rather convincingly, links responsibility for the February 26, 1993 bombing of New York’s World Trade Center to Saddam Hussein. Her secondary purpose--in a book from a neoconservative think tank due out in an election year--was to blame the Clinton administration for an ineffective response to terrorism. Fair enough.

I went on to read more articles and books—all in the public domain--which apparently the Bushies did not. I concluded--by September 2002 when I presented anti-terrorism classes for headquarters—that Saddam Hussein was brutal and viscious, but he was not suicidal. Al-Qaeda’s first priority is to overturn the secular governments in the Middle East and replace them with theocracies like that in Iran and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. They believe that the United States, Israel and the west in general are preventing that goal. Saddam Hussein, on the other hand, believed that the U.S. had given him a green light to invade Kuwait and then used the invasion as an excuse to attack Iraq. The 1993 attack on the WTC was simple revenge—and a warning. Saddam would not have put serious weapons in the hands of an independent terrorist group bent on his destruction. Similarly, he would not have provoked a second war against the U.S. when he was beaten so badly the first time. I told my classes that we should have our eyes on Iran, and look for attacks that were not clearly sponsored by any country. Terrorism is best handled by the police, not the military.

Whatever weapons of mass destruction Saddam held were there to intimidate his neighbors, impress the region, and prevent the U.S. from invading. He turned out to be even more clever than I gave him credit for being. He got rid of the weapons so that they could not be discovered by the inspectors. Then he behaved as though he really did have them in hiding—all the time denying that he had any. In that strategy, Saddam was much more subtle and intelligent than Bush. It would have worked with any normal president. Unfortunately, Bush is a man who thinks the best way to get rid of mice is to burn down the house.

Now, here we are five years in with no end in sight. This country cannot continue on the same course and cannot afford to increase our involvement to the point where we can achieve a military victory. At the same time, governments take time to mature. It will be decades before Iraq is fully functional. Withdrawal in the near term will send Iraq into the chaos of becoming a non-state, a festering training ground for terrorists.

Maybe instead of reading a book, Bush should have read “Humpty Dumpty” instead.

A new strategy: protection by headline

"U.S. Customs: 100% Scanning by 2012" That was the headline. Are you impressed? I was. Almost.

Then, I read the story that revealed the scanning of cargo containers they were talking about was for radiation only.

Back in the mid-1990's I traveled to a country that shall remain nameless that had--at that time or previously--nuclear weapons and materials. The U.S. government wanted safeguards that these materials--if they were still there or were imported--would be detected should anyone try to export them. I found that radiation monitors--which are lunchbox-sized cases with detectors and alarms inside did not exist at land border or seaport locations. However, they did have them at airport cargo warehouses. No-one at these locations could remember the alarms ever going off, or remember what they were supposed to do if they did. The boxes themselves appeared not to have been opened for calibration or other inspection for a long time--or so I judged based on the accumulation of bird droppings on the boxes.

I feel sure that this country has installed more radiation monitors since my visit--that was the point of the survey, after all. But, I am not at all confident that their levels of training and maintenance have improved.

Moreover, all radiation monitors can be defeated by proper radiation shielding. If the material is placed in a lead container of sufficient thickness, it cannot be detected. The most worrisome aspect of this fact is that weapons-grade nuclear materials emit less radiation and are much easier to shield than, say, the materials in your dentist's x-ray machine.

Still, I heartily commend the effort to have portal scanners everywhere that international cargo is handled. I would like to ask why it has taken so long. We are running a foot race with an unseen competitor, trying to get our protections in place before he decides to attack. Do you think the bad guys see headlines like this one and say, "Damn, I won't have my bomb ready before 2013"?

I would also like to bring up an uncomfortable fact. Terrorists are not likely to waste precious manpower and resources on weapons unless they have experience with that type of weapon. How embarrassing to expose an entire terrorist network on a bomb that fizzles. Therefore, until I hear of terrorists exploding radioactive or nuclear devices closer to their bases, I am not going to lose sleep worrying about them shipping those devices over here.

What does concern me are conventional explosives, chemical and biological weapons. These have been explored or used by al-Qaeda and friends. These are also weapons that will not be picked up by the 100% scanning that will be in place by 2012. X-raying 100% of incoming containers would be helpful, but x-rays can be defeated by clever packing. Nothing is better than having trained, motivated personnel open up the boxes and look inside. It doesn't have to be 100% of all boxes, but it has to be more than we're doing now.

There are simply not enough people to do the job the way it should be done, and the ones who are there are hampered by low morale. National security cannot be had on the cheap. Headlines and dumb luck will not protect us for very long.

100% Container search is 100% wrong

Both the House of Representatives and the Senate have passed bills calling for scanning 100% of all sea borne shipping containers before they come to the U.S. It sounds good doesn't it? The problem is the volume of shipping that must be examined. Ship capacity is measured in TEUs or twenty-foot equivalents. Most containers today are 40 feet in length, and any discussion of shipping must allow for that adjustment. New jumbo ships that are being constructed this moment carry 12,000 TEUs, and last year more than 46 million TEUs entered the U.S.--double the number of a decade previous. And, the growth continues.
Since ships pay a berthing fee for their time in port, they need to unload and load as quickly as possible. Scanning containers on their way from the dock to the ship takes too much time. Some containers will have been sitting on the dock for days ahead of time, but if they are scanned ahead of time, there is no guarantee that no one has tampered with them in the interim.
Such on-the-dock tampering is common in drug smuggling. An otherwise legitimate shipment is opened on the dock, sacks of drugs are thrown on top of the cargo, and then retrieved at the dock in the U.S. It is an old dodge. If secure seals are used, the container will arrive with the seal in tact, despite having been opened twice thanks to a little slight of hand at the loading dock.
Even if such tactics are not used, operator fatigue will cause things to be missed. Have you ever looked at x-rays? They are not clear and precise pictures. In a hospital, I once watched a doctor overlook a broken rib on an x-ray. Moreover, liquids block x-rays. And, contraband can be shaped to resemble innocent articles. Add to that the pressure for the scanner operator to spend no more than a few seconds on each box, and this foolproof plan is easily fooled.
Let's not forget that scanning done in foreign countries is by foreign officials. U.S. officers may be on the scene for advice and guidance, but without any authority. Ask yourself how diligent a scanner operator will be for $5 a day looking for a bomb en route to a rich country across the ocean--unless he finds it and then maybe it explodes in his face.
And, has Congress allotted funds for the maintenance of these scanners? The countries with the ports are expected to purchase and maintain the equipment themselves. What happens when the scanners or the linked computers break down and parts are thousands of miles away? Will the cargo stop flowing and the ships sit waiting? Not likely. My cousin once observed a Russian Customs officer diligently studying an airport x-ray monitor on which the picture never changed although luggage continued to pass through the machine.
The best approach is for officers to target containers for scanning, because then they have an incentive to prove their hunches correct. Scanning should be followed up by physical hands-on search--for cause and at random--but not 100%. Just more than we're doing now.