Human Nature Trumps Homeland Security 304
netbuzz writes "Security expert Bruce Schneier suggests this morning that 'there might not be a solution' to our post-9/11 penchant for making domestic anti-terrorism decisions based on the basic human desire to cover one's backside. He might be right. But shouldn't we at least try to figure out a better way? For example, wouldn't 'Commonsense Homeland Security' be a winning political banner, not a risky one? "
Causes, not symptoms (Score:4, Insightful)
I gotta blame (Score:5, Insightful)
Homeland Security (Score:1, Insightful)
Homeland Security is not about security. It is about using the public's tax money to enrich your friends and business partners. And politics are determined by the players not by the voters (as much as we'd all like to believe otherwise).
It is a no-win situation (Score:5, Insightful)
But shouldn't we at least try to figure out a better way? For example, wouldn't 'Commonsense Homeland Security' be a winning political banner, not a risky one?
Scenario 1:
Scenario 2:
With options like that, it doesn't matter what they do, as they are always going to be wrong.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
No (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:1, Insightful)
The unifying notion is that many people fear and hate the unfamiliar, and will wage war against it no matter what it is.
We can't have any more politician politicians (Score:4, Insightful)
#1. If you start a war, you send your kids to the frontlines of whatever country you are attacking.
#2. Your kid stays there till your term is over.
#3. You cannot own any companies or be a shareholder of any.
Re:It is a no-win situation (Score:2, Insightful)
Does that include duct tape on the windows and the banning of liquids on all non-private airlines? (God forbid if a terrorist has a enough money to charter private flights).
When your 'do everything they can' scenario actually happens as a viable and logical solution, maybe then your 'do everything they can' scenario will make sense. Or possibly be proven invalid.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference here is that there is continuity between those actions and the present. Islamic extremists look back to the early waves of expansion and say, "That's just, we need to keep it up." Meanwhile, it's hard to find any Christians who are trying to bring back the Byzantine Empire.
I don't deny that Muslims feel wronged by the U.S. However, it seems likely that there would be strong impulses towards violence from certain sectors in that society regardless of what the U.S. was doing. Thailand and the Philippines have problems with Muslim insurgencies even though they are not meddling superpowers.
Reactionary, not preventative (Score:4, Insightful)
As a slogan, yes (Score:2, Insightful)
Do not agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly, we are not without sin, but the current rift is more complex than you portray. At the very least, it is due in part to a clash of cultures and religions that are almost diametrically opposed to one another. Freedom of speech, expression and, yes, religion are basic tenets of American society. We have grown so used to these basic freedoms that we assume that they are universally true...and they are not...regardless of how much we (or others) would like them to be.
I am not attempting to flame, but I think that it is fair to say that some societies (especially some of those in the Mid-East) hold a specific religious dogma to be of principal importance to their society. All other laws and rules of behavior flow from that religious dogma...or, at the very least, cannot conflict with it. I think that it is also fair to say that the level of tolerance for conflicting beliefs is fairly low. Doubt it? Try carrying a stack of bibles into Saudi Arabia and see how far you get through customs. I'll tell you how far - to the line that leads to jail:
http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGMDE230022
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_
In America, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. I worked in Japan for some time and realized that a somewhat similar Japanese phrase crystallizes the difference between our two cultures - the nail that sticks up gets hit. The clash of philosophies between Islam and the West make the differences between the US and Japan look trivial.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead we let Republican Presidents (yes, it was ALWAYS Republicans that did this, Carter and Clinton did not make this mistake) search out and finding the most vicious, obnoxious, totalitarian, Facists we can find, giving them large amounts of aid, helping them to gain power. Then when we looked at who are friends were and what they were doing, we abandon them, often when they have grown dependent on our aid. This pissed them off, and either they declare us traitors, or they get thrown out of power and the revolutionaries hate us. We did it with Iran (Shah/Khomeni), Panama (Noreiga), Iraq (Hussein), and Afganistan (Bin Laden)
Unfortunately self interest interferes (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything remains until such time as the electorate get sick of all of it and kick out the party that is profiting by it and replace them with the politic party that will shift the focus away from terrorizing the public with bogus threats and focus on all those mundane issues that will affect the lives of the majority like, universal health care, universal education, the environment and the falling average standard of living ie they toss out the party that focuses on the wealthy minority and making them richer, safer and protecting them from the poor that the rich create and instead focus upon the working poor and on preventing the now shrinking middle class from sliding down to join the working poor.
You can always tell the most corrupt politicians because they will always pat themselves on the back for how much profit the corporations and the wealthy that control those corporations are making and completely ignore how many ex-middle class families have joined the ranks of the working poor.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
Australia is a western nation. Nothing can, will or should alter that fact. As such, in this new world, we are a terrorist target. Those who assert that through some calibration of our foreign policy we can buy immunity from terrorist attacks advance a proposition which is both morally flawed and factually wrong.
It is morally flawed because this nation should never fashion its foreign policy under threat. The foreign policy of Australia should always reflect the values of Australia. Bin Laden identified Australia as a terrorist target because of the intervention in East Timor. Let me pose the question, if that threat had been issued prior to the invention in 1999 should the Australian government have pulled back? I think not. Would the Australian public have wanted the government then in the face of that threat to have pulled back? I think not. The proposition about your foreign policy being adjusted is also factually flawed because the victims of terrorists over the past decade have come from many nations sharing a full variety of foreign policy and strategic views.
Re:We can't have any more politician politicians (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:4, Insightful)
Thailand has been through so many governments since the overthrow of the monarchy in 1932, including several brutal military dictatorships, that it does not surprise me that Thai muslims might want in on all the action. As for the Philippines, they have been in a similar position. One does not have to be a super power to meddle, and it's not only meddlers that attract insurgencies. You might want to check how many non-muslim insurgencies a country has had before using them as an example of how Muslims are violent.
Security? (Score:4, Insightful)
When I think of the term security, my first thought is as the first word in the term "security blanket". It's an emotional state for a person, not a logical state to be achieved in a system.
The same holds whenever I hear the term 'homeland security' and 'national security' - these systems are not designed, oriented, or run in any way to make an impervious wall to potential damage - they are, and have always been, publicity measures to evoke the emotional state of security.
If we were to create a system of real 'functional' national security, it would be a nightmare all around. We would have to make it practically impossible for any damage to be done to the protected area - which isn't plausible unless you completely prevented living things from being in the protected area or anything in range. Even the middle of the Demilitarized Zone in Korea would not fit such a definition.
Beyond this technicality though, people don't want even limited functional security. They want a shield from external consequences - they want a daddy to look over them, a very biased daddy who will listen to their complaints and hurt the bad guys. This, to a degree, is the goal behind the current illusion of security.
At the same time though, I'm glad it is the merely political/emotional system it is. Because I'd rather have a bumbling mostly-absent daddy-figure in that space, than a system which actually had the power to implement a system of authoritarian measures beyond most people's 'convenience' threshold. I acknowledge that I'm in mild danger without some precautions (in any case, really) - but I find an entrenched abusable 'security' environment much more terrifying than all the horrible rebel terrorists in the world, in the same way that I'd find a poison labeled as candy more terrifying than all the poison in the world.
Ryan Fenton
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
Not so hard to find, there's one living at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave, Washington, DC. Check in with him & his boss, Dick.
Thailand is an outlier, but in the Philippines you've got a non-Muslim government made up of the leftovers of a Spanish & US colonial system. The Muslims in the south were most certainly meddled with by westerners, it just happened long enough ago that most folks in the US have never heard of it. Ditto Indonesia. It amazes me that folks think France can take over Syria, England can take all of Mesopotamia, the US can grab the Philippines, and then set up arbitrary borders, paying no attention to traditional tribal and ethnic boundaries, walk away and be surprised when the people who were essentially enslaved start 1) Fighting with each other and 2) looking for a little payback.
Re:Not exactly. (Score:3, Insightful)
"I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion.
I want everyone to remember *why* they need us!"
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you really that uninformed?
In the words of Boots Riley (Score:3, Insightful)
It's poor people dying so the rich cash checks.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
History does not agree with you, for reasons others have pointed out. This has been going on for centuries. The only thing that has changed in the past few decades is that oil wealth and technology have finally made it possible for Islamic terrorists to effectively strike us at home in the US and Europe.
The important factor is that Western cultural ideas are threatening conservative Islamic ideas - this is the real threat the jihadists perceive. They don't hate our interference in politics, it's our "interference" in their culture. Are you willing to compromise your liberal Western values to appease Islamic conservatives? Are you willing to ignore their hideous human rights abuses?
Re:We can't have any more politician politicians (Score:4, Insightful)
I served so the Bush twins wouldn't have to. I'll gladly donate my service to them. That's why it's called a Volunteer Force. No one is in Iraq that doesn't want to be. If they wanted out, all they have to do is make a pass at their commanding officer (provided their commanding officer is the same sex they are)
#2. Your kid stays there till your term is over.
Did that... served in the MidEast under two administrations.
#3. You cannot own any companies or be a shareholder of any.
Their money is in a blind trust. They don't know where their money is. Besides, if they had to put their money into common interest baring accounts, they would get blasted everytime the interest rates went up. Or would you prefer that they just keep all their money under the mattress in the Lincoln bedroom?
Re:How To Stop Terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, just like the war on drugs... oh wait.
Some problems can't be solved just by throwing enough money at them.
How do you teach an intolerant person tolerance?
--
How do you win a "war on terror" when you're the one creating it??
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds a lot like the US administration when they try to scare the public by saying that just because we haven't been attacked since 9/11, doesn't mean that the terrorists won't attack tomorrow...
Not just the media's fault (Score:3, Insightful)
A hundred years ago the average American was a hell of a lot more educated than his modern descendent, such that most people would have seen right through the idiocy and emotional based 'policies' that drive modern political discourse. Which is why a determined campaign was waged to dumb people down.
Ideas that can't be expressed in a paragraph (or better a bumber sticker) have no chance of going anywhere in these days of two minute TV news stories that have to fit in the idea, the other party objecting to it and the network twit pontificating about it. And ideas that by all rights should be dead issues because they are so self evidently bogus are taken seriously because politicians can rely on 90% of the viewers being too ignorant to know better and that under no condition will the TV dude call them out on saying something retarded.
So where does it end? Can it be reversed? Doubt it. It will end, as Amb. Kosh said, "In fire."
Re:I gotta blame (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
And this makes me wonder if any "common sence" approach to national security could ever come about. It seems that everyone wanting something else doesn't understand the picture or the threat that is being presented to us. Bin Laden cowtails to some extream religios view for personal gain because just like any other religions because it helps get people on his side (it has recuiting benifits). And I think these others are somehow being sucked in.
It isn't that there cannot be "common sence" security. The problem is that when people demonstrate that they do not know what the problems are or that they are incappable of interpreting it, the solutions would always seem lacking. National security is already a ballence between preserving freedoms and effective security measures. But to have someone suggest a change in lue of security for more freedom when they cannot even get the picture of what is going on correct means that it will fail or makes us less safe (the reasons it will fail).
I'm not saying shut all the idiots up or anything. That would end up shutting me up too. The debate is a good thing but some home work needs to be done before making the claim about "laxing this aspect of security". I don't want to get attacked because some asshat who has little clue thinks this should work. The attitude now is that terrorism only exists because we are in Iraq and neglects many other aspects of it. You even made the claim that Spains problems were because of Iraq when they weren't. This shows they are winning the propaganda game.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
20,000 people die each year from the flu, perhaps there should be some sort of war on virii declared - maybe we'll get universal health care funding
not a new problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Israel's approach is borne of being surrounded by enemies and inundated by non-friends. They deal with it by having intelligent people working in their security forces, including at the airport. They frisk you (usually with a metal detector wand) when you enter any gathering place - restaurant, bus station, theater, museum, post office, etc. They use profiling, political correctness be damned. Their security practices seem intelligent - you don't have to take off your shoes when you run their usual airport security gauntlet, and a grandmother traveling with her family isn't going to get run through the same ringer as a suspicious young person.
Israel deals with real terror threats every day. They defuse real attacks every day. Maybe they know what they're doing.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
It seemed like you were trying to counter the idea that the US is drawing the attention of terrorists by sticking it's nose in others' business with the fact that even Norway, who has not been attacked, has been threatened. Being threatened is not the same as being attacked. I'd be surprised to find out if there was a single country who has never been threatened by terrorists, and am also fairly certain that the majority of countries who have been threatened by Muslim fundamentalists have not been attacked.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
Against WHO, God damn it? You don't even know who your enemy is. Stop trying to pretend you're fighting a "war"!
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
So when are you thinking of converting? Your first method is impossible unless you propose genocide - because the more "islamic terrorists" you kill the more "islamic terrorists" you create.
Re:How To Stop Terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
Can a people remain free and be 'protected'? (Score:4, Insightful)
I, for one, believe not. Perhaps for this reason that free people seem reflexively aggressive in foreign relation (US and GBR for example); the inability to sufficiently balance these two interests lends itself to the use of external direct force. As a free people desire that their authorities protect their interests and shield them from harm (via police, fire and rescue squads, ambulance services, and yes military) they will only allow so much intrusion upon their liberties (civil rights and liberties, privacy, dignity, &c). In order to achieve its mandate to 'protect' the citizenry the authority applies direct, sometimes extreme, force upon the external threat (be it a criminal, foreign power, bomb chucking anarchist, &c).
Unfortunately, authorities in the US have evidently determined that we have enough of neither. Rights, liberties, and simple human dignity is being lost while simultaneously a rather large and significant amount of external force is being applied.
Reasons and rationales (Score:3, Insightful)
Ceasing interference with their politics in order to stop terrorism is a bad idea. It proves that terrorism is an effective tool against the US. (See also, Barbary Pirates [wikipedia.org].)
Ceasing interference with their politics because its the right thing to do is a great idea.
Convincing anyone that our reasons are the latter is an impossible idea. :)
Granted, I've given no solution here. Perhaps the best solution is to cease interference with their politics (for the right reason of course), but if they take this as a sign that terrorism is a good idea in the future we thoroughly disabuse them of this idea at that time - while maintaining (due) vigilance against it in the present, of course. (Note: due vigilance does not include preventing fluids on flights!)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. As an agnostic conservative/libertarian, I condemn all forms of religious extremism, and it's blatantly obvious that the Muslim world has a particular problem in that area. (And no, the rare abortion clinic bombing by a deranged lunatic doesn't remotely compare to government-sanctioned stoning of homosexuals). It's amazing how so many on the left will defend the most illiberal regimes on the planet, in order to avoid admitting that conservatives might have a point. If Bush being pro-life upsets you, you should be absolutely infuriated with the treatment of women under Muslim theocracies. The enemy of your enemy is not your friend.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
To paraphrase the man who everyone claims is on their side when they justify this horrific foreign policy. How can you tell your brother he has a mote of dust in his eye when you have a log in yours? We got ourselves in this situation...and fighting through it won't make it any better. Cure the disease, not the symptoms. The current state of affairs are just symptoms of our unbelievably awful international policy. Fix our behavior and many of the problems will start to lessen if not disappear over the years. This isn't appeasement like the ultra conservatives like to claim, its called setting the example. We are supposed to be the beacon of light on the hill, lets act like it for a change.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
Certainly; we could adopt sharia and allow them to exterminate the Jews. Islamic extremists are not otherwise rational people who are only striking at us because of our injustices. In their own countries they're stoning homosexuals and adulterers/rape victims, forbidding women from learning to read, and violently suppressing other religions. We didn't make them do that. We could cease all military involvement in the Middle East (which I'm all for, step 1 is lots of nuke plants), but they'd still have plenty of problems with us.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not a new problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I have met people who have been on the receiving end of the attentions of the "intelligent" Israeli security forces and those of the equally intelligent and famously well-run Israeli military. I never want to see the US go down that road. Me, I'm still hoping Abu Ghraib and uncounted civilian casualties are aberrations, not the new norm, for Americans.
"Maybe they know what they're doing." Yeah, and that's why they're at peace with their neighbors. Or maybe there would be peace if only every single person in the Middle East except the Israelis weren't such evil, vengeful fanatics, right?
A less contorted explanation is that the same propaganda and manipulation that keeps corrupt right-wing thugs in power in Israel is also being market-tested here by our own home-grown force-worshipping greedheads. Because fear is useful in forcing compliance, and fearful people are more likely to acquiesce in brutality.
So I really don't care how the Israelis do airport security, anymore than I want pointers from them on bullozing houses or gunning down stone-throwing kids. It's justice that I want to see done. The Israelis who do that, I'm willing to learn from. But to see heavy-handed police-state tactics, there's no need to travel that far. More's the pity.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a difference between facts and moral judgments. US, Spanish, and English involvement in the Middle East is a motivation behind those acts of terrorism. That's a fact. Whether or not they deserved to be bombed is a moral judgment that is partially informed by that fact. If these governments were in fact doing absolutely nothing and were bombed without any provocation, that would lead us to one moral judgment. On the other hand, if these governments were systematically destroying their civilization and they had no other way to respond, that would lead us to a very different moral judgment. The facts are as follows: the US, England, Spain, etc. made, were making, have made, and continue to make certain interventions in the Middle East. Al-Qaeda considered those interventions aggressive and decided to strike back. We can sit around all day analyzing what these interventions are and whether they justify the response, but that would make us historians. If we're worried about serving the interests of Americans, Britons, and Spaniards, we have to analyze which is greatest--the cost of continuing to intervene or the cost of not intervening. This is a cost-benefit analysis, and only works with facts, not moral judgments.
As an analogy: if I'm pointing a gun at your face and telling you to give me your wallet, you don't really worry about whether or not the fact you killed my father justifies this. You just weigh the options available to you and do whatever satisfies the end you're trying to achieve (be it justice, your own self-preservation, etc.)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:3, Insightful)
France has a pretty good image in the middle east nowadays, despite the fact that it also considers terrorism as one of its first security problem. But it tries to deal with it with respect to human rights.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:5, Insightful)
Second of all: If we would wage war on every potential killer of yours, we would have to concentrate the forces first on you, then on your mother, then on your stepfather (if you have one), then your biological father. Those four persons are the most probable to take your life. They are responsible for about 50% of all homicides. (I am not sure, but I think either your husband/wife or your own children come next.)
Third: There is no direct relation between cause and effect in terrorist attacks. The most recent attempt to a terrorist attack in Germany I know of was a man who planned to carbomb a bank. Not for political reasons, but because of bad service. What's next? Battle against the Customer?
That's why I think the idea of an 100 percent protection against terrorist attacks is just silly. You never know what or who causes the urge to attack someone, and you can't foresee the method they will be trying. That's why there is the call for Common Sense. Eliminate the foreseeable threads by protecting infrastructure that causes much havoc if attacked and is a quite easy target.
Don't try to thwart every single plot that has been discovered or can be thought of individually. We are back to the old problem: "Enumerating badness" is never complete and seldom a sensible way to deal with threads. Try to be secure by design, not by eliminating threads.
Re:Causes, not symptoms (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:not a new problem (Score:3, Insightful)