Archive for December, 2009
December 30th, 2009 by Justin
You got a better idea?
The recent failed bombing attempt by an agent of Al Qaeda has predictably resurrected the old profiling debate. The thrust of the conservative position on this issue has typically been that we should not worry about people’s feelings when people’s lives are at stake. The liberals, meanwhile, typically say that profiling violates people’s civil liberties and is immoral generally.
I would like to introduce a new argument against profiling that I have not heard discussed by the talking heads. It’s not about feelings, and it’s not about liberties. It’s about the most important question of all: will it actually work? Because, after all, if it just doesn’t work, then any discussion about its effect on people’s feelings, or its conformity with constitutional rights is meaningless.
What is profiling and will it work?
The basic idea behind profiling is that we should, during airport screenings, separate out and pay special attention to individuals who fit the profile of the kind of people who are out to kill us: young Arab Muslim extremist men. The question arises, how can we tell who is a young Arab Muslim man and who is not? Well, naturally, the response comes, it is through things like their skin and hair color, name, religion, and even clothing. Let’s see if profiling on any of these bases can actually work, over the long term.
Skin color: Arab people generally have brown skin. But so do millions of people of Latin American, African, South Asian, Southeast Asian and European origin. How do we distinguish who’s an Arab and who’s a Brazilian? It’s impossible, based on skin color or hair color (all of these people have dark hair, as well).
Name: there are certain names like Abdul, Muhammad or Abdullah that are Arab in origin, and are also taken by many non-Arab Muslims. But there are two problems here: (1) many non-Muslim (Arab Christians) and non-Arab people (Muhammad Ali, the boxer) have these kinds of names; many Muslim people do not have names of this type, and (2) it is safe to say that a terrorist intent on harm will have zero compunction to legally changing his name, but an average harmless person will not—therefore this policy, over time, will inevitably divert security’s attention away from the real threat, and toward the innocent.
Religion: the threat comes from people who are Muslim. Fair enough, but the overwhelming vast majority of people who travel, and who are Muslim, pose no threat. More to the point, how the hell are we supposed to tell who is a Muslim and who is not? Are security officials to ask for “passport and denomination, please” to every traveler? Even if such an absurd policy were to be implemented, can we not depend on the real terrorists to lie, and the innocent Muslim people to tell the truth, again diverting security away from the guilty and toward the innocent?
Clothing: many Muslims wear certain kinds of characteristic clothing. And there is nothing to stop a terrorist from dressing like a westerner, right? Consider, for example, Mohammed Atta:
I’m no fashion designer, but it looks like average western attire to me.
Facial features: now we are really digging. But let’s say we entertain the idea that Arab people have certain characteristic facial features (the structure of the face, the shape of the brow or nose, etc). Problems: (1) in the absence of highly-paid experts in this field stationed at countless airports, this is necessarily very subjective and basically impossible to exploit, (2) huge numbers of Arab people do not share “typical” facial features, indeed they may look like an average European person to the untrained eye (and even the “trained” eye), (3) the most recent terrorist attempt reminds us that our threat is a multiracial and multiethnic one—the guy was a black African, (4) any facial features that could be identified are unquestionably shared by people who are not Arab (consider Jews, Greeks or Italians, whose genetic stock have similar roots in the greater Mediterranean region).
Profiling will not help us
So we see there is no effective, reliable way to weed out the innocent from the guilty. Feelings be damned. If there were a reliable way for airport security personnel to make innocent civilians safer through profiling, I would say “the hell with political correctness—let’s get our priorities in order.” But I have demonstrated that there simply is not, given the nature of this threat. Profiling of this type, if implemented, may help for a little while. But over time, it will have at least two major negative consequences that will overwhelm any potential meagre gains: (1) it will further antagonize average, innocent Muslims and Arabs, thereby stoking violent extremism, and (2) it will lull us into a false sense of security, from which we will be jarringly awoken when one day a blue-eyed Polish-American man blows up an airplane in the name of Allah.
Indeed, we already have many examples of white or western people joining or trying to join Al Qaeda or similar groups. And yet we still have people suggesting that profiling people at airports will be effective. It is abundantly obvious that these terrorists will do whatever it takes to accomplish their mission. If we were to explicitly adopt some profiling regime of the type described above, we can rest assured that the dedicated Islamic militants will dye their hair, change their name, bleach their skin (they’re committing suicide, remember) and put on a different set of clothes. And since they are committing suicide, what’s a little plastic surgery to alter facial features, if they choose to go that far? Add some large sunglasses to further mask their face, a nice shave and some cologne and, voila, a modern white western man is just minding his own business going through airport security.
Many might respond saying “what about profiling based on nationality, background, past suspicious activity, etc.” News flash: we’re already doing that. If one says that we need to improve that whole system (the system that Idiocy Department Chief Janet Napolitano said “worked”), then that is a totally different issue, and I could not agree more.
But, the opponent might say, I have left out one very important trait: gender. The terrorists are overwhelmingly men. Surely there is room here for the diehard profiling lobbyist to snatch victory from the jaws of argumentative defeat, right? The answer: a resounding… maybe.
Ignoring the fact that the hypothetical and innovative terrorist can (1) get a sex change, (2) change his name and/or use a fake passport along with female clothing (which we have seen these kinds of characters do, and which alone seem to negate any long-term effectiveness of gender profiling), this approach might work. If we subject all males to stricter security precautions than females, we could reduce costs and save time without, potentially, reducing security. But that’s just it. The advantages seem to be in cutting costs, rather than increasing benefits. There are female Islamic militants, and the male ones could smuggle bombs or explosive devices into innocent women’s luggage in one way or another.
Conclusions
So it turns out that profiling just doesn’t work. Conservatives just love to paint liberals as pie-in-the-sky idealists with no appreciation for real threats, who play politics with security in the name of “theory” over practicality. Well, it looks like it is the conservatives who are enamored with theory to the detriment of practical logistics on this one.
We are met with two basic realities. First, with few exceptions, basically everybody is going to have to go through the security system the same. Picking out people who fit a certain “profile” might make security officials feel like they’re being smart and cunning, but, as the events of Christmas demonstrate, it just doesn’t work if the overall global security regime is garbage to begin with.
Second, we are reminded of the most important lesson of all: you don’t neutralize threats of this nature with more and more layers of security. At some point, the choice we are met with is to either shut down the entire global system of travel and commerce, or address the real, root causes that feed the animosity and hatred which leads to a transnational militant religious movement. It comes down to economic development and social and political advancement in Muslim and Arab regions, but that’s a topic for another day.
December 28th, 2009 by Justin
Arvind Subramanian writes recently in the FT that the field of economics has “made amends” for failing to predict the economic crisis by producing effective solutions for managing it. The fact that a depression was avoided indicates that, for all its flaws, economics has contributed positively.
For sure, we have not learnt all the lessons; we may even have learnt some wrong ones. It is also probable that we are setting the stage for future crises, not least because we are still groping for ways to tame finance. So, economics is bound to fail again. But the avoidance of the Greatest Depression that could so easily have happened in 2009 is an outcome the world owes to economics; at the least, it is the discipline’s atonement for allowing the crisis of 2008 to unfold.
So in other words, economics has been harmful, except it has been beneficial. Only an economist (or, maybe better, an academic) could make illogic seem so logical. It is, after all, “probable that we are setting the stage for future crises,” but hey, “the avoidance of the Greatest Depression… is an outcome the world owes to economics.”
I am reminded of the line that many have used to criticize Ben Bernanke’s recent elevation in stature: the arsonist is rewarded for putting out his own fire. Just replace Bernanke with the entire economics profession over the last 40 years, and you can’t tell the difference. To be sure, there are many brilliant economists who have enhanced knowledge to various degrees in recent decades. And not all economists have subscribed to the neoliberal, neoclassical orthodoxy that laid the foundation for this crisis. But enough did that we can characterize the overall field as deeply flawed.
As I have said, this field has thus far demonstrated little to no propensity to change its tone. We see no meaningful shift in the debate between left-of-center and right-of-center economists; so far, they are debating the same old issues they’ve been debating for years. Large figures like Paul Krugman have, as expected, begun to ask the hard questions and think outside of the box. But where are the rest of them?
In a way, this lack of sufficient self-reflection is understandable in any academic field that is dominated by pride, tenure, seniority and elitism. Despite this, one would expect a massive, intellectually unavoidable disruption to the status quo and the established “models” to prompt some real, solid soul-searching in any such discipline.
The fact that there has been no such soul-searching is troubling, to say the least. These are, after all, the same people who are spinning the intellectual yarn from which an extremely fundamental component of our social order is made, and will continue to be made.
The global economic system came to the brink of collapse. And yet, the same, tired old rightist and leftist politicians are having essentially the same, tired old debates they were having 1 or 2 years ago about state involvement and welfare checks. Surprise, surprise, they are prescribing the same, tired old policies (Lower taxes! No, more regulation!). Meanwhile, the supposed intellectual keepers of the system are asleep at the wheel.
So the economic system came close to collapse. And Jimmy cracked corn, and they don’t seem to care. Subramanian’s pride in his field is misplaced. It is far from clear that the crisis is really “over.” If he really wants to help avoid the next crisis, and do something good for the world, he would do better by getting out his pen and paper and reconsidering the Theory of Consumer Choice, rather than writing opinion pieces about how great his failed profession is.
December 26th, 2009 by Justin
In the most recent mayoral election in New York City, the New York Times reports, for the first time, the majority of voters were non-white. This is of course a sign of things to come in New York and the US overall, as many have been projecting for a while that by the middle of this century the majority of people in that country will not be white.
Now, this would not necessarily be a problem if we could be confident that the vast majority of people in the US would not define, distinguish and separate themselves to a significant degree on racial, ethnic and cultural lines. But we can’t. And that alone is cause for concern.
Of course, the problem is not the overall color tone of the country. The problem is the implications it spells for social and political stability in a society where such large portions of the population take race as such a profoundly essential aspect of their identity. And the primary danger, as I see it, stems not from the minority racial/ ethnic/ cultural groups—African Americans, Hispanic Americans, East Asian Americans, etc—for they have understood themselves as “minorities” for a long time, and that reality is by now well established in their conceptions of themselves vis-a-vis the rest of society. Instead, the danger, and the real fascinating historical development to come, lies with the European American ethnocultural group.
That’s because that group has enjoyed total, uninterrupted cultural and social dominance over the country from the very beginning. Now, that chapter is coming to a close. What will become of America’s whites? How will they define themselves in a society where, for the first time ever, they are no longer the majority of the population? What does it mean? Or does it mean anything at all? Is the US in store for years of fresh ethnocultural civil strife? Or will the racial changing of the guard go off without a hitch?
Of course, the non-white components of America’s population present issues, as well. Insofar as blacks, hispanics and others continue to identify themselves according to their skin color or genetic heritage (rightly or wrongly, for whatever reason), they necessarily see others as meaningfully “different” in some way or another. And insofar as this is the case, there is the ever-present potential for tension, mistrust, hate or violence. Despite the abundant and obvious progress that has been made in race relations over the last half-century, it is also obvious that race remains an important line of demarcation in American society. An argument could be made that the election of the first black president has even made matters worse.
But wait, there’s more. Because race and ethnicity is not the only dimension of identity in the US. We also have language, religion, class and ideology to deal with. In large parts of the country (areas of the Southwest, south Florida and the major metropolitan areas come to mind), Spanish is the de facto language of communication. A person today can be born, grow up, live and die in the US, as a full citizen, without ever speaking a word of English. In one respect, this is a beautiful thing, but in another, it presents strong potential for division. Witness, for example, Belgium, where language serves to divide the population in two.
Much more could be said on the crisscrossing dividing lines in religion (note the rise in Islamophobia and the aggressive posture of right-wing Christianity in recent years), ideology (red states and blue states, and the cultural implications thereof), and class (widening income inequality in recent decades). I will leave those issues for another post.
What are readers’ thoughts on this issue? Will America find unity in its increasing diversity? Or will the melting pot overheat to the breaking point? Thoughts?
December 22nd, 2009 by Justin
Drew Westen gets at the heart of what independents like myself are concerned with vis-a-vis Obama. The title of his piece is “Leadership, Obama Style, and the Looming Losses in 2010: Pretty Speeches, Compromised Values, and the Quest for the Lowest Common Denominator.” Ouch. And a quote:
Consider the president’s leadership style, which has now become clear: deliver a moving speech, move on, and when push comes to shove, leave it to others to decide what to do if there’s a conflict, because if there’s a conflict, he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it.
Ouch again.
Although I lean broadly left on most issues (but I disagree with much of officially “progressive” or liberal politics), I did not vote for Obama. I, for one, was not bamboozled like a starry-eyed teenage girl at a boy band concert, like most of the left-wing people I knew. And I’m damn proud of it. I did not hear almost anything from Obama during the campaign that spoke to an authentically new, 21st century left-of-center ideological vision, and in the year since, I’m still waiting. Instead, during the campaign I heard the Democratic party basically pick up where they left off in 1980.
Never mind the massive changes that have occurred in America and the world since then (you know, stuff like the collapse of the Soviet Union, the internet and 9/11). It looked like the Democrats thought the same old tired ideological nonsense was still very much relevant. Much of that can be explained, of course, by the Democrat candidates’, shall we say, advanced age (and the seeming inability I have discovered of anyone who grew up during the Cold War to deeply grasp the true nature of the post-Soviet world order). But Obama, being younger, offered (hate this word) hope.
Well, so much for that. It turns out that Obama is basically a politician like any other. Little vision, lots of rhetoric and mountains of political strategy. With such a thin resume, so much of his appeal and attractiveness stemmed from his personality and charisma. Is anyone reminded of a certain right-wing political star? And now we see the result, as Westen points out so eloquently.
Silly liberals, when will they realize that the Republicans and Democrats are simply two sides of the same coin?
December 19th, 2009 by Justin
From the western perspective, looking on a map, Afghanistan looks like a discrete political unit, comparable to any other sovereign country like France, Canada, Mexico or Japan. Therefore, westerners often assume that the kinds of social and political institutions present in those other countries can also be built in Afghanistan, with due regard for the local culture and particularities. Polling stations, finance ministries, public education, national parliament, government health clinics, security apparatuses—all of these things can be built, if we just do it right. So the thinking goes.
Such thinking is so disconnected from reality it is almost disturbing. Nowhere is the question asked, “how did those other countries come to develop such institutions and infrastructure?” or “is the social and cultural and economic framework of Afghanistan amenable to such developments?”
Does anyone recall that, once upon a time, such “modern” nations as England, France, Japan or Sweden were in a state of political, economic and social backwardness equivalent to Afghanistan’s today? Did their modern democratic and post-industrial capitalist systems spring up overnight? Or did they take many centuries of development and progress?
Does anyone care to pay heed to the fact that Afghanistan is riven with division and disparateness ethnically, tribally, linguistically, religiously and ideologically? Does anyone see an asymmetry in assuming the sociopolitical structures built and designed in extraordinarily homogeneous societies (in Europe and East Asia, for example) will work in an extraordinarily heterogeneous one?
Given the abject ignorance of the history of the modern nation-state and the nature of its development, it is no surprise that the history of Afghanistan as a “graveyard of empires” is also completely lost on western policy makers. Add to that the fact that centralization has only ever succeeded with the assent of the regional and tribal and local authorities, and we can begin to see why the US and its allies are doomed to fail.
A reading of history and of common sense spells out the proper path in Afghanistan: to partition the country into sovereign polities that are based on the actual identities of the people, probably within the framework of a federal system, where the central government will have authority over a few functions like coining money or foreign policy, and little else. The vast majority of powers and authority will be reserved for the smaller-scale political entities, where the vast majority of the identity and loyalty and legitimacy lies.
In some of these new political entities, popular rule will be able to be pursued almost immediately. In others, the social and economic structure will simply not be ready. In some places women will enjoy the freedom of full participation in public life. In others, they will not be seen, much less heard. In some places a secular, modern education will be had by many children. In others, the rigid backwardness of Islamic indoctrination will be the norm—and for boys only. As unfortunate as all of these outcomes may be, I would ask objectors a simple question: are you willing to pay for the alternative? Are you willing to send your children to fight against history?
If the “federal” system being proposed here sounds familiar, it should. It just so happens that another, somewhat successful society began as a loose federation of sovereign states, each enjoying greater identity with the people than the collective whole, and with a very weak central government. You may have heard of it—the United States of America. But again, that’s history.
Finally, a dose of pragmatism. The more moderate elements of the Taliban (such as they are) will need to be negotiated with and included in the new order. This stems from the fact that they have the power to purvey violence. In such an anarchical situation, little else needs to be said. No matter how repulsive the Taliban may be to the west, or to any basic, secular human decency, the fact remains that they have power because they have guns and the willingness to use them. For all my secularism, I prefer a woman in a burka to a woman in the ground.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4
