Lindsey Graham could make the Obama's adopting an additional puppy a political issue, so it's not surprising that he has decided to latch on to the fact that the Russian government raised an issue of the older Tsarnaev brother with the FBI as evidence of the FBI's failure. Several twitterers have also claimed that the Boston bombing was Obama's fault. I don't have time to deal with the crazies in this world, but I do have some thoughts on the FBI and its treatment of the older Tsarnaev.
First, we as a country can't predict everything that everyone will do. It's the price of freedom. There are countries where people fear talking badly of the President / Prime Minister / King / Supreme Leader. In such places, people have a reason to fear. They have seen their family members, their neighbors, their friends taken from homes because of whispered rumours about who supports who, who is sufficiently "patriotic" or sufficiently "good" or sufficiently "helpful" to the regime. Doing human rights, you can spend years reading such stories. For my LLM dissertation, I spent 6 months reading torture cases - what evil man can do to another man is detailed in such cases, and many of those cases start with a supposed threat one poses to the ruling regime.
Living in a free society - a truly free society - means the government doesn't monitor every conversation or email we have. It doesn't monitor our every purchase, our every visit, our every change in belief. This means we can't always know when something will happen. This is as true of what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did as it is of what the Boston bombers did. Freedom means you cannot predict every attack, and you cannot prevent every attack. The only alternative is to up the monitoring we are all subject to, and it is, of course, necessarily reminds us of what Ben Franklin said: those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.
But, the FBI was given information from Russia on Tsarnaev, so it is legitimate to ask what weight should have been given to this inquiry. There are disputes about how often or who was given information, but let's be clear: the information was from Russia involving a Chechen who was in the US because as a child his family needed to seek asylum. The brutality of the conflict in Chechnya is well documented. But the brutality did not stop when the war did. Amongst those most likely to be targeted and harmed are human rights defenders. The conflict is wrapped up in both ethnic and religious issues, particularly discrimination and self-determination, though these are not the only issues.
Discrimination against Chechens by the Russian government is widespread, and was cited in at least some news reports as one of the reasons. For Russia to have concerns about an ethnic Chechen - particularly one that travels between the US and Russia - is not particularly surprising. Any strengthening of Islamic faith could be seen as a threat.
The US cannot accept without question the call for investigation by countries like Russia. To do so would be to import discrimination from another state and utilise it in the US. If the same logic was applied to Iraq, the US would have to accept any discriminatory calls against the Sunni minority. For China, this would lead to heightened surveillance by the US against Uyghurs. For Myanmar, this could force the US to discriminate against ethnic Rakhine or Kayin people. The list could go on and on. The very people who need us most - those who seek refugee status because of intense discrimination - would have that discrimination re-inflicted on them.
And make no mistake - to gain asylum in the US is not an easy thing. It's a high standard and every year we deport a large number of asylum seekers. It's a high burden to cross and it is specific to the individual's risk if they were to return home.
To inflict on such refugees the discrimination they faced back home without cause - a serious showing by the home country that there is reason for concern and that it is not simply discriminating - is immoral and unethical.
When the FBI was tipped off by Russia, Tsarnaev was treated as others on the watch list are. He stayed on the list for one year and because nothing further suggesting concern occurred in that time, he was dropped. To expect the FBI to do more simply because a discriminatory regime targeted someone in the ethnicity against which they discriminate is to do a disservice to the American dream, that one can escape persecution and seek freedom. To ask the FBI to predict such abhorrent behavior in the absence of significant evidence is to ask them either to erode our freedoms or to become fortune tellers. And I, for one, don't believe fortune telling is an appropriate means of conducting national security.
I also don't think eroding our freedom is an appropriate means either. I'm tired of people like Lindsey Graham saying they love America and it's freedom when what they mean is they loving being priviledged in America with its great privileges. To love American freedom is to love the absence of discrimination, to love the equal treatment we enjoy, and to love the idea that you can talk to your brother in your own house without anyone listening. This is both a great privilege (though it should be a universal human rights) and a great threat to the security of others. It allowed Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to plan the Columbine attacks, for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to develop the Oklahoma City bombs, and for the Boston bombers to plan last week's attack.
But unless you're willing to give up the right to privacy - that right to private conversations in one's own home without government monitoring and interferrence when they deem a conversation insufficiently patriotic - there's little in evidence that suggests the FBI could have done anything predict or prevent the Boston bombings.
Graham is trying to make a political issue out of a great tragedy because he has nothing else to offer the American public. And that is, perhaps, the greatest disservice a politician can offer our country.
First, we as a country can't predict everything that everyone will do. It's the price of freedom. There are countries where people fear talking badly of the President / Prime Minister / King / Supreme Leader. In such places, people have a reason to fear. They have seen their family members, their neighbors, their friends taken from homes because of whispered rumours about who supports who, who is sufficiently "patriotic" or sufficiently "good" or sufficiently "helpful" to the regime. Doing human rights, you can spend years reading such stories. For my LLM dissertation, I spent 6 months reading torture cases - what evil man can do to another man is detailed in such cases, and many of those cases start with a supposed threat one poses to the ruling regime.
Living in a free society - a truly free society - means the government doesn't monitor every conversation or email we have. It doesn't monitor our every purchase, our every visit, our every change in belief. This means we can't always know when something will happen. This is as true of what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did as it is of what the Boston bombers did. Freedom means you cannot predict every attack, and you cannot prevent every attack. The only alternative is to up the monitoring we are all subject to, and it is, of course, necessarily reminds us of what Ben Franklin said: those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.
But, the FBI was given information from Russia on Tsarnaev, so it is legitimate to ask what weight should have been given to this inquiry. There are disputes about how often or who was given information, but let's be clear: the information was from Russia involving a Chechen who was in the US because as a child his family needed to seek asylum. The brutality of the conflict in Chechnya is well documented. But the brutality did not stop when the war did. Amongst those most likely to be targeted and harmed are human rights defenders. The conflict is wrapped up in both ethnic and religious issues, particularly discrimination and self-determination, though these are not the only issues.
Discrimination against Chechens by the Russian government is widespread, and was cited in at least some news reports as one of the reasons. For Russia to have concerns about an ethnic Chechen - particularly one that travels between the US and Russia - is not particularly surprising. Any strengthening of Islamic faith could be seen as a threat.
The US cannot accept without question the call for investigation by countries like Russia. To do so would be to import discrimination from another state and utilise it in the US. If the same logic was applied to Iraq, the US would have to accept any discriminatory calls against the Sunni minority. For China, this would lead to heightened surveillance by the US against Uyghurs. For Myanmar, this could force the US to discriminate against ethnic Rakhine or Kayin people. The list could go on and on. The very people who need us most - those who seek refugee status because of intense discrimination - would have that discrimination re-inflicted on them.
And make no mistake - to gain asylum in the US is not an easy thing. It's a high standard and every year we deport a large number of asylum seekers. It's a high burden to cross and it is specific to the individual's risk if they were to return home.
To inflict on such refugees the discrimination they faced back home without cause - a serious showing by the home country that there is reason for concern and that it is not simply discriminating - is immoral and unethical.
When the FBI was tipped off by Russia, Tsarnaev was treated as others on the watch list are. He stayed on the list for one year and because nothing further suggesting concern occurred in that time, he was dropped. To expect the FBI to do more simply because a discriminatory regime targeted someone in the ethnicity against which they discriminate is to do a disservice to the American dream, that one can escape persecution and seek freedom. To ask the FBI to predict such abhorrent behavior in the absence of significant evidence is to ask them either to erode our freedoms or to become fortune tellers. And I, for one, don't believe fortune telling is an appropriate means of conducting national security.
I also don't think eroding our freedom is an appropriate means either. I'm tired of people like Lindsey Graham saying they love America and it's freedom when what they mean is they loving being priviledged in America with its great privileges. To love American freedom is to love the absence of discrimination, to love the equal treatment we enjoy, and to love the idea that you can talk to your brother in your own house without anyone listening. This is both a great privilege (though it should be a universal human rights) and a great threat to the security of others. It allowed Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold to plan the Columbine attacks, for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols to develop the Oklahoma City bombs, and for the Boston bombers to plan last week's attack.
But unless you're willing to give up the right to privacy - that right to private conversations in one's own home without government monitoring and interferrence when they deem a conversation insufficiently patriotic - there's little in evidence that suggests the FBI could have done anything predict or prevent the Boston bombings.
Graham is trying to make a political issue out of a great tragedy because he has nothing else to offer the American public. And that is, perhaps, the greatest disservice a politician can offer our country.
No comments:
Post a Comment