Tuesday, May 10, 2005

# Douglas Herman at Strike the Root - Geronimo, Cochise and Osama bin Laden - if the neocon war-mongers would study U.S. history, they would know that they will never conquer Osama bin Laden's "terrorists" until they honestly offer true justice. [root] Perhaps most remarkable is a collective American myopia to history. Only a century and a half ago, the charismatic Cochise held the American military to a bloody stalemate for a dozen years with fewer than 200 fighters, and Geronimo frustrated US captors for a quarter century with as little as 37 followers. Cochise finally negotiated a favorable truce from Washington DC , but not before he conducted a series of vengeful raids and depredations from his mountain sanctuary in southeastern Arizona. Fifteen thousand casualties later, the roads leading to Tucson cut and that city besieged, a half dozen US generals and five thousand troops frustrated, President Grant realized the futility of fighting a conventional war against an unconventional warrior. Twelve years later Grant negotiated a peace settlement with Cochise. [End the War on Freedom] 12:55:04 PM    comment () Things Americans Believe. But more importantly, we should take seriously people who hold myths about American power because we do the same thing. To an Arab, how fantastical does it sound to assert that Saddam Hussein, straitjacketed by harsh economic and military sanctions, was in some way responsible for 9-11? Yet a solid majority of Americans, prodded on by our government, believe exactly that. Ditto (Limbaugh reference intentional) for the once near-unanimous (where it counted) belief that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. To broaden things out a bit, Americans are remarkably ill-informed about the rest of the world, period. We cannot find countries on a map unless we've invaded them, and sometimes not even then. Among the major countries of the world, perhaps only the Chinese are so profoundly xenophobic and ignorant of what happens outside their country's borders. Americans are bogged down in a deadly war in Iraq in large part because men (and, occasionally, women) who get paid to know better blithely assumed that Iraqis would gladly welcome an American occupying force. The rose petals never materialized, and yet it's taken two years and still many in the Bush Administration don't understand that the insurgency is not made up of "foreign terrorists," but is largely comprised of nationalists who don't see any American-installed government as legitimate. These are the myths we comfort ourselves with, to demonize an "other" we don't well understand. It is the same process, and at times every bit as sensational and absurd, as what the Arab street often believes about Israel and America. Or what the Chinese or Koreans believe about Japan, or what Indians and Pakistanis believe of each other. Nationalists believe, by definition, that theirs is a uniquely virtuous people. And, by extension, that others don't measure up. Certainly Americans fall into that belief as often as anyone else. (link) More on the delusional beliefs held up up 38% of Americans here. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and all of that. [Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs] It's hardly surprising. For many years I've been reading about polls showing that the overwhelming majority of Americans "believe in God." 12:38:01 PM    comment () The (British) job is done. Let us take Blair's position at face value. Has he not noticed that in Basra and the other two south-eastern provinces where British forces are based the insurgency barely exists? It is true that another British soldier died last week in Amara, a traditionally difficult town, but Basra has been quiet for months. Suicide bombers are conspicuous by their absence. Attacks on British forces are rare, and fatalities even rarer. On election day in January there was almost no violence. The reasons are varied, the main one being that the Shia political groups which control Basra are taking the long view. They form the backbone of Iraq's new government in Baghdad and have no particular complaint with the current drift of Iraqi politics nationally. Although they are Islamists, the conservative stamp they have put on the city has not been opposed by the British. The radical Shias around the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr who strongly denounce the occupation and have taken up arms against it are not as active in Basra as they are in Baghdad and the holy city of Najaf, which is closer to the capital. So, although there are special factors which explain it, the bottom line is that Iraq's south-east has no real insurgency to speak of. Why then are British troops needed? What is the threat they are allegedly deterring, and that Iraqis cannot handle on their own? There is none. Forget the cliches about "not cutting and running". Cut the rhetoric about "the need to finish the job". British troops could pull out immediately, and neither the people of Iraq's south-east nor the people of Britain would regret it. (link) Heh. [Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs] Actually I think the people of south-east Iraq would regret it very much, because the British would be replaced by Fed troops, and that would be the end of the relative peace. 11:26:10 AM    comment () REAL ID. The United States is getting a national ID card. The REAL ID Act (text of the bill and the Congressional Research Services analysis of the bill) establishes uniform standards for state driver's licenses, effectively creating a national ID card. It's a bad idea, and is going to make us all less safe. It's also very expensive. And it's all happening without any serious debate in Congress. I've already written about national IDs. I've written about the fallacies of identification as a security tool. I'm not going to repeat myself here, and I urge everyone who is interested to read those two essays (and even this older essay). A national ID is a lousy security trade-off, and everyone needs to understand why. Aside from those generalities, there are specifics about REAL ID that make for bad security. The REAL ID Act requires driver's licenses to include a "common machine-readable technology." This will, of course, make identity theft easier. Assume that this information will be collected by bars and other businesses, and that it will be resold to companies like ChoicePoint and Acxiom. It actually doesn't matter how well the states and federal government protect the data on driver's licenses, as there will be parallel commercial databases with the same information. Even worse, the same specification for RFID chips embedded in passports includes details about embedding RFID chips in driver's licenses. I expect the federal government will require states to do this, with all of the associated security problems (e.g., surreptitious access). REAL ID requires that driver's licenses contain actual addresses, and no post office boxes. There are no exceptions made for judges or police -- even undercover police officers. This seems like a major unnecessary security risk. REAL ID also prohibits states from issuing driver's licenses to illegal aliens. This makes no sense, and will only result in these illegal aliens driving without licenses -- which isn't going to help anyone's security. (This is an interesting insecurity, and is a direct result of trying to take a document that is a specific permission to drive an automobile, and turning it into a general identification device.) REAL ID is expensive. It's an unfunded mandate: the federal government is forcing the states to spend their own money to comply with the act. I've seen estimates that the cost to the states of complying with REAL ID will be $120 million. That's $120 million that can't be spent on actual security. And the wackiest thing is that none of this is required. In October 2004, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 was signed into law. That law included stronger security measures for driver's licenses, the security measures recommended by the 9/11 Commission Report. That's already done. It's already law. REAL ID goes way beyond that. It's a huge power-grab by the federal government over the states' systems for issuing driver's licenses. REAL ID doesn't go into effect until three years after it becomes law, but I expect things to be much worse by then. One of my fears is that this new uniform driver's license will bring a new level of "show me your papers" checks by the government. Already you can't fly without an ID, even though no one has ever explained how that ID check makes airplane terrorism any harder. I have previously written about Secure Flight, another lousy security system that tries to match airline passengers against terrorist watch lists. I've already heard rumblings about requiring states to check identities against "government databases" before issuing driver's licenses. I'm sure Secure Flight will be used for cruise ships, trains, and possibly even subways. Combine REAL ID with Secure Flight and you have an unprecedented system for broad surveillance of the population. Is there anyone who would feel safer under this kind of police state? Americans overwhelmingly reject national IDs in general, and there's an enormous amount of opposition to the REAL ID Act. This is from the EPIC page on REAL ID and National IDs: More than 600 organizations have expressed opposition to the Real ID Act. Only two groups--Coalition for a Secure Driver's License and Numbers USA--support the controversial national ID plan. Organizations such as the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, National Association of Evangelicals, American Library Association, Association for Computing Machinery (pdf), National Council of State Legislatures, American Immigration Lawyers Association (pdf), and National Governors Association are among those against the legislation. And this site is trying to coordinate individual action against the REAL ID Act, although time is running short. It's already passed in the House, and the Senate votes tomorrow. If you haven't heard much about REAL ID in the newspapers, that's not an accident. The politics of REAL ID is almost surreal. It was voted down last fall, but has been reintroduced and attached to legislation that funds military actions in Iraq. This is a "must-pass" piece of legislation, which means that there has been no debate on REAL ID. No hearings, no debates in committees, no debates on the floor. Nothing. Near as I can tell, this whole thing is being pushed by Wisconsin Rep. Sensenbrenner primarily as an anti-immigration measure. The huge insecurities this will cause to everyone else in the United States seem to be collateral damage. Unfortunately, I think this is a done deal. The legislation REAL ID is attached to must pass, and it will pass. Which means REAL ID will become law. But it can be fought in other ways: via funding, in the courts, etc. Those seriously interested in this issue are invited to attend an EPIC-sponsored event in Washington, DC, on the topic on June 6th. I'll be there. [Schneier on Security] It's not at all surprising that this is being snuck through attached to an unrelated bill. Stealth has long been the favored method of passing laws that are unpopular with the majority of voters. 9:59:48 AM    comment ()

© Copyright 2006 Ken Hagler. Last update: 2/15/2006; 2:05:13 PM.