Freedom is on the march everywhere. In my town, starting today you can look just about anywhere and smile into the camera. A friendly Homeland Security employee will take note. Feel free to give the “thumbs up” sign—they love that.

I am hoping all the cameras will be clearly visible and labeled, with a blinking red light. I want to make sure they catch my good side.

Voice offstage: “Mayday! Mayday!”
Second voice: “May Day?”
Third voice: “Get those two …”

I’m struggling with seeing the deployment of cameras in our local villages as being a benefit to policing. If it’s in our villages—are we really moving towards an Orwellian situation with cameras on every street corner? I really don’t think that’s the kind of country that I want to live in.

If it weren’t for his use of the term villages,* you might think it’s some “card-carrying member of the ACLU.” No, the speaker is Ian Readhead, the Deputy Chief Constable of Hampshire—the original, not the New one. He’s also the chairman of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ data protection group. In other words, he’s a cop, and he’s worried about the surveillance society being created in Great Britain.

According to the Wall Street Journal, there are at least 500,000 surveillance cameras in London, and the paper cited a study saying that “in a single day a person could expect to be filmed 300 times.”

Video surveillance in public places has not reached this level in the United States (as far as we know**) and its effectiveness has been convincingly disputed. Yet despite the obvious potential for mischief and misuse, there is no shortage of politicians and government officials pushing surveillance of law-abiding citizens as a tool in the so-called global war on terror.

We need more Ian Readheads.
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*I don’t think we have “villages” in the United States anymore, do we? I mean, if we do (if it’s part of a municipality’s official name— “The Village of Lombard,” or some such), we don’t actually call them villages—at least I don’t. We call them towns. A “village” in 21st century America is more likely to be a shopping experience, I’m sorry to say.
**Are there really only 15 surveillance cameras in public places in the District of Columbia? (Those would belong to the DC Metropolitan Police. We have a few other law enforcement agencies operating here, to put it mildly.)

“Looks like a bomb t’me. Whaddya think, Mick?”
“Yuh, could be. Better blow id up just in case.”

Indeed, Rumsfeld’s dominance of the cabinet and the Bush administration may have guaranteed that America chose the entirely wrong paradigm for the past five years. Notwithstanding the spectacular violence of the Sept. 11 attacks, America might have done better had it not chosen a war paradigm to fight terrorism and instead chosen to employ a comprehensive array of diplomatic, intelligence, military, and law enforcement approaches. Doing so might have encouraged more of our allies to stand by our side. It might also have put America on a better footing to sustain its efforts for what promises to be a generational struggle against terrorism.

Gee, ya think?

It would be great if we (meaning people in a position to influence policy—in other words, they) could train this sort of clear-headed thinking on the present—i.e., flip hindsight into foresight.

But after 9/11, would the braying punditocracy and the M/I/M* complex have permitted anything other than out-and-out war? Is it inevitable that an attack, or a perceived threat of attack, or a bad night’s sleep of attack—or the succubus of world domination—will unleash the dogs of war? It need not be. But how can a “drumbeat of peace” be kept up, so that it takes a huge effort to convince us that war makes sense?

US Rep. Dennis Kucinich and others have pushed for a Department of Peace. It apparently strikes most people as a soft-headed. It is actually the opposite. But it requires memory. And the sad fact is, remembering is hard work. And it requires humility. You’d think that would be easy for a predominantly self-professed Christian nation.
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*Military/industrial/media.

On the eve of the well-orchestrated memorials, which seemed better suited to ratcheting up fear than bucking up spirits, Bill Maher struck a discordant note. He said it’s his patriotic duty to mock George W. Bush:

New rule: Bad presidents happen to good people. Amid all the 9/11 anniversary talk about what will keep us safe, let me suggest that in a world turned hostile to America, the smartest message we can send to those beyond our shores is, “We’re not with stupid.” Therefore, I contend—with all seriousness—that ridiculing this president is now the most patriotic thing you can do. Let our allies and our enemies alike know that there’s a whole swath of Americans desperate to distance themselves from Bush’s foreign policies. And that’s just Republicans running for reelection.

Part of me agrees, of course, but part of me is uncomfortable with mockery as a method of political discourse. More importantly, though, it’s not just George Bush. To get personal is to fall in the trap set by the mainstream culture. You vote for the candidate you’d prefer to watch a football game with. Don’t waste time investigating the forces at work, the deals being made—the real game being played. If you like the way the guy talks, or walks, or winks at you, go ahead and vote him into the most powerful office in the land.

That said, I simply have to post this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m being disingenuous here. I recall perfectly well it was John Kerry who articulated the “police work” idea during the campaign of 2004. He was roundly ridiculed by Cheney/Bush and their enablers in the media— “John Kerry is a big pansy who doesn’t understand we’re at war,” etc. No, the problem was, I couldn’t seem to track it down (i.e., a few minutes of Googling left me high and dry).

Well, here comes (God forgive me!) George Will to the rescue. Here’s the relevant excerpt from his column:

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.” The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry’s belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that “many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror.” In a candidates’ debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be “occasionally military,” it is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world.”

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a “senior administration official,” insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:

“The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren’t for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It’s like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn’t work.”

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike “the law enforcement approach,” does “work.”

My, my, my. It seems only the delusional are left to support Cheney/Bush in their Iraq misadventure and their saber-rattling over Iran and Syria. The folks at Media Matters for America wonder whether we can expect vicious attacks on Will from the administration and the right-wing talking heads, questioning his love of country and his sanity. ( ”Why does George Will hate America?” )

Don’t hold your breath. George Will is still basically on board with the “conventional wise men.” Billmon addresses (read: demolishes) the rest of Will’s article, which wasn’t germane to the point I was making and is standard Will fare.

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

Writing at Slate, Shmuel Rosner shares some thoughts about the proposed fence along the US–Mexican border drawing on the Israeli experience with their own 400-mile wall. He properly focuses not on the technology but on the human relations:

When Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano declares, “You show me a 50-foot wall, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border,” the answer is fairly straightforward: You show me a 51-foot ladder, and I’ll show you a guardsman standing on the other side of the wall waiting to arrest the person using it. The fence is not the only thing keeping people from entering. The fence has just two objectives: slowing the intruders and making them visible to members of the border patrol. The rest of the work is done by human beings.

And generally speaking, this is the biggest lesson. It’s not the fence, stupid—it is the decisions that the planners make. How tough are you willing to be with illegals? How much money do you want to spend? How important is it to maintain good relations with the towns on the Mexican side of the border? How sympathetic are you to would-be border crossers’ needs and desires?

The more you answer these questions the Israeli way, the more unbeatable your fence will be. But don’t forget: Years of terror attacks hardened Israelis’ hearts toward their neighbors (just as years of occupation hardened Palestinians’ hearts toward Israelis). This brought them to a point where they were ready to do whatever it took to make the bloodshed stop. So, here’s an easy way to figure out if an American fence will work: Measure the anger and despair. Has it grown big enough to make that same commitment?

Back to our friend Bob Frost:

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

Soon the talk passes from trees to cows, and then to elves—things that perambulate and might justify a wall. But still—Bob was being ironic. Wasn’t he? Are Canadians bad neighbors?

While I’m at it, I’ll let a bloggy smile turn into a good laugh (“stuart”’s comment)—as long as I don’t tip my chair back too far and end up on the floor.