Border Security

I crossed the border from Canada to the US last weekend, as I have done every February since 2004. Notably, I started making this annual trek well after 9/11. Every year, it gets more annoying.

The first year we made the crossing, we waited in line about 10 minutes, we drove up to the border agent, who greeted us with a smile and looked at our licenses. "Where'd you go skiing?" he asked, as the purpose of our trip to Canada was obvious by the presence of the ski rack and three pairs of skis on top of our car. We told him where we'd been (Whistler), he welcomed us home, and we were on our way. (I should note that we always cross at Aldergrove, a small crossing due north of Bellingham, rather than at the Peace Arch, where I-5 crosses.)

This year, again at Aldergrove, we waited in line 40 minutes. The border agent took our licenses and stepped back in his booth momentarily. Back out, he asked where we'd been, how long, and what the purpose of our trip had been (no smiles and questions about skiing, though the ski rack and skis were just as prominent on our car.)

He then asked for our daughters birth certificate, which we produced. We've always carried it, but never had to show it before this trip. He examined it, then asked my husband and I where in Tennessee we'd be born. That's when the whole absurdity of the situation put me on a slow boil. There's a 40-minute line of cars behind us, we're obviously a family returning from a ski trip, and asking us what city in Tennessee we'd been born is supposed to somehow screen out terrorists and illegal aliens? Would this border agent 3000 miles from either of those cities even know if those cities actually existed in Tennessee? Is it supposed to be some sort of question to screen out the enemy, like in old TV shows where they were always asking the potential prisoner of war who won the World Series last year?

I know this probably seems like an overreaction, but I'm just tired of the rampant paranoia in American life these days. I'm tired of taking my shoes off at airports. I'm tired of making sure my toiletries are in 3 oz bottles that all fit in a quart-sized clear Ziploc bag. And I don't like being grilled by a surly border agent at the end of my vacation.

Welcome home, indeed.

Could They Really Be That Stupid?

I always try to keep in mind the saying "Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity." However, when it comes to the US misadventures in the Middle East, it's been hard for me to believe that the administration could possibly be that stupid, so I've tended to look for malicious explanations.

But maybe they really are just that stupid. It seems inconceivable to me that anyone could have ever thought that invading Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein would have resulted in a stable government friendly to US interests being installed. Before the invasion, even though it seemed clear that the administration really was going to do it, I couldn't understand what they really thought they would accomplish. Two outcomes seemed inevitable to me: a bloody civil war would erupt, and Iran's influence in the region would increase. Even if the neo-cons didn't care about the former, surely the latter was problematic for them.

I really haven't been able to come up even with malicious justifications that would seem to fit the circumstances, and this article by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker pushes me back to the stupidity side. Evidently, the warmongers in the administration really did believe that because Iraqi Shi'ites had been so repressed and persecuted under Saddam Hussein, if the US got rid of Hussein, those Shi'ites would ally with the US rather than their co-religionists in Iran. This seems incredible to me, but I suppose that if you ignore a bunch of history and squinch your eyes just right, you can make a certain kind of sense of it. The major leap you have to make is to assume that Iraqis have a sense of national identity that is more important than their tribal or religious identity.

If you only look at the world through American glasses, and assume that everyone's experience is just like yours, I suppose you can make that leap. You'd have to assume that arbitrary boundaries imposed by external powers held together by a brutal dictator would inspire a sense of loyalty, a "my country, right or wrong" mentality, but if you're already the type to equate criticism of policy with treason to country, I suppose that's not too big a leap. You'd also have to assume that because said brutal dictator fought a bitter war with neighbor Iran, Iraqi Shi'ites woulc also hate Iran. Remember, we're talking stupidity, here.

I know no one would ever mistake President Bush for a well-read, historically-aware kind of guy, but surely, I thought, there are others in the administration who aren't as ignorant. Evidence suggests, though, that stupidity really does reign.

The Smell Test

The administration seems to be counting on the fact that most Americans (or for that matter, most members of government) don't know the difference between Sunnis and Shi'a. Recent news stories have the administration claiming that Iran is providing arms to Shi'ite extremists to kill Americans. But who are we fighting in Iraq?

I'll admit that it's hard to tell who's on which side in the quaqmire that is Iraq; toppling Saddam Hussein created a power vacuum, and there are multiple groups trying to fill various parts of it. But the insurgency, those "dead-enders" in their "last throes", as our Vice President has called them, are Sunni. Saddam Hussein and his supporters, the Ba'athists, were Sunni. There's little doubt that Iran would prefer a Shi'ite government in Iraq; it was obvious before this little adventure began that the most likely outcome was that Iran would gain more influence in Iraq. The current government in Iraq is led by a Shiite faction, who are supposedly our allies, the ones we're trying to get to stand up so we can stand down.

It wouldn't be surprising if Iran were arming one or more of the Shiite factions, and I'm sure that Iran wants the US to leave Iraq. But if any country in the Middle East is supplying explosive devices and money and arms that are killing Americans, it's more than likely Saudi Arabia. You remember Saudi Arabia, don't you? The majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.

A significant part of the reason that the Middle East is such a mess is that Western powers have never bothered to learn anything about the distinctions among Middle Easterners. The current administration seems determined to just blow the whole place up, and hope that the result is more friendly to the US and keeps the oil flowing to us and not China. In addition to being immoral, such a strategy seems unlikely to actually win us any friends in that part of the world.

Controlling the Story

The Republicans do an amazing job of controlling the stories that show up in our media. They pounce on some little something that they can distort and exaggerate and turn into a pseudo-scandal, and shout about it until the media pay attention and ignore bigger stories. Which do you think is a bigger, more important story - Nancy Pelosi needing a bigger military aircraft than Dennis Hastert, or that $4.3 billion of cash was shipped off to Iraq on pallets, and nobody seems to have any idea where it went? Which one is getting more coverage?

Searching "Pelosi plane" on Google News results in over 900 hits; "cash pallets" under 300. Why do reporters let themselves get manipulated like this?