The protests and attention given to Ferguson MO in recent days have nothing to do with what happened there and everything to do with the wide and varied history of racial tension in the United States. That said, examining what occurred may yield some important lessons.
The police believed Michael Brown, a young black man, had stolen a small amount of tobacco from a nearby store. Brown was at the window of a police car with officer Darren Wilson inside. A scuffle broke out which resulted in Brown initially being shot. Brown moved away from the police car injured. Then he either attempted to raise his hands and surrender or began to aggressively approach Wilson again at which point he was shot until dead.
In a case where a police officer was involved in a physical fight with an adversary, I find it hard to believe that the use of deadly force constituted an offense under current norms.
What seems clear however is that Wilson used far more power than necessary throughout the encounter. Potentially lethal force need not necessarily be the answer to a fist fight nor need an approach by an injured adversary trigger sudden death. The problem then is probably not officer Wilson's actions but rather standard procedure. Quite simply the police have a duty to avoid deaths, even of those who they believe to be bad. In the US cops are armed even while directing traffic which smacks of an excessive comfort with the use of guns. Police forces ought to be trained and equipped differently.
Nobody can prove that Wilson would not have shot Brown if he were of a different race and the protests that have sprung up as a result of this seem more inclined towards unleashing anger at the perceived state of affairs than advocating for any kind of change.
These protests show the grimmest picture of recent events. Rioting as well as the damage and occupation of others' property have no place in any society. Like any other matter this present case must be investigated individually without assumptions from countless other cases of racial tension leading to a pre-determined verdict. What is necessary is an organized process of discussing ways to prevent what occurred and patience waiting on an investigation. Nothing justifies public violence and a muscular response to restore order is inherently necessary. It's a bit of a bity that for all the anger over race in the United States nobody is discussing how to fix it.
Wednesday, August 20, 2014
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Which Whackos?
The President just ordered military action in northern Iraq along with the dispensation of humanitarian assistance. This is in reaction to recent actions by ISIS fighters. Basically ISIS were the strongest group of rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al Assad. ISIS are radical Sunnis whereas Assad's government is made up of Alawite Shiites. The border between Syria and Iraq is largely porous desert and ISIS had likely been shuttling resources across it for quite some time, probably with a determined blind eye shown by the US back in those days when Assad was the bad guy and ISIS were the good guys (we called them the Syrian rebels back then). As the front lines in Syria stabilized ISIS turned their attention to Iraq. Meanwhile the US had badly screwed up Iraq. Remember W and the whole Saddam has WMD thing? Of course the country had been run by a minority Sunni dictator and as soon as voting was allowed the Shiites elected their own man. Of course the Shiites wanted to punish the Sunnis, the Sunnis didn't like going from oppressed to oppressors, and the non-Muslim Kurds saw a chance to take action towards forming the state they'd always wanted to. Naturally the years that followed were...unpleasant.
As the situation stabilized Nouri Al Maliki, the Shiite in power, saw that the US was presenting him from oppressing the Sunnis. So he played the democratic leader card and told the US to get out. Barack Obama wasn't going to cause a diplomatic controversy to stay in Iraq. So then Maliki started to tighten the screws on Iraq's Sunnis. When Sunni ISIS started pouring over the border into the Sunni regions of Iraq chafing under Maliki's Shiite rule they naturally welcomed them. It all reminds me of some of the speeches various statesman (are said to) give to the Athenian people in Thucydides Peloponnesian War; basically these leaders urge the Athenians to aggressively oppress and enslave many weaker poleis because if they don't dominate others then others will dominate the Athenians. Whither this course is right or wrong doesn't appear in the logic of the orators either due to their own thought process or more likely that of the Athenian people.
Anyway ISIS quickly took over the mostly Sunni parts of the country but seemed to have no luck advancing into the Shiite center of the country. The western media had been publishing anticipatory stories about ISIS taking Baghdad and, when this did not promptly happen, sort of forgot about them. Instead of continuing along the line of the Tigris, ISIS turned its advance west towards Kurdistan. Kurdistan had been semi-autonomous as a result of US efforts and the Kurds had taken Kirkuk and a number of oil fields in the confusion of the initial ISIS invasion. Now cut off from the Shiite government in Baghdad they are for all practical importance an independent state. Kurdish peshmerga fighters who were supposed to be formidable, were quickly pushed back by ISIS likely as a result of ISIS' fighters being battle hardened by fighting in Syria unlike the Kurds whose recent conditions had been comparably peaceful. As Kurdish forces rapidly fell back, various minorities sheltering under their protection become exposed. Although Iraq's only Christian settlement was recently destroyed, most attention has been focused on a religious group called the Yazidis whose doctrine seems to be a typically near eastern fusion of Zoroastrian and Abrahamic dogmas. They wound up trapped on a mountain. The US parachuted food and water down to them and launched airstrikes against ISIS allowing the Kurds to advance. Recently Maliki has called troops into Baghdad to protect himself against parliament and the new Iraqi president who are trying to remove him at the behest of the US.
So who are the good guys? ISIS being Sunni comes from broadly the same block as Saddam Hussein, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE et cetera some of whom have played an important role in bankrolling the group. Meanwhile Assad and the Shiites in Iraq including (until recently) Maliki are both backed by Shiite Iran as is Hezbollah. The Kurds in Iraq are naturally connected to those in Turkey who have historically posed a military threat to that NATO ally which is Sunni and so semi-sympathetic to the Saudi block. Neither list is one all of our enemies or friends. It does speak to the utility of Israel as an ally whose isolation at least means that it doesn't involve such twisty affiliations.
Anyway we need to put pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program which means weakening Assad and the Shiites in Iraq which is exactly what ISIS does which is why we were/are so big on their operations on the Syrian side of the border while vehemently opposed to the mess they've exposed in Iraq. Backing them however would lead to further instability and genocide as well as attacks on the west as ISIS is basically a hideous al Qaeda offshoot that is posting photos of mass killings on social media. So which side do we back?
This is why our best course would be to avid getting involved in the Middle East at all. The expansion of fracking means that the Middle East is useful for nothing at all strategically at a time when mass military provocation and small scale violence between China and its neighbors in East Asia could set of a conflict. Any sort of conflict over there military or not threatens to maul major stock indexes and seriously injure the global economy. In light of that seeking employ significant resources in the Middle East seems foolhardy. There is space for minor actions such as the occasional airstrike, the use of drones, and aid. There is also good reason for backing Israel as it is an ally because it lacks a dangerous ideology or undesirable commitments as well as possessing a developed economy. Beyond the buzzing of a few drones however, it would be prudent to aviod becoming entangled in the region. Why, remember we nearly gave weapons and a no-fly zone to ISIS and now we are having to act against them who are anyways using US equippement given to the Iraqi army and captured by them. Now think about arming the Kurds, how long until we regret that?
As the situation stabilized Nouri Al Maliki, the Shiite in power, saw that the US was presenting him from oppressing the Sunnis. So he played the democratic leader card and told the US to get out. Barack Obama wasn't going to cause a diplomatic controversy to stay in Iraq. So then Maliki started to tighten the screws on Iraq's Sunnis. When Sunni ISIS started pouring over the border into the Sunni regions of Iraq chafing under Maliki's Shiite rule they naturally welcomed them. It all reminds me of some of the speeches various statesman (are said to) give to the Athenian people in Thucydides Peloponnesian War; basically these leaders urge the Athenians to aggressively oppress and enslave many weaker poleis because if they don't dominate others then others will dominate the Athenians. Whither this course is right or wrong doesn't appear in the logic of the orators either due to their own thought process or more likely that of the Athenian people.
Anyway ISIS quickly took over the mostly Sunni parts of the country but seemed to have no luck advancing into the Shiite center of the country. The western media had been publishing anticipatory stories about ISIS taking Baghdad and, when this did not promptly happen, sort of forgot about them. Instead of continuing along the line of the Tigris, ISIS turned its advance west towards Kurdistan. Kurdistan had been semi-autonomous as a result of US efforts and the Kurds had taken Kirkuk and a number of oil fields in the confusion of the initial ISIS invasion. Now cut off from the Shiite government in Baghdad they are for all practical importance an independent state. Kurdish peshmerga fighters who were supposed to be formidable, were quickly pushed back by ISIS likely as a result of ISIS' fighters being battle hardened by fighting in Syria unlike the Kurds whose recent conditions had been comparably peaceful. As Kurdish forces rapidly fell back, various minorities sheltering under their protection become exposed. Although Iraq's only Christian settlement was recently destroyed, most attention has been focused on a religious group called the Yazidis whose doctrine seems to be a typically near eastern fusion of Zoroastrian and Abrahamic dogmas. They wound up trapped on a mountain. The US parachuted food and water down to them and launched airstrikes against ISIS allowing the Kurds to advance. Recently Maliki has called troops into Baghdad to protect himself against parliament and the new Iraqi president who are trying to remove him at the behest of the US.
So who are the good guys? ISIS being Sunni comes from broadly the same block as Saddam Hussein, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE et cetera some of whom have played an important role in bankrolling the group. Meanwhile Assad and the Shiites in Iraq including (until recently) Maliki are both backed by Shiite Iran as is Hezbollah. The Kurds in Iraq are naturally connected to those in Turkey who have historically posed a military threat to that NATO ally which is Sunni and so semi-sympathetic to the Saudi block. Neither list is one all of our enemies or friends. It does speak to the utility of Israel as an ally whose isolation at least means that it doesn't involve such twisty affiliations.
Anyway we need to put pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program which means weakening Assad and the Shiites in Iraq which is exactly what ISIS does which is why we were/are so big on their operations on the Syrian side of the border while vehemently opposed to the mess they've exposed in Iraq. Backing them however would lead to further instability and genocide as well as attacks on the west as ISIS is basically a hideous al Qaeda offshoot that is posting photos of mass killings on social media. So which side do we back?
This is why our best course would be to avid getting involved in the Middle East at all. The expansion of fracking means that the Middle East is useful for nothing at all strategically at a time when mass military provocation and small scale violence between China and its neighbors in East Asia could set of a conflict. Any sort of conflict over there military or not threatens to maul major stock indexes and seriously injure the global economy. In light of that seeking employ significant resources in the Middle East seems foolhardy. There is space for minor actions such as the occasional airstrike, the use of drones, and aid. There is also good reason for backing Israel as it is an ally because it lacks a dangerous ideology or undesirable commitments as well as possessing a developed economy. Beyond the buzzing of a few drones however, it would be prudent to aviod becoming entangled in the region. Why, remember we nearly gave weapons and a no-fly zone to ISIS and now we are having to act against them who are anyways using US equippement given to the Iraqi army and captured by them. Now think about arming the Kurds, how long until we regret that?
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Governance in the East and West
For the first time since the collapse of Communism in 89-91 a good deal of debate is going into the superiority of different systems of government most recently:http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/05/opinion/david-brooks-the-battle-of-the-regimes.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0. Here David Brooks asserts that there is an ongoing battle between "centralized authoritarian capitalism and decentralized liberal democratic capitalism"; and he then proceeds to list the achievements of the former and failings of the latter before suggesting that more creative entrepreneurs are necessary to defend the current Western system.
This is extraordinarily misguided thinking. In places' like California's Silicon Valley, famed for their creative culture and prosperity, dissatisfaction with the US government abounds as it does in more economically depressed places. Following from this example, there is little reason to think that similar success would lead to support for Western style government in Brooks' example of Africa.
The fact of the matter is that Western governments are not only losing their competition with the Eastern alternative identified by Brooks and others but are failing and suffering from fundamental flaws. What has become clear is that the system which defeated Communism and that we Westerners have been taught as much by faith as reason is failing.
The problem then is not that states like China and Singapore have hit upon a golden model. Their faults such as corruption and lack of creative thought are something most Western thinkers can list today. The problem is not that they are succeeding but that decentralized liberal democratic capitalism is failing. If Western states are to compete they cannot defend traditional systems on faith and worn out arguments. Rather it is time, for the first time in generations, to rethink many of our fundamental ideas about the composition and role of government.
This is extraordinarily misguided thinking. In places' like California's Silicon Valley, famed for their creative culture and prosperity, dissatisfaction with the US government abounds as it does in more economically depressed places. Following from this example, there is little reason to think that similar success would lead to support for Western style government in Brooks' example of Africa.
The fact of the matter is that Western governments are not only losing their competition with the Eastern alternative identified by Brooks and others but are failing and suffering from fundamental flaws. What has become clear is that the system which defeated Communism and that we Westerners have been taught as much by faith as reason is failing.
The problem then is not that states like China and Singapore have hit upon a golden model. Their faults such as corruption and lack of creative thought are something most Western thinkers can list today. The problem is not that they are succeeding but that decentralized liberal democratic capitalism is failing. If Western states are to compete they cannot defend traditional systems on faith and worn out arguments. Rather it is time, for the first time in generations, to rethink many of our fundamental ideas about the composition and role of government.
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