The Smoking Gun and Miami Herald report that a Miami International Airport TSA worker has been arrested for beating up a co-worker who joked about his endowment after observing the assailant walk through a whole-body imager or “strip-search machine.”

Herat, Afghanistan—Malou Innocent and I have escaped Kabul for the much more pleasant city of Herat, in northwest Afghanistan near Iran and Turkmenistan. We haven’t left all of Afghanistan’s many problems behind, but the atmosphere here is far different than in Kabul.

Set in a wide plain, Herat played an important historic role as part of the “Silk Road,” the famed Asian trading route. Although captured by the victorious Taliban, Herat showed little sympathy for its new overlords. After its liberation the city suffered from the domination of “warlord” Ismail Khan, but sprouts of liberalism increasingly can be seen in Herat. For instance, though women are expected to cover their hair, women’s organizations have proliferated and gained public acceptance.

Violence is minimal, though an RPG attack six months ago effectively shut down what had been the city’s only five-star hotel, transformed into offices for Westerners. Set on a hill dramatically overlooking the city, the building offered too tempting a target.

Tight security is evident at the airport, hotels, government buildings, and NGO offices. But there are far fewer armed police on the streets, machine gun-topped Humvees at intersections, and fortress-like buildings. Most concrete goes to construction rather than barriers. Barbed wire is used sparingly, not by the mile, as in Kabul.

The international presence is strong, but not as overwhelming as in the capital. We generated a lot of attention when we were on the street. Most reactions were positive. Children wanted their pictures taken with us; students wanted to practice their English; adults wanted to introduce themselves. We exercised caution and were closely guarded, but never felt the sense of persistent menace as in Kabul.

Most humbling was meeting with human rights activists. Our cultures differ dramatically in some regards, but what most Afghans desire is not much different than what Americans want: peace and prosperity, freedom and opportunity. Evident on the street are the strong family and friendship ties that underlie Afghan society. A number of people have stepped out heroically in an attempt to build a better society. 

The consistent frustration of these activists is the Afghan government. Corruption is pervasive; the police cannot be trusted. While people disagree over America’s future role, virtually everyone desires a more effective, representative, and honest Afghan government. And many of them believe that requires less, rather than more, international “aid.”

Malou and I have a few more days in Afghanistan, and another city to visit. So far it has been a fascinating and challenging visit. Many hard decisions must be made to reorient U.S. policy. Among the hardest of those decisions must be made regarding Afghanistan.

Sens. Joe Lieberman (I‑CT) and Scott Brown (R‑MA), joined on the House side by Reps. Jason Altmire (D‑PA) and Charlie Dent (R‑PA), today introduced a little publicity stunt in legislative form called the Terrorist Expatriation Act, making good on Lieberman’s pledge to find a way to strip the citizenship of Americans—whether naturalized or native born—who are suspected of aiding terrorist groups. It does so by amending the Immigration and Nationality Act, which lays out the various conditions under which a person may renounce or be deprived of citizenship. 

A couple things to note about this:

First, the act as it stands now contains a provision that could probably be used to revoke the citizenship of terrorists. One of the ways to trigger the loss of citizenship is by:

committing any act of treason against, or attempting by force to overthrow, or bearing arms against, the United States, violating or conspiring to violate any of the provisions of section 2383 of title 18, or willfully performing any act in violation of section 2385 of title 18, or violating section 2384 of title 18 by engaging in a conspiracy to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them…

So why isn’t this enough to satisfy them? Well, I left off the very end of the clause:

if and when he is convicted thereof by a court martial or by a court of competent jurisdiction.

Needless to say, actually “bearing arms against the United States” is a rather more serious offense than providing “material support” for terrorist groups. Indeed, someone who knowingly provides funding or “expert assistance” (including legal or humanitarian aid) to a designated group may, under current law, be guilty of providing “material support.” Yet these more serious acts of betrayal still require that someone be convicted in court before the penalty of expatriation can be imposed. If they want to revoke Faisal Shahzad’s citizenship, they can do it already: just convict him of one of those offenses.

Another clause of the existing law provides that someone who joins a foreign military may, indeed, lose their citizenship without being convicted of anything. But as a subsequent section of the statute makes clear, citizenship can’t be revoked on these grounds while the person remains in the United States. They have to actually, physically “go over to the other side” and take up residence abroad. So again, the assumption is that someone residing in the U.S., and therefore subject to apprehension and trial, ought in fact to be tried before such a drastic step is taken, even if we’re prepared to skip the trial when someone is actually overseas and marching about in an enemy uniform.

Finally, note that the bill’s definition of “material support” for terrorist groups explicitly invokes the criminal statute covering such actions. Which is to say, revocation of citizenship under the new bill is triggered by committing a particular federal crime. Except that the Immigration and Nationality Act only requires that one of the predicates for revocation be established by a “preponderance of the evidence.” So in effect, the bill takes what is already a crime and says: Proof of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” is no longer a prerequisite for the imposition of punishment for this crime. 

What a convenient end-run around that pesky due process! Just think how we could reduce the burden on our courts by doing this for all sorts of crimes!

After another fascinating day in Abu Dhabi, which included a visit to the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque (the picture can’t do it justice) and the more-than-5-star Emirates Palace Hotel, we rose early this morning and traveled the short distance (about 90 minutes on the highway) to the second largest emirate, Dubai.

The visit began with a visit to the enormous DP World facility at the Jebel Ali port, one of the most active in the world. Millions of tons, chiefly goods in 20-foot container boxes, move through this facility every year. DP World remains one of the stronger subsidiaries in the troubled Dubai World’s portfolio, and the company and that first visit became a metaphor for the day: Dubai has had its difficulties, but the fundamentals that drove its spectacular growth over the past few decades remain strong. Dubai is located at a crossroads — both strategically and economically. It is leveraging this geographic advantage through investments in infrastructure — from the port expansion, to the just opened metro, to a massive new airport that is still under construction — in the hope of attracting and retaining entrepeneurs and capital. And it continues to celebrate its tolerance and openness, which it hopes can be a model for the region.

Senior officials spoke frankly about their slow response, particularly their inadequate communications, surrounding Dubai World’s debt payments. They understand the value in greater transparency and oversight, but are reluctant to institute sweeping new regulations that might impede their recovery.

But they also sought to correct the record about the actual state of Dubai’s economy. Judging from some news stories, I was expecting to see hundreds of abandoned skyscrapers, cars left unattended on the highway, and tumbleweeds rolling through the city streets. The reality was considerably less dire. There are some building projects that appear to be on hold (cranes not moving, no workers milling about), and traffic on the wide highways is not particularly heavy, but there is still considerable activity both at the port and in the downtown area. Meanwhile, during a visit to the Mall of the Emirates this evening (the one with an indoor ski slope) I found relatively few vacant storefronts (no worse, for example, than what I’ve seen in Northern Virginia).

Anecdotes are one thing; key questions remain. It is difficult to get a read on the actual statistics. And it appears that senior officials in Dubai still don’t know the true gap between the value of Dubai World’s assets and its liabilities.

Meanwhile, just as in Abu Dhabi, there are anxieties associated with Iran’s rising power. This was the other key theme of today’s meetings. Senior officials pointed to their compliance with existing UN sanctions that prohibit the sale of certain materials that might be useful in Iran’s nuclear program. They stressed that they would support additional UN sanctions. But while they are want desperately to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the repercussions of military action against Iran would hit Dubai the hardest. The very attributes that make the emirate so attractive to enterpreneurs and tourists would evaporate in the event of war. Beyond the lives lost in retaliatory actions throughout the region, capital would seek out other safer investments. Tourists can choose many other places to visit. Or they can just stay home.

I certainly hope it doesn’t come to that. No one does. There is great potential for Dubai (and Abu Dhabi) to serve as a model for the region. The international character of this place is almost impossible to describe, but I’ll close with one more anecdote. When I flipped on the television, I could watch cricket, two soccer games, handball, or ultimate fighting. I could also watch a movie about tennis in English. Or “Meet the Fockers” with Arabic subtitles. World news in Farsi. Financial news in German or Italian. Movies in Chinese, Korean or French. I could go on.

Tomorrow we’re hoping to visit the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, and then off to Riyadh in the evening.

Washington, DC is a company town, and the company is the federal government. Between the executive branch, the Congress, the Supreme Court and all the rent-seekers and hangers-on that come to court power, the city is a veritable petri dish that breeds and nurtures the worst human impulses. Some Cato people live here, too.

Local politics in DC is so dominated by Democrats that the Republican Party in DC is a perennial butt of jokes. Between its role as the seat of the federal government and the Democratic Party’s Turkmenbashi-level control of local government, it is a city that conservatives love to hate.

Across the river in Virginia, by contrast, there are lots of Republicans, and they are still able to compete against the Democrats statewide. Lots of Republican politicians in Virginia sing sweet songs about the dangers of big government and hold themselves out as the true holders of the limited government faith. But it sure would be nice if they could spit the teat out of their own mouths while they warble:

Ten cents of every federal procurement dollar spent anywhere on Earth is spent in Virginia. More than 15,000 Virginia companies hold federal contracts, a number that has almost tripled since 2001. Total federal spending — from salaries to outsourced contracts — has more than doubled, to $118 billion, since 2000, as homeland security and defense spending skyrocketed in response to the 2001 terrorist attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By 2008, it accounted for about 30 percent of Virginia’s entire economy.

Federal dollars have filtered through the rest of the economy, too, helping to build the high-tech Dulles corridor and funding new homes and cars for federal workers and contractors and meals at local restaurants. The billions have helped fuel the economic boom cycles of the past decade and have cushioned the blow of the recent recession, particularly in Northern Virginia, where the unemployment rate has stayed stubbornly below 6 percent, less than the state and national rates.

[…]

[caption align=right]

Good Spending[/caption]

In an interview, [Governor Bob] McDonnell acknowledged last week that federal per-capital spending is high in Virginia. And it is true, he said, that most of Northrop Grumman’s business comes from the government. But he said the company’s business is largely defense-related, including shipbuilding in the Newport News area.

“I call that good investment and good federal spending,” he said.

He said the government must restrain spending in other areas — entitlements, earmarks and “other kinds of pork projects.”

Note that McDonnell’s definition of “good” versus “bad” spending seems either to be determined by potential lethality or by location in his state. As the article points out, “defense spending accounts for 900,000 Virginia jobs, close to one in five in the state.” Moreover, McDonnell makes no argument about why we need to prepare to fight China, which makes up the bulk of the justification for the Northrop project in Newport News. (Which, by the way, is an awesome sight, in a literal sense, but also terribly wasteful.)

Moreover, you could zero out “pork” and earmarks tomorrow and while morally satisfying, it would not come even close to filling in the giant hole our rulers in Washington have dug. And as for entitlements? By all means, let’s take a scythe to them. Except a recent Economist/​YouGov poll asked the question “If government spending is reduced in order to cut the budget, which of the following government programs should receive lower federal funding than they currently do?” Seven percent ticked the “Medicare” box, seven percent ticked “Social Security” and 11 percent ticked “Medicaid.” In fairness to McDonnell, only 22 percent selected “national defense” and there was only one item, foreign aid, that won a majority.

If getting the deficit fixed means relying entirely on cutting pork, earmarks, and entitlements, the picture is grim. Defense spending needs to be on the table. Even the parts in Virginia.

The attempted bombing in Times Square brought terrorism and the capabilities of surveillance cameras to the top of the headlines this week. As I pointed out in my Politico piece, cameras have not proven an effective deterrent to terrorist attacks. Cameras are generally useful in piecing together the plot after the attack (not so much in this case, since police were looking for a middle-aged white man and not a young Pakistani male) and helped in this capacity in the Madrid, London, and Moscow commuter system bombings.

I discuss the usefulness of cameras in this podcast:

Whether cameras are helpful enough to justify massive spending to install more of them in New York is another matter. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly seems to think so, even though it’s already been the site of significant surveillance funding from the federal government. Steve Chapman remains skeptical of them, and former NYPD counterterrorism cop Michael Sheehan is honest enough to admit that their value is in investigating attacks, not deterring them. London has a million cameras, making it the most heavily-surveilled city this side of Pyongyang. Though sold on a joint counterterrorism-crime rationale, they did not deter the 7/7 bombings and roughly 80% of crime in London goes unsolved. Of the cleared cases, roughly one in a thousand is a camera success story.

As Roger Pilon points out, cameras are useful in law enforcement operations outside of blanket surveillance. They can deter excessive use of force and other unlawful conduct by police officers or at least provide a means of punishing those responsible, as they did in the recent beating of University of Maryland student. Police officers realize this, and actively deter filming their questionable activities.

A camera is an honest cop’s best friend. It can provide a defense against groundless claims of brutality. At least eleven states and 500 local jurisdictions require that interrogations be videotaped. Beyond the protection of civil liberties and preventing false or coerced confessions, these videos make for highly probative evidence. The jury gets a window into the interrogation room. The defendant’s mannerisms, demeanor, and a lack of police coercion tied to the defendant’s statements make for good, and more transparent, policing.

Businessweek has a story quoting a former federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, Michael Wildes, speculating that Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square bomber, made so many mistakes (leaving his house keys in the car, not knowing about the vehicle identification number, making calls from his cellphone, getting filmed, buying the car himself) that he may be the “dumbest terrorist in the world.” But Wildes can’t accept the idea that an al Qaeda type terrorist would be so incompetent and suggests that Shahzad was “purposefully hapless” to generate intelligence about the police reaction for the edification of his buddies back in Pakistan.

Give me a break. This incompetence is hardly unprecedented. Three years ago Bruce Schneier wrote an article titled “Portrait of the Modern Terrorist as an Idiot,” describing the incompetence of several would-be al Qaeda plots in the United States and castigating commentators for clinging to image of these guys as Bond-style villains that rarely err. It’s been six or seven years since people, including me, started pointing out that al Qaeda was wildly overrated. Back then, most people used to say that the reason al Qaeda hadn’t managed a major attack here since September 11 was because they were biding their time and wouldn’t settle for conventional bombings after that success. We are always explaining away our enemies’ failure.

The point here is not that all terrorists are incompetent — no one would call Mohammed Atta that — or that we have nothing to worry about. Even if all terrorists were amateurs like Shahzad, vulnerability to terrorism is inescapable. There are too many propane tanks, cars, and would-be terrorists to be perfectly safe from this sort of attack. The same goes for Fort Hood.

The point is that we are fortunate to have such weak enemies. We are told to expect nuclear weapons attacks, but we get faulty car bombs. We should acknowledge that our enemies, while vicious, are scattered and weak. If we paint them as the globe-trotting super-villains that they dream of being, we give them power to terrorize us that they otherwise lack. As I must have said a thousand times now, they are called terrorists for a reason. They kill as a means to frighten us into giving them something.

The guys in Waziristan who trained Shahzad are probably embarrassed to have failed in the eyes of the world and would be relieved if we concluded that they did so intentionally. Likewise, it must have heartened the al Qaeda group in Yemen when the failed underwear bomber that they sent west set off the frenzied reaction that he did. Remember that in March, al Qaeda’s American-born spokesperson/​groupie Adam Gadahn said this:

Even apparently unsuccessful attacks on Western mass transportation systems can bring major cities to a halt, cost the enemy billions and send his corporations into bankruptcy.

As our enemies realize, the bulk of harm from terrorism comes from our reaction to it. Whatever role its remnants or fellow-travelers had in this attempt, al Qaeda (or whatever we want to call the loosely affiliated movement of internationally-oriented jihadists) is failing. They have a shrinking foothold in western Pakistan, maybe one in Yemen, and little more. Elsewhere they are hidden and hunted. Their popularity is waning worldwide. Their capability is limited. The predictions made after September 11 of waves of similar or worse attacks were wrong. This threat is persistent but not existential.

This attempt should also remind us of another old point: our best counterterrorism tools are not air strikes or army brigades but intelligence agents, FBI agents, and big city police. It’s true that because nothing but bomber error stopped this attack, we cannot draw strong conclusions from it about what preventive measures work best. But the aftermath suggests that what is most likely to prevent the next attack is a criminal investigation conducted under normal laws and the intelligence leads it generates. Domestic counterterrorism is largely coincident with ordinary policing. The most important step in catching the would-be bomber here appears to have been getting the vehicle identification number off the engine and rapidly interviewing the person who sold it. Now we are seemingly gathering significant intelligence about bad actors in Pakistan under standard interrogation practices.

These are among the points explored in the volume Chris Preble, Jim Harper and I edited: Terrorizing Ourselves: Why U.S. Counterterrorism Policy is Failing and How to Fix It — now hot off the presses. Contributors include Audrey Kurth Cronin, Paul Pillar, John Mueller, Mia Bloom, and a bunch of other smart people.

We’re discussing the book and counterterrorism policy at Cato on May 24th, at 4 PM. Register to attend or watch online here.