Courthouse shooting not an act of terrorism?

Not a good day to be in Las Vegas. Joseph Burger reports in the New York Times:

A gunman opened fire Monday morning in the lobby of the Federal Courthouse in downtown Las Vegas, killing a court security officer and wounding a deputy United States marshal before fleeing.

According to FBI Special Agent Joseph Dickey,

“At this point, we believe it was a lone gunman, a criminal act, not a terrorist act,”

Dickey’s quote perplexes me. Why does it matter if the shooter acted alone? If terrorism is a violent act intended to create fear, how is this not an act of terrorism?

I am being a bit dense here on purpose to make a larger point. I think Dickey is trying to say that at this point there is no evidence that the shooter had any ties to terrorist organizations. However, his language is revealing about the way we think about terrorism. If the shooter was sympathetic to al Qaeda, will we call it an act of terrorism? Probably. We tend define terrorism today not by the act, but by ones beliefs and associations (e.g., the war on terrorism). Yet this is far from what terrorism is: a tactic to create fear. I think our approach to the issue would be vastly different if we thought of it not in terms of organizations, but tactics.

Regime change in Iran

Stephen Walt convinced me. Shadi Hamid convinced me Walt is wrong.

The politics of fear

With new screening procedures at airports and Newark Airport shut down, the war on flying (a.k.a. security theatre) continues. David Brooks and Glenn Greenwald have recent columns on the danger of this type of hysterical overreaction to terrorism. I agreed with their points, but didn’t really understand the magnitude of what they were addressing until today, listening to the news people on the teevee talk at me. It was the first time I had seen the news on TV since the bombing attempt. It was completely out of control: Obama needs to fire his entire cabinet, airports around the world need to get really, really serious about security, we need to invade Yemen, the borders are insecure. The spittle was flying fast and furious.

Walking to work I had time to internalize what I saw. My reaction while watching TV was the pressure to fight terrorism is really intense, and I suspect that is the superficial point that Obama’s critics are trying to make. After thinking about it for a few minutes it dawned on me that the criticism is good politics for the Republicans and probably has very little to do with terrorism. I won’t go as far as Brooks and Greenwald to say that the politics of fear is undermining democracy (after all most of the war that we see is security theater at the airport), but I do agree with their larger point about that we ask to be treated like children. My advice: watch the Food Network or the Travel Channel instead of the news. You are far more likely to get killed by lightening or in a car crash than by a terrorist, so why not relax and watch Adam Richman attempt to eat a six pound burrito?.

Freedom, the Rule of Law, and a Walk in Kampala

A friend here in Kampala recently commented to me that in Uganda you find freedom without the rule of law, and in Rwanda you find the opposite.

Today I may have a chance to explore that. The police are deployed throughout the city in anticipation of political protests sparked by the decision to keep the CBS radio station closed. The government shut down the station last year – along with several other media outlets – as part of its response to the riots that shook the capital and left 27 dead. The coalition of opposition parties, which is organizing the attempted political actions today, will also be protesting the continuation of the leadership of the highly controversial Electoral Commission.

Since I have been in Uganda I have seen cartoons in the press that have characterized the police as out of control and inclined towards violence. One of them depicted a voter about to grab a helmet to participate in the 2011 elections. Certainly Uganda has many challenges with regard to the rule of law, police discipline being one to which Ugandans are frequently exposed. The police also have a reputation among them of being highly corrupt. Moreover, the police are often irrelevant: mob justice is common here, and foreigners are even advised not to stop if they cause an accident on the road…for their own safety. Up in the region where my team works, Karamoja, crimes as serious as murder are often still dealt with through local elders and traditions (usually involving reimbursement of a certain number of cows) rather than through the Ugandan criminal justice system.

The rule of law is flouted at higher levels too: official corruption, tales of exorbitant spending, and stories of “ghost” soldiers, workers, and even clinics (with “ghost” budgets) routinely make the headlines here in the non-government sponsored papers. The fact that these stories and cartoons are a regular facet of life here is certainly indicative of a level of press freedom and independence. But the decision to keep CBS closed and other tales of media harassment demonstrate that this freedom has limits.

For example: I cannot speak intelligently about Uganda’s experience with freedom, rule of law, etc. in comparison to Rwanda, but Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda can, and did in an article in his Independent magazine.  It is one of the most scathing and interesting articles I have read since I have been here. He writes in response to a letter from a Ugandan politician that criticizes him for taking a positive stance on the “authoritarian” regime in Rwanda. “Colin,” he answers, “democracies do not rob their own citizens the way we are witnessing in Uganda.”

After reading his opinion piece I instinctively googled, “Andrew Mwenda death threat.” This lead me to an article in which I learned that Mwenda has been held at gunpoint by government agents, charged with 20 criminal violations including sedition, and has purportedly already survived several plots against him. Still, Mwenda says in the article, “If Museveni were like Idi Amin (the infamous Ugandan dictator), I’d already be dead.”

Now there’s the power of positive thinking. I’m off to see what the papers and the police are up to on the streets of Kampala.

Why I haven’t been writing a lot of posts

Deadlines, not vacation:

January 4: Grades

January 4: Arab Reform Bulletin paper on Obama and the Middle East

January 8: Recommendations for NED Regan-Fascell Fellowships

January 11: Grant recommendation for Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada

January 15: NSF grant submission

January 15: CDACS/POMED/USIP paper on Obama and the Middle East

Fun times!