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an independent newspaper EDITORIALS
R Can the Obama administration avoid a rupture with Pakistan without sacrificing vital military operations?
ELATIONS BETWEEN the United States and Pakistan, never stable, are once again close to crisis. The immediate cause is the closing by Pakistan of a trans- port route to Afghanistan for non-lethal
U.S. and NATO supplies — an action taken in re- sponse to a border incident last week in which NATO aircraft exchanged fire with Pakistani sol- diers, reportedly killing three. The shutdown of the supply route has caused a backup of thousands of trucks carrying fuel and other supplies, which in turn has enabled a series of attacks by Pakistan- based Taliban forces. The latest, on Monday morn- ing, destroyed 20 trucks and killed three people out- side of Islamabad. Though damaging, this dispute can be sorted out.
NATO’s secretary-general has apologized for the border incident, and Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States said Sunday that the supply route would be reopened soon. There are, however, deeper
Banking
on Barney The troubling bailout of OneUnited
Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) of the House Financial Services Committee, OneUnited got $12 million from the Troubled Assets Relief Program in De- cember 2008, thanks in part to a provision in- serted in the TARP bill by the committee’s chair- man, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). OneUnited has since failed to pay the government the $900,000 it owes — not surprising, given its his- tory of mismanagement, which TARP officials elided to approve the money in the first place. Ms. Waters now faces a House investigation on
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charges she improperly aided OneUnited, whose past directors include her husband; she denies it. Mr. Frank faces no such proceeding, but this is not his finest hour, either. Aware of Ms. Waters’s potential conflict of interest, he told her to steer clear of the bank’s plea for aid and said he was “taking care of it.” This was not a “handoff,” Mr. Frank says. OneUnited was active in his home state; having heard of its plight from others, he was already inclined to lend a hand. OneUnited’s capital had consisted largely of stock in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; like other small banks, it suffered when the Bush administration took over the insolvent mortgage giants. All his bill did, Mr. Frank says, was give such banks a shot at TARP cash: Funding them or not was Treasury’s call. Federal support of minority-owned banks can
help financial services reach underserved com- munities. But OneUnited specialized in serving itself. Indeed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. cracked down on a top officer’s use of bank funds for a Porsche and a couple of mansions. Other regulators had consistently noted One- United’s failure to meet community credit needs. Mr. Frank says he knew none of this — but he also made no effort to check OneUnited out be- yond what he learned from Ms. Waters and oth- ers lobbying on its behalf. Mr. Frank’s contention that TARP aid was up
to Treasury is true. But TARP officials went the extra mile, and then some, to bail out OneUnit- ed. Internal e-mails make clear they believed Mr. Frank and Ms. Waters were interested in OneU- nited, in part because Ms. Waters had sought aid prior to Mr. Frank’s intervention and in part be- cause Mr. Frank’s staff called after the TARP bill passed. A TARP inspector general later con- firmed that OneUnited was shown “greater flex- ibility” than others but found no proof of im- proper favoritism, a conclusion Treasury offi- cials endorse. Mr. Frank allows that the TARP infusion has not worked out and it’s probably time for the FDIC to intervene at OneUnited. “TARP was a time of great turmoil,” he told us. “Not every ‘T’ was crossed.” So a dodgy bank with little going for it except access to powerful members of Congress gets $12 million for no evident public purpose and with little chance taxpayers will ever see that money again. Those responsible insist that, according to prevailing norms in the nation’s capital, they did nothing wrong. Worst of all, they might be tell- ing the truth.
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F AMERICANS ARE angry at Washington, it may be because of episodes like the federal coddling of OneUnited Bank. A minority- owned institution with close ties to Rep.
issues. The exchange of fire reflects a more aggres- sive effort by the U.S. command in Afghanistan to disrupt terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas, using both CIA-operated drones and piloted aircraft. Part of this offensive may be aimed at head- ing off reported plans by al-Qaeda for terrorist at- tacks in Europe in the near future. However,many of the drone attacks have been aimed at the Taliban’s Haqqani faction, which is believed to be deeply en- twined with al-Qaeda — and with Pakistan’s intelli- gence agency. Pakistan’s punishment of NATO for the border in- cident is arguably an inevitable response to domes- tic political opinion. But its resistance to a more muscular U.S. campaign in North Waziristan, where the Haqqani faction is based, is unacceptable. The Obama administration has repeatedly pressed the Pakistani military to act against the Haqqani and al- Qaeda sanctuaries — and the military has just as of- ten refused, arguing that its forces are stretched too
thin by other campaigns and by the need to respond to massive flooding. These explanations have some substance. But if Pakistan is really unable to tackle the sanctuaries, it cannot be allowed to prevent the United States and its allies from doing so. The events of recent days have demonstrated Is- lamabad’s leverage over Washington. But the Oba- ma administration has powerful cards, too — in- cluding the more than $1 billion annually in military and economic aid it is giving Pakistan and the ben- efits of the Afghanistan supply trade for the Paki- stani economy. The State Department’s special rep- resentative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke, rightly said last week that “success in Af- ghanistan is not achievable unless Pakistan is part of the solution.” The administration must avoid a rup- ture in relations; it should make amends for mis- takes like the border incident. But it must insist on a robust military campaign in North Waziristan — if not by Pakistani forces, then by the United States.
TOM TOLES
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2010
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
dletters@washpost.com
Lessons from the Rutgers suicide The Post’s editorial board was right to highlight
the tragedy of Tyler Clementi’s suicide [“Cruelty at Rutgers,” Oct. 2] but wrong to ignore the real un- derlying cause: homophobia. Does anyone think that a male college freshman videotaped having sex with a woman would have suffered anything like the hatred and derision that Mr. Clementi no doubt anticipated? Rather than focusing on issues of privacy and technology, The Post should call on parents and teachers to discuss the tragic consequences of intol- erance and bigotry.
JERRYHAUSER, Washington
Parents, teachers and youth workers need to be vigilant in working with our young people to teach respect, ethics and critical thinking about the ways that high technology can destroy lives [“Rutgers stu- dents mourn classmate,” news story, Oct. 1]. With the click of a mouse, a person’s reputation can be wrecked forever. The world and especially those who loved Tyler
Clementi have been robbed of his music and life. We have a generation that is growing up with instant global access, which can and should be a good thing. But we need to keep pace with that technology by teaching decency and common sense. DOROTHYROSSI, Springfield
A reckless immigration program Shankar Vedantam’s Sept. 30 Metro article, “Local
jurisdictions find they can’t opt out of federal immi- gration enforcement program,” highlighted a prob- lem that immigration experts have long been con- cerned about: The Department of Homeland Security is rapidly deploying the new Secure Communities system, but the consequences of using such a power- ful, far-reaching tool are unknown. Secure Communities is a technology that enables the federal government to screen anyone who is ar- rested through the FBI fingerprint database used in every local police station. DHS has touted the program as a silver bullet for
catching violent, convicted people who lack legal im- migration status. Even more troubling than the re- ported lack of an “opt out” provision is that Secure Communities could result in widespread racial profil- ing by some state and local law enforcement agencies and the arrest of anyone who “appears to be an illegal immigrant,” not just dangerous, convicted people. It is dangerous and irresponsible for a program of such breathtaking scope to be implemented without having all the kinks worked out. GREGORYCHEN, Washington
The writer is director of advocacy for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.
How to advance Mideast peace Glenn Kessler’s Oct. 1 news story, “White House
A dangerous delay Crime victims deserve to have information about inmate furloughs.
HERE ARE THREE possibilities for why sensible revisions to the rules governing furloughs for federal inmates have not been implemented some seven years after
they were drafted: Prison administrators are in- competent; union rules are impossibly cumber- some; or both. Under any scenario, the delay is ab- surd. Typically, federal inmates convicted of nonvio- lent crimes and with less than two years left on their sentences are allowed furloughs for such pur- poses as visits with critically ill family members or to receive medical treatment. Most of these fur- loughs, in which inmates are permitted to travel without supervision, last a matter of days. Inmates also are granted furloughs to travel unescorted to another low-security facility or a halfway house. The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector
General released a report last month analyzing the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) record on furloughs. The BOP generally received adequate marks, although the agency showed sloppiness in handling some records. The agency, as the inspector general’s of- fice suggests, should better train prison employees and update its database system to avert a clerical oversight from resulting in the release of a danger- ous inmate. Yet what stands out most is the egregious delay in implementing regulations, drafted in 2003, that would require the BOP to notify crime victims and witnesses of all inmate furloughs — including those for medical reasons, which apparently are not covered by the Victim and Witness Protection
Act of 1982. The rules would also, among other things, require drug testing of all returning in- mates. The report notes that the provisions could affect conditions of employment for prison workers and so have to be reviewed and agreed to by the Amer- ican Federation of Government Employees’ (AFGE) Council of Prison Locals. This has not hap- pened yet, according to the report, because of union rules that result in an “inordinate amount of time for issues to reach the top of the queue” for negotiation and settlement. There are about 50 is- sues pending, and they must be negotiated one at a time before negotiators can turn to the next sub- ject. Unless the furlough matter is leapfrogged to the top of the list — and there are questions about how and whether this can be done — BOP officials estimate that the matter will not be resolved until 2017, when a new master agreement with the union is negotiated. Union officials were not contacted for the IG re-
port, and they adamantly deny that they are the problem. AFGE President John Gage has sent a let- ter of complaint to Attorney General Eric H. Hold- er Jr. and says that the BOP is allowed to request that a matter be taken up sooner than scheduled — an opportunity Mr. Gage says the BOP did not ex- ercise in the furlough debate. Prison officials and union representatives should put aside hostilities and take up the fur- lough matter as soon as possible. Drug testing and victim notification should not have to wait another seven years while the parties squabble.
offers Israel a carrot for peace talks,” reported that “The United States would also promise military hardware and pledge to veto U.N. resolutions relat- ing to Arab-Israeli peace for a year.” Well, what else is new? The United States has been doing that all along. But the carrot did not work, so now is the time to use the stick. However, because of its “special relationship” with Israel, the United States will not do that, so it should relin- quish its position as “honest broker” and turn it over to the United Nations and pledge not to veto U.N. resolutions relating to Arab-Israeli peace negotiations.
JAWAHARLALRAMNARACE, Accokeek
Whose ‘culture of dependency’? In his Oct. 3 op-ed, “The Moynihan feast,” George
F. Will stated that “liberal politics produces a cul- ture of dependency and a government riddled with rent-seeking — the manipulation of government power for private advantage.” If you change “liberal politics” to “conservative politics” and “private advantage” to “corporate ad- vantage” in the above sentence, would not that cap- ture conservative politics to a T? MARTINROSENSKY, Silver Spring
Halting Mexico’s drug violence
As I read the Oct. 3 front-page article “Brutal drug violence stalks mayors in Mexico,” the follow- ing thought occurred to me: Are those ultimately re- sponsible for this violence those Americans who use illegal drugs, especially for “recreational” purposes? If this is so, should there be a movement in this country to point out that every time people use such drugs, they are contributing to drug-related vio- lence in Mexico and elsewhere? I can envision television ads and other forms of
advertising making use of these arguments, much as was made against the use of cigarettes. Perhaps this could help lessen drug use and the accompanying violence in Mexico.
ROBERT LINDEN, Washington Egypt’s diminished democracy
LOCAL OPINIONS 3Join the debate at
washingtonpost.com/localopinions
Poverty is everyone’s problem
Carol Morello and Dan Keating’s Sept. 29 front-page article, “D.C., region show disturbing rises in childhood poverty,” shed important light on the growing gap between the “have and have- nots” in our area. This dis- crepancy is further under- scored by census data show- ing the Washington region to be the best-educated area in the nation. I have worked on behalf of the homeless for 25 years, and people are always shocked to learn that the average age of a homeless person is only 9 years old. If we help provide the tools for these children and their parents to break the cycle of homelessness, we could decrease societal costs and increase the overall quality of our communities.
To build stability and self-sufficiency, we must
We must offer the same tools that many of us are fortunate to have.
offer the comprehensive tools many of us are fortunate enough to have at our fingertips: edu- cation, affordable housing, counseling, financial consulting and old-fash- ioned TLC. Homelessness and poverty are societal issues that are of- ten misperceived, and there is a lack of appropriate
awareness of them. We all have a responsibility to address these concerns. Living in what is offi- cially the smartest region in the country, D.C. area residents can lead the way. CHRISTOPHER FAY, Falls Church
The writer is executive director of Homestretch, which provides services and transitional housing for the homeless.
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The Sept. 30 editorial “Beyond Mr. Mubarak” was right to point out that advancing democracy in Egypt is in the United States’ interest and that pend- ing elections are likely to be anything but demo- cratic. Political and social tensions are increasing in Egypt, not least because of the government’s un- certainty about how to manage the succession proc- ess from octogenarian President Hosni Mubarak. The denial of basic rights and freedoms to nonvio- lent government critics and political opponents is widespread and persistent. The U.S. government should be more willing than it has been to criticize the Egyptian authorities in specific terms for violations that take place. It should make the case forcefully to Egyptian leaders, in public and private, that such practices harm Egypt’s long-term interests in development, social peace and prosperity for its people. The U.S. government will lose nothing by calling things by their proper names in Egypt, even if Egypt’s leaders object. Failure to speak out against human rights violations will be seen as complicity by many people in Egypt and throughout the Arab world, which would risk further tarnishing Amer- ica’s already battered reputation in the region. NEILHICKS, New York
The writer is international policy adviser for Human Rights First.
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