TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2010

EUGENE ROBINSON

Act of vengeance

An unjust law won’t solve a real problem

A

rizona’s draconian new immi- gration law is an abomination — racist, arbitrary, oppressive, mean-spirited, unjust. About the only hopeful thing that can be said is that the legislation, which Republican Gov. Jan Brewer signed Friday, goes so out- rageously far that it may well be unconstitutional. Brewer, who caved to xenophobic pressures that previous governors had the backbone to resist, should be ashamed of herself. The law requires police to question anyone they “rea- sonably suspect” of being an undocu- mented immigrant — a mandate for racial profiling on a massive scale. Le- gal immigrants will be required to car- ry papers proving that they have a right to be in the United States. Those without documentation can be charged with the crime of trespassing and jailed for up to six months. Activists for Latino and immigrant rights — and supporters of sane gov- ernance — held weekend rallies de- nouncing the new law and vowing to do everything they can to overturn it. But where was the Tea Party crowd? Isn’t the whole premise of the Tea Par- ty movement that overreaching gov- ernment poses a grave threat to indi- vidual freedom? It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be de- tained and interrogated on a whim — and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a po- lice state — would send the Tea Par- tyers into apoplexy. Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away hap- pen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish? And what is the deal with Sen. John

McCain? The self-proclaimed practi- tioner of “straight talk” was once a pas- sionate advocate of sensible, moderate immigration reform. Now, facing a pri- mary challenge from the right, he has praised the new law, which is as far from sensible and moderate as it could possibly be. Are six more years in the Senate really worth abandoning what seemed like bedrock principles? Or were those principles always situa- tional? Let me interrupt this tirade to point

out that while Arizona has unques- tionably done the wrong thing, it is un- derstandable that exasperated officials believed they had to do something. Im- migration policy and border security are federal responsibilities, and Wash- ington has failed miserably to address what Arizonans legitimately see as a crisis.

Arizona has become the preferred

RICHARD COHEN

Casablanca West

Arizona rounds up the usual suspects

retty soon this state will be dicey for blonds. Last week, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a bill that allows the police to demand the papers of anyone reasonably suspected of being in the country illegally. Since this law is aimed at illegal immigrants from Mexico, the cops are almost certain to bend over backwards to avoid any sug- gestion of racial profiling and will, as a matter of fairness, stop and frisk the odd Scandinavian. Sven, don’t let the sun set on you in this state. I am not a blond, but I was once a redhead, and I sunburn to blinking neon orange. Even at some distance, it is clear that I am not Mexican, and so you would think that people like me are protected by the Incredible Power of White. But the Arizona law is so bi- zarre, fueled by anger and a dash of bigotry, that its effect is hard to pre- dict. One thing is certain: Some cops will abuse their power — such is hu- man nature — and the Hispanic mi- nority will come to see the police as op- pressors. History will repeat itself by moving west — cactus instead of Span- ish moss. The law may seem absurd, but its harshness is no laughing matter. It has prompted widespread outrage from various politicians and civic leaders. And the Roman Catholic archbishop of Los Angeles, Cardinal Roger M. Maho- ny, has even likened it to “Nazism.” This seems a bit extreme, since there was more to Nazism than merely stop- ping people on the street and demand- ing their identification documents. Still, the practice does bring to mind a certain Maj. Heinrich Strasser in the movie “Casablanca,” who was in the habit of demanding “papers” from the likes of Paul Henreid, the Victor Laszlo character who managed to somehow escape a concentration camp in a Palm Beach suit. In fact, one of the splendid freedoms of America is to be free of “papers.” All over the world, people carry papers saying who they are and where they belong and often revealing their religion or ethnicity as well. Not here. No papers. No doubt, Arizona has a problem.

P

The state (population 6,595,778) has an estimated 460,000 illegal immi- grants. It also has a porous border with Mexico, and there is an understand- able nervousness over the drug-fueled mayhem that is taking place in that

scottsdale, ariz.

country almost daily, some of it spill- ing into Arizona (a rancher was recent- ly murdered). The people of this state are not totally crazy. They are merely misguided and scared. An amazing 70 percent of them support the new law. At the moment, the law amounts to

a full-employment program for legal scholars. It is so constitutionally dubi- ous that it may not make it to its own birth, some 90 days hence. Among oth- er things, it encourages racial profil- ing, absconds with federal preroga- tives regarding immigration, and will prove both impractical and onerous to enforce. (What if most Hispanics re- fuse to carry documents? Will they all be detained — legal and illegal alike?) President Obama immediately de- nounced the law, and Democrats have clamored to curry favor with the His- panic vote by moving up immigration reform on the congressional agenda. Indeed, the law is so hard to defend that Sen. John McCain, facing a hard- right primary challenge from a sup- porter of the measure, spoke a few words of praise but nevertheless could not bring himself to cheer the new po- lice powers. On local TV here, he mum- bled words of furrowed ambivalence. There was a better way of dealing with the problem, he said. Indeed there is. But the Obama ad-

ministration had better pay attention to the conditions that produced this law. In a way, another Tea Party move- ment has emerged — a scream of pain and anger from a constituency that has seen immigration laws turn mean- ingless and the impotence of the gov- ernment flaunted on a daily basis. These are people who didn’t have a particularly high regard for Washing- ton in the first place. This is the An- glos’ last stand. The sun this time of the year has not

yet been set on broil, and the sky is a criminal blue. The weather is marvel- ous, and the charms of this state lure us here for yet another family sojourn. But I am apprehensive about next year, when my drop-dead, non-His- panic looks — hair of shimmering white, skin long ago adapted to the dis- mal Polish winter — will mark me as a target for cops seeking to show that they don’t engage in racial profiling. If asked for my papers, I’ll have a one- word response: Florida.

cohenr@washpost.com

point of entry for undocumented workers, and an estimated 460,000 are in the state — settling down, or just passing through — at any given time. I have driven down to the border and watched as authorities tried to pick out trucks and vans that might be transporting people without papers. I’ve spent a morning at the Mexican consulate in Phoenix, which is usually crowded with recent immigrants; only the most naive observer would think that all or even most of them were in the country legally. The influx imposes an unfair burden on the state, and for years Arizonans have implored federal officials to do something about immi- gration reform and border control — to no avail. But this law won’t work. On the con-

trary, it will make the problems worse. Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon — who wrote an op-ed in The Post calling pro- ponents of the law “bitter, small- minded and full of hate” — hopes to file a lawsuit against the state arguing that local police are now being forced to fulfill a federal responsibility. One of the concrete problems with

the law treating undocumented im- migrants as criminals is that it gives those without papers a powerful in- centive to stay as far away from police as possible. This will only make it more difficult for local police to investigate crimes and track down fugitive offend- ers, because no potential witness who is undocumented will come forward. And how are police supposed to de- cide whom they “reasonably suspect” of being in the country illegally? Since the great majority of undocumented immigrants in Arizona are from Mexi- co, aggressive enforcement of the law would seem to require demanding identification from anybody who looks kind of Mexican. Or maybe just has- sling those who look kind of Mexican and also kind of poor. Or maybe any- one who dares to visit the Mexican consulate.

Arizona is dealing with a real prob- lem and is right to demand that Wash- ington provide a solution. But the new immigration law isn’t a solution at all. It’s more like an act of vengeance. The law makes Latino citizens and legal residents vulnerable to arbitrary ha- rassment — relegating them to second- class status — and it is an utter disgrace.

The writer will answer questions at 1 p.m. today at www.

washingtonpost.com. His e-mail address is

eugenerobinson@washpost.com.

KLMNO

R

A17

Afghanistan decision time

by Ahmed Rashid

B

NIGEL RODDIS/REUTERS

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg speaks to students at the Aviation Academy in Woolsington in northern England last week.

ANNE APPLEBAUM

In Britain, a Tea Party with a spot of Earl Grey

H

ere is a riddle: What would the Tea Party movement look like if it were British, privately

educated and had once worked as a ski instructor in Austria? The answer: It would look like Nick

Clegg, leader of the British Liberal Democratic Party — and possibly the beneficiary of the biggest revolution among British voters in decades. For those who don’t follow these things, the Liberal Democrats are Britain’s historically insignificant third party. In its current incarnation, the Liberal Democrats date from the late 1980s, when the Labor Party was a near- Marxist monolith, the Tories were the party of Margaret Thatcher, and there was a lot of space in between. Since then, the Lib Dems have tak- en some odd turns, sometimes cham- pioning quirky local causes, some- times floating to the left or the right of the political spectrum, often leav- ing the center ground that they once claimed for their own. Now, after years of drift, Clegg has suddenly found for the party a position that works. Instead of ideology, he offers an option: If you are sick of Labor, if you can’t bring yourself to vote Con- servative, if you are bored of the two- party system itself — then vote for me.

Of course he doesn’t quite put it

that way, but that seems to be the message voters got from his perform- ance this month in the first-ever tele- vised campaign debate among British party leaders. This event was a mini- revolution in itself: Until this elec- tion, British politicians did not hold debates in the American style — standing behind lecterns, arguing about selected issues in front of a se- lected audience — because tradition dictated that important debates took place in Parliament. In the past few years, however, the significance of Parliament has waned. A new genera- tion of voters doesn’t understand its rules and conventions, while the im- portance of staged television appear- ances has been growing. And Clegg, it turns out, is very, very good at staged television appearances. What makes him “good,” in part, is his unstudied manner; with nothing to lose, he just seems more relaxed than his opponents. He also breaks taboos (he isn’t much bothered about high levels of immigration, for exam- ple). He might even be attractive be- cause of his background: Clegg’s mother is Dutch, his wife is Spanish and his children are bilingual. Maybe, just maybe, British voters are slowly

becoming more “European” than their politicians think. Or maybe they are simply sick of

the Labor Party that has been run- ning Britain since 1997 and can’t quite convince themselves that David Cameron, the “modernizing” Tory leader, is really as “modern” as he says. Clearly they are worn out by the parliamentary-expenses scandals that hit both of the main parties equally hard. No doubt they want to protest some politics in general, and the bad economy in particular. What- ever the reason, Clegg’s ratings soared after that first debate, and in some polls he now comes out ahead of Labor. This was amusing at first (“Clegg

who?”). But as Election Day draws nearer, the mainstream parties have ceased to be amused. If current poll numbers hold until the May 6 elec- tion, the Labor Party could finish third in the popular vote but still have the most seats in Parliament. The To- ries could win the popular vote but not have enough of a parliamentary majority to run the country. The Lib Dems could form a coalition with ei- ther party, but Clegg has said that his price will be a new British voting sys- tem. This would mean, for the British, an unthinkable, revolutionary change. Most European countries vote according to rules of proportion- al representation, as a result of which their parliaments contain several parties and the government is often a coalition. Britain, like the United States, has “first past the post” voting: a two-party system and, usually, a one-party government — albeit Brit- ain’s has far fewer checks and balanc- es than that of the United States. Supposedly, the ordinary voter —

the mythical “man on the Clapham omnibus” — cherishes this uniquely British political system, often cheer- fully referred to as “our elected dicta- torship.” Working on that assump- tion, the Conservative and Labor par- ties have been issuing dark pleas to voters: This could be the last general election to be held under those very British rules; this could be the end of politics as we know it; and so on. Maybe these dire threats will win back voters by the end of next week. But at the moment, it seems that the man on the Clapham omnibus, like his Tea-Partying colleagues across the Atlantic, is perfectly happy to vote for the end of politics as we know it. The faster the better, please.

applebaumletters@washpost.com

POST PARTISAN

Excerpts from The Post’s opinion blog, updated daily at washingtonpost.com/postpartisan

E.J. DIONNE JR.

Britain’s election bazaar

It turns out that the rise of the Liberal Democrats into the top ranks of British politics was not a fluke, the temporary re- sult of a single boffo debate performance by party leader Nick Clegg. After the sec- ond debate last Thursday, Clegg consoli- dated his party’s standing, turning the fi- nal half of the campaign into a kind of po- litical bazaar. The latest YouGov poll shows the Con-

servatives with 33 percent, the Lib Dems with 29 percent and Labor with 28 per- cent. Such numbers would almost cer- tainly produce a hung Parliament, and the ruling Labor Party and the Conserva- tives would both try to negotiate with the Lib Dems to form a government. Because the Lib Dems are center-left, the obvious coalition is between Clegg’s party and Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Labor Party. But many of the seats Lib Dems have the best chance of winning are most closely contested against Conservatives. That means Clegg must: (1) win over Labor-leaning tactical voters who want to defeat Conservatives and Tory leader David Cameron; and (2) close the deal with middle-of-the road

voters who intensely dislike Brown and want a new government. So Clegg — trying to appeal to both groups — said Monday that he was will- ing to ally with either party, but that if La- bor ran third, a Lib Dem-Labor coalition would probably depend on Brown being willing to step aside as prime minister. This is creating turmoil inside the Labor Party, the British papers are reporting, with some in the leadership apparently prepared to push Brown aside if that would secure a Labor-Lib Dem coalition government. In the meantime, Cameron realizes

that his party is in a dogfight with the Lib Dems in many constituencies, so he reached out to his left on Monday by ask- ing support from voters who have “ideal- ism and progressive ideals hardwired into their DNA.” There is one more debate, on Thursday, among the three party leaders; this could create another unexpected turn in this election. For now, it’s difficult to see how any party wins a majority. I wouldn’t rule out Brown putting on a good debate per- formance this week and closing strong. But the bottom line, I think, is that there is a realignment happening on the British center-left. My hunch is that unless Clegg totally fails in the final stretches of the campaign, the future of the British left will lie in coalition politics between Labor and the Lib Dems.

efore President Hamid Karzai arrives in Washington next month, President Obama has to make clear key decisions on the course of war and peacemaking in Afghanistan. Neighboring countries and most Afghans be-

lieve that the endgame has begun for a post-U.S. Afghanistan. There are just 14 months for the U.S. military surge to show results while Washington simultaneously prepares to begin its July 2011 troop withdrawal and handover to the Afghan government. Already, efforts to jockey for future control of Afghanistan have been seen among Pa- kistan, India, Iran and even Russia. Several NATO countries eager to withdraw forces are frustrated. It is clear in the region that someone will have to mediate with the Taliban, but in the absence of U.S. leadership, a tug of war is taking place over who will do it, when, how and where. The recent spat between the White House and Karzai — which has cooled down thanks in part to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan — largely stemmed from Karzai’s growing frustration over questions about which the Obama administra- tion has been unclear. According to U.S. and Afghan officials, Karzai’s

first question when he arrives will be whether Washington supports his efforts at reconciliation with the senior Taliban leadership. In January, the United States and NATO agreed to reintegra- tion — bringing in Taliban foot soldiers and low- level commanders — but Washington balked at full reconciliation, saying it wants to see the Tali- ban weakened militarily over the next six to 12 months before considering talks with its leaders. Karzai’s representatives, however, have spent the past 12 months holding talks about talks with senior Taliban representatives in several Arab Gulf states. Taliban leaders have made clear that they want to talk directly to the United States, and Karzai knows his discussions with the Tali- ban cannot go further without public U.S. sup- port and a commitment to engage. The Afghans want a clear answer from Washington that they will lead any future negotiations. The Obama Cabinet is set to discuss this issue, but it has been divided, including over how American voters would react to talks with the Taliban. Nevertheless, Karzai is hoping for a posi- tive decision by the time he arrives in Washing- ton. The issue is complicated by the Pakistani military’s determination to guide or even dom-

The Obama administration must signal greater clarity about talking to the Taliban if Afghans are not to feel abandoned once again to the whims of their neighbors.

inate the peace process rather than leave it to the Afghans. Pakistan holds many of the cards: Taliban leaders and their families live in Pakistan and are in close touch with the military and its Inter- Services Intelligence directorate (ISI). Some Tali- ban allies, such as the network led by Jalaluddin Haqqani, are even closer to the ISI. Although the military is finally hunting down the Pakistani Taliban in the Northwest tribal areas, the Afghan Taliban and Pakistani extremists in Punjab prov- ince are being left alone. The January arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Ba-

radar, the No. 2 Taliban leader, in Karachi and the unexplained arrests and subsequent freeing of several other leading Taliban figures have demonstrated to Kabul and Washington the Pakistani military’s clout.

Karzai and most Afghans fear that if Washing- ton waits too long to decide about talking to the Taliban, control will fall to the ISI as happened in the 1980s and 1990s — when Washington aban- doned Afghanistan to Russia and Pakistan but the ISI played favorites and was unable to end the civil war among Afghan factions. Almost all Afghans, including Karzai’s Pashtun

supporters, the non-Pashtun Northern Alliance and even the Taliban oppose any major role for the ISI, as do most regional powers, particularly India, Iran, Russia and the five Central Asian republics.

When Karzai visited Islamabad on March 10 to

find out why his interlocutor Mullah Baradar was arrested, he was, according to Afghan offi- cials, bluntly told by Pakistan’s generals that the Americans are bound to leave and that if he wanted Pakistani help resolving issues with the Taliban, he would first have to close Indian con- sulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad. Pakistani of- ficials deny threatening Karzai and insist that they want a peaceful and stable Afghanistan once the Americans leave. But other sources have confirmed that such ultimatums were delivered. Pakistan is convinced that Karzai is allowing

India to undermine Pakistan’s western border re- gions through its four consulates in Afghanistan and has demanded that Afghanistan close the consulates. For a sovereign Afghanistan, this is an impos- sible request, but it is just the opening gambit in a looming test of wills. Pakistan’s maneuvers have prompted India to try reactivating its 1990s alliance with Iran, Russia and Central Asia, which supported the former Northern Alliance in a civil war against the Pakistan-backed Taliban regime. Pakistan’s military has virtually taken control of foreign policy and strategic decision making from the civilian government. Thus Pakistan’s foreign policy reflects the military’s obsession with India. The region and NATO countries are eager to hear from Washington on dealing with the Tali- ban. A U.S. decision is needed before regional tensions further escalate. The Obama adminis- tration must signal greater clarity about talking to the Taliban if the United States and NATO are to help the Afghans structure any future dialogue with the Taliban and if Afghans are not to feel abandoned once again to the whims of their neighbors.

Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist, is most recently the author of "Descent Into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia." His book “Taliban” was updated and reissued this month. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56