(if I were the) King of the Forest

Richard Clarke’s charges that the Bush administration ignored the growing threat of Al Quaeda – and ignored his own prescient warnings about that threat – in the months leading up to the attack on the World Trade Center became a cause celebre among those who wished fervently to believe both in the incompetence or venality of the President and his policies and in the capacity for government to keep us safe from such atrocities. If we only listened to smart and dedicated people like Richard Clarke (and his old boss, Bill Clinton) then we could have back our golden age.

That is certainly the story that was told by the news media. But notwithstanding subsequent revelations about Mr. Clarke’s apparent epiphany on the dangers of Islamic Fascism between his services on the Clinton and Bush foreign policy teams, is it really reasonable to expect that a new President and a new administration – even if they have both a vision and a mandate – is going to turn around decades of policy thought and practice in their first nine months in office?

The question of the day seems to be whether Spain’s election results and subsequent announcement that they would withdraw their troops from Iraq amounted to an exercise in democracy or an act of appeasement. Notwithstanding the vehemence and sanctimony accompanying pronouncements either way, the answer may simply be “Yes. Both.”

But the biggest downside to a national ID card is that once it was in place, and in order to make the best use of it for fighting terrorism, it would be irresistible that it be transformed from something that is only practically mandatory (like the drivers license and the Social Security card – in theory you could arrange your life to live without them) into something that is legally mandatory, not merely if you want to board a plane or to handle dynamite but simply because you exist. And then, once governments and government agencies across the spectrum know that everyone must have one, it is only practical that they demand you present it for every interaction with government – for your own protection of course, just to ensure we know who we’re dealing with. And how about when you are acting suspiciously in the street? In fact, why don’t we just make it mandatory that you carry it with you at all times, and show it on demand to any government official?

Periodically in discussing issues surrounding nuclear non-proliferation someone – typically but not always someone from some Islamic country – will assert that we have no right to deny the likes of Saddam Hussein or the Iranian Ayatollahs access to nuclear weapons – that such a demand amounts to imperialism, that it interferes with the self-determination of their peoples and usurps their legitimate sovereignty. Inevitably the need for nuclear weapons in the hands of such countries is rationalized by the need to “counter the threat” from Israeli nuclear weapons or from our own. And inevitably attempts to limit the number of nuclear nations in the world are classified as arrogance, the presumption that only members of the nuclear club are sophisticated and moral enough to be trusted with such power.

There is some validity to the issue of the usurpation of sovereignty – although if we wish to be so solicitous of sovereignty we really should have a debate over what constitutes legitimate sovereignty in the modern era of human rights and ascendant democracy. But where nuclear weapons are concerned basic survival, not sovereignty, is really the most fundamental consideration. And if our desire that Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong Il not have nuclear weapons represents a presumption that they are not sophisticated and moral enough to be trusted with such capabilities, that presumption is not arrogant but prudent.

I fear that in the modern cultural/social/political climate, Mr. Schneier’s plea for more distributed solutions to security problems will, except in the narrowest technical realms where logic and experience generally prevail, fall on deaf ears. Social and political biases of the public aside, our political and cultural leaders benefit from the increased power with which centralized systems endow them, and such systems will continue to be the preferred solutions to most problems which fall, however unproductively, into the political realm.

It takes money to make money. Especially here in the Silicon Valley, where high rewards come from high risks bankrolled by big bucks.