My Take on the Gates Arrest Controversy

I cannot help but think about the Gates arrest through the prism of my own experience. While I do not wish to imply that I understand what it feels like to be a black man in America during an encounter with a white cop, after reading about the arrest, I was reminded of my own experience in encountering an authority that once upon a time thought of me as a threat.

In late summer 2001 I was wrapping up my vacation in Mostar and was on a bus to Zagreb, along with my grandfather, from where I would fly back to the US. The southern border at Vinjani, between Croatia and Bosnia, is a primary target for all kinds of smugglers and the EU has been pushing Croatia and Bosnia hard to crack down on this border if they were ever to join the EU club. As our bus made its way along the rocky, nausea inducing winding roads of Western Herzegovina I was beginning to fall asleep next to my grandfather who was wide awake. It was my grandfather who woke me up from my hazy sleep, saying: "We are at Vinjani", the border crossing. A polite Croatian police officer walked into the bus and asked everyone to take out their passports. At this time I still carried my Bosnian passport along with my recently issued American Green Card. I handed the police officer the passport and the Green Card. After staring at it suspiciously, he asked me to step off the bus. At this point, I immediately became furious.

Now, an outsider looking at the situation could say "Well, he was disrespectful to the police officer. The officer has a tough job, blah blah blah." But the only reason an outsider could not comprehend my response if he/she did not know the history of my encounters with the Croatian police in general and in particular, my interaction with the border police at this particular border crossing.

In the scorching summer days of 1993--as the war between Croats and Muslims in Mostar exploded into a daily face-to-face, street by street combat--the Vinjani border crossing became both, a symbol of hope for Mostarci who wanted to escape the fighting, and a menacing obstacle for Muslim men trying to secretly pass into Croatia and escape the Bosnian Croat army concentration camps which had popped like mushrooms all over Herzegovina in the early summer of that year. In June 1993, my mother and I were leaving the city on a bus a day after my brother and my father had escaped the city in a cab of a known smuggler. Our original plan was to meet up in Split but we did not know if my brother and my father had actually made it the night before. Our anxiety about their fate was mixed up with our fear, if not panic, about the Vinjani border crossing. We had heard stories of Croat police taking all Muslims off the bus and then taking them in an unknown direction, probably to concentration camps, or worse. At the border, the Croat police took everyone off the bus, and then proceeded to rummage through everyone's baggage, take everyone's IDs and hoard us into the small police station under the scorching sun. A Muslim man begged an officer to let him pass as his son was suffering from epilepsy and looked like he was about to pass out. The soldier laughed at him (in front of my very own eyes) and called him a "pussy" for crying. The man, along with his son was hauled away in a police van. When it came our turn, my mother produced her birth certificate which showed clearly her Croatian heritage: her father was born in Split and her mother in Zagreb. The officer looked at the birth certificate and laughed at the Serbian spelling of my mother's name (Snezana as opposed to the Croatian version "Snjezana") shouting "Oh you are not a real Croat, look at your name." At this, my mother (a tiny woman) snapped the certificate out of his hands and told him that "I am a bigger Croat than you will ever be!" At this, the officer asked her to accompany him to a separate room in the police station at which I immediately pushed my way between him and my mother and followed them at the annoyance of the officer. I was terrified of what might happen in that room. As soon as we walked into the room, the officer changed his demeanor apologized to my mother justifying his behavior by saying he "didn't know you were Croats." My mother demanded he let us through. At this, he sighed, stamped our documents and we were on our way (on a much emptier bus this time) to Croatia where we re-united with my father and my brother.

So when I was asked to step off the bus almost exactly 8 years after this nightmarish incident, the first memory that popped into my mind was of the thug who treated us like dirt and worse of all who might have harmed that man and his epilepsy-stricken son. But this time, I had a green card and felt empowered. I told the police officer that I will not step off the bus until he tells me the reason for this. At this my grandfather politely told the police officer that I am a student in America and that I am on my way "home." The officer persisted: "this bus will not leave until you step off and follow me to the police station." I kid you not, but this was the same police station from the summer of 1993. But I honestly could not feel any fear probably because I was so angry. In the station, I demanded to know why I was taken off the bus. Then I realized that the incident arose out of the officer's confusion regarding the Green Card. He kept asking me what this document meant. In my attempt to clout myself into a more powerful status, I told him it meant that I was "under the protection of the US government" and that the document was tantamount to a US passport. He then proceeded to make small talk asking me why and for how long I had been in Mostar. I told him, in a very rude manner, that I was there for two months and the reason for it was because this was "the only home I will ever have and that I can go there any time I'd like." He wrote down my green card number and instructed me that I was now free to go back to my bus. I snapped the green card out of his hands, like my mother had done the same with her birth certificate eight years earlier, and stormed out of the station. I remember the sound of the door slamming behind me. Actually, I remember regretting the slamming the moment I stepped out as I was afraid it might have given him an additional excuse to hold me. I climbed on the bus to find my grandfather absolutely terrified as to what might have happened to me. The entire bus was staring at me. Then and there I vowed I would get my American passport and next time would immediately ask to see US consular staff if I were hassled again. I was too upset to talk to my grandfather and only told him of what had happened once we got to Zagreb.

I could not help but think of this experience when reading about Gates' arrest. In my mind, the professor was completely justified in his reaction and it is the police officer who has to apologize.

The (Im)Probability of Getting a Good Night's Sleep in Champaign, Illinois

Waking up at 6:00 AM, two hours before my alarm clock, for the third morning in a row, I thought I'd ruminate out loud, actually rant, about the infinitely minuscule probability that one can have a decent night of sleep in Champaign, particularly on the intersection of one of the many many many insanely and logic-twisting traffic-congested streets in this small town.

So, if I am woken up by the sounds of NPR's Morning Edition at 8AM refreshed after eight hours of sleep, this means that a series of events completely out of my control did not happen the previous night:

1) No insanely obese, sexually frustrated, and mentally challenged motorcyclists revved their penis-substitutes outside of my house, particularly between 1-2AM, which for whatever reason seems to be their favorite time slot.

2) The girl who lives next to me did not spend only a part of her night at her boyfriend's (or boyfriends') house only to be dropped off at 3 AM, literally outside my window, after which she almost ALWAYS proceeds to do her laundry while talking incessantly on her cell phone. Oh yes and the laundry is in the basement so close below my bedroom that I can see the laundry machine from a hole in my floor (I am not even kidding!). So, getting a good night sleep also means that she did not turn the drier off and on either putting her clothes through many cycles or doing a year's worth of laundry in one night!

3) The neighbors upstairs did not drag their furniture in the middle of the night, vacuum, or have an argument. By the way, I can hear them sneeze not to speak of other noises, which are (unfortunately for them and fortunately for me much rarer). It also means that my neighbor did not literally stamp on the floor as he was preparing for work only to slam the door behind him as if turning his anger for having to go to work at the poor wooden door and by extension, at the disgruntled Bosnian living beneath him.

4) The neighbor in the house next to mine did not start with the construction way before sunrise nor did he rev his own motorcycle which he keeps parked in a giant mobile garage right outside of my door (which blocks my sight as I am pulling out of my driveway--thanks a lot asshole!).

5) My soft-spoken and generally nice landlord did not come at 7AM (I guess before going to work) to do some shoveling and gardening (oh I forgot the mention, both the gravel and the garden are right OUTSIDE MY BEDROOM WINDOW)!

6) Finally, it means that it is not Tuesday and the garbage truck did not pull into my driveway at 4AM incessantly beeping and taking for God knows how long to empty the giant trash container outside my window.

So as you can see, in order for me to get my eight hours of sleep in this town all these six conditions have to be met. And honestly, what are the chances of that? Slim to none, says the sleepy, cranky me.

Stop saying Obama is just like Bush!

There is one thing that the right-wing and the far-left in this country agree on these days: President Barack Obama is much like President Bush in fighting the war on terror. Whatever your disagreement with Obama may be--and I have many, particularly on the so-called doctrine of prolonged detention--to compare his approach to Bush's is not only patently false, but it betrays a breathtaking lack of understanding of a long-running contest over the meaning of the Constitution.

From the internal memos, memoirs, and transcripts from the Bush administration--leaked in interviews, books, and Bush himself--it has become clear that Bush's approach to fighting terrorism was guided by one principle: unitary executive. The greatest advocate of this principle was of course Vice President Dick Cheney and his legal adviser David Addington who believed that at times of war (actually at all times, but particularly during a war), the President of the United States had an unchecked authority to abrogate any law the Congress made if the protection of the American people was the motivating factor of his decisions. This is the American version of Louis XIV's infamous creed: "L'etat, c'est moi." The Cheney crowd consisted of angry right-wingers who still felt slighted by the Congressional oversight of the Presidency instituted after the Watergate fiasco. They believed that in the aftermath of Watergate, the Presidency had made way too many concessions to Congress. The main real-life repercussion of this was the infamous "enemy combatant" doctrine.

According to the "enemy combatant" doctrine, the President of the United States had an unchecked, oversight-free, Constitutional power to declare any single human being on the planet--even if he or she was a US citizen--to be an enemy combatant and as such, could be imprisoned indefinitely as long as the "war on terror" goes on. The example of this was of course the case of the so-called "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla who was held for years in an army brig, and Al-Massari, who was held in isolation until this year when President Obama transferred him to a federal court where he plead guilty and got a long-prison term.

Obama's right-wing detractors and his supposedly betrayed left-wing critics lament his supposed continuation of Bush's policies, pointing to his doctrine of "preventive detention" and his continuation of military tribunals, to argue that other than being an eloquent defender of the Constitution, Obama is doing pretty much the same amount of damage to it as Bush had done, and is continuing his policy. FALSE!

The Obama approach to terrorism is guided by the respect for the Constitution. In every instance where he has to judge how to approach fighting terrorism, he has bent over backwards to stay as true to the Constitution as possible, and more importantly, to completely ABROGATE THE IDEOLOGY OF UNITARY EXECUTIVE! The last point is key to understanding how Obama's approach differs from Bush's. In every matter--from detaining terror suspects, to trying them, to attacking other countries in self-defense--President Obama has disputed the idea of unitary Executive. Instead, he has delegated many of the powers Bush claimed for himself to the Congress. For example, in the so-called preventive detention policy, Obama has set out clear and multi-layered oversight by the US Congress and the courts so that no one single man or a woman--even if they are the President of the US--can pass such profound judgment on the life of a human being. The same rule follows in military tribunals--while they are still not the same as our civil courts, they will be under the oversight of courts and many constitutional obligations are still in effect--such as the prohibition against torture-extracted evidence and the right to habeas corpus for the detainees.

Thus, Obama's complete abandonment of the term "war on terror," is more than a semantic exercise. It shows Obama's contempt for Bush's view of "unitary executive." By avoiding this term, Obama is also giving up the claim of the US Executive to some extraordinary "war" powers. In fact, this is exactly what many of us on the left wanted from the President: to treat our efforts to protect the US from terrorists more as a legal battle, than a war which would automatically authorize the President to use some unconstitutional powers. The closure of the GITMO, which will happen by January 2010, will be a powerfully symbolic, and also practical, proof of President Obama's continuing dismantling of Bush's illegal unitary executive doctrine.

Sometimes I think some on the left are unable or unwilling--or both--to recognize a good thing while we are experiencing it. And Obama's Presidency has definitely been a great thing for this country. Again, it is a healthy thing that many of us still disagree on him on many issues-including the preventive detention-but to argue that he is the same as Bush, is simply not true!