Editorial

Not when, but how

Police apology merits applause
It takes courage to admit one’s mistakes, and it takes even more to actually apologize.
That’s why we applaud Oberlin Police Chief Michael Moorman, who issued a thoughtful apology to three students who were subject to a harrowing search in the early morning hours last week.
This antelucan crusade to recover a stolen stop sign was grossly inappropriate. Officers should not traipse through student dormitories without due cause. The idea of “hot pursuit,” where officers enter private property in the immediate chase of an alleged offender, does not warrant a midnight search of every room in a building for a stop sign.
While there is nothing good to say about the theft, Moorman was right to note that there were more temperate measures police could have taken.
We also commend Dean of Students Peter Goldsmith for taking the problem and making it into an opportunity to improve relations between the College and city police.
But Goldsmith should not stop there.
It is time the College took a close look at the Security’s approach during tense situations. Tank has been victimized and stereotyped by Security officers on numerous occasions. Goldsmith should take this as another opportunity to look carefully at whether Security is following the letter and spirit of College policy.
Finally, Security should apologize for abetting police in infringing upon the sanctity of students’ privacy and the reckless disregard of student rights during the search.

A new cold war?

Showing off the bells and whistles of his new national security plan, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge recently enjoined every American to “be a soldier in your own home.”
Just a minute. Haven’t we heard this before?
Ridge and the rest of the Security gang — Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc — have begun to dredge up the tried-and-true rhetoric of the Cold War.
Replace the words “terrorists” and “terrorism” with “communists” and “communism,” and today’s political landscape begins to bear a striking resemblance to the way things were about four or five decades ago.
And this is not a good thing.
For one, Americans must be on guard against oversimplifying an issue as complex as “terrorism” — which is, at the very least, a slippery enough term that both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict feel they can use it to describe each other’s tactics. But unlike communism in the form of the Soviet Union, terrorism is not something that can be “defeated” in the literal sense.
Rather, terrorism is a method — that of causing grave harm to the few to produce widespread fear in the many. And one can no more declare war on it than one could declare war on shooting, bombing, or maiming.
This is not to suggest that the threat of terrorist attacks on our country is not real, or that the American government should not go to great lengths to protect against them.
Rather, as responsible citizens in a society that values individual autonomy while seeking to assure the public well-being, we must avoid being corralled into simplistic interpretations or too neatly packaged views of the world. We must be on guard against the rise of a Neo-McCarthyism, of needlessly hounding out those who would seek to improve this country by pointing out its shortcomings.
Those who frame the issues control the debate. For a new time of troubles, old frameworks can be learned from, but ultimately only a new framework will suffice to address new problems.
“I think we can’t afford the consequences of a nation that was not seriously engaged in thinking about the world and not pondering what the consequences of these kinds of policies might mean,” former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry told an audience of Oberlin students last October.
Stifling debate in the name of patriotism is not only wrong, it can be dangerous. Contrarians may, in the end, prove more vital to protecting American security than those who blindly follow the flock — those soldiers in their own homes.

Editorials are the responsibility of the Review editorial board—the Editors in Chief, Managing Editor and Commentary Editor—and do not necessarily reflect the view of the staff of the Review.