Mike Hawash
Mike Hawash has indicated his regret for his actions in the past. He's received a seven year sentence, and I guess that seems about right. For those who don't remember, Hawash is the former Intel software engineer who was arrested a year or so ago for attempting to fight against US troops in Afghanistan. At the time, the tech community was somewhat up in arms because he'd been arrested without charge or explanation.
Some time passed, and then the FBI documents were made public. Reading them was pretty sobering. He hadn't just been arrested in a general sweep; there was very specific information about what he'd done wrong, how he'd gone about it, and so forth.
I think some of my incredulity at the time of his initial arrest was really due to the fact that he was a software guy. I just found it hard to believe that someone in my profession could do something so stupid. Clearly, though, he did.
Overlapping with that was the knowledge that various government agencies had engaged in a fair amount of abuse of process and flat out racism in detaining many other Arab citizens. I think this is one of the reasons that I feel so strongly about ensuring that individual rights are very carefully monitored and never abused...because when the government really needs to act in an extraordinary way, and be somewhat rough on a particular individual, we can't have any confusion about whether that person is being caught up in a general crackdown.
The FBI couldn't have done anything different in the Hawash case; they appear to have done everything by the book.
It's still strange to me, though. A guy who co-writes a book on DirectX programming, is a highly paid engineer, and is by all accounts a model suburban father, somehow morphs into a guy who's willing to fly to a strange country, pick up a gun, and shoot at US soldiers.
I take heart in the fact that there are tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of Muslim suburban fathers here who do not make the same choice, when torn between cultures. We stand with them; they are part of the American soul.
I feel sad for Mike Hawash and his family. He's paying a terrible and just price for his actions.
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Ross, I too was incredulous
Ross, I too was incredulous when Hawash was originally arrested. Although I'm not a software guy, I'm enough of a SYSOP and hanger-on to feel that such actions would be totally out of character for soneone like Hawash.
Like you, I was deeply skeptical of the circumstances surrounding Hawash's arrest. Like Buckethead, I am prone to take to the hills with a deer rifle at the first sign of gub'mint thuggery, and I was afraid that Hawash was being made an example of.
Guess I was wrong on all fronts, and it's an awful shame. I too feel bad for Hawash, but more for his family. Hawash himself made his own decisions and will pay the price- penitence is the flip side of remorse. Seven years sounds about right to me, too. "Just and terrible" is the perfect phrase to describe the situation.
Not to be a dick, but I don't necessarily see hundreds of thousands of Muslim suburban fathers speaking out [em]against[/em] the Hawashes of the world.
Racial profiling doesn't
Racial profiling doesn't automatically equal racism either. Paying extra attention to arab citizens seems entirely sensible considering the majority of Muslim extremists we knew about at the time were arabs.
Ted, certainly true. I've got
Ted, certainly true. I've got a little bit of bitch in me, and as a consequence I always brace myself whenever the government starts doing stuff like "paying extra attention to Arab citizens." I don't trust the gubmint enough to know where to draw the line between "attention" and "dragnet."