Law Enforcement Evolves

Evolving Definitions of Law Enforcement

By Roy D. Follendore III

May 25, 2002

Terrorism is not irrational any more than bank robberies, rapes and murders are irrational. Being rational does not mean the same thing as validity, honesty, sanity, logical, or criminality. It simply has to do with the relational reasoning that takes place with respect to context, objectives and intentions. A rational action is simply what it is, rationalized. When things have taken place we can not reason, we can only rationalize.

When we rationalize what we have done we are being rational. Human beings have what they think are legitimate rational explanations for their behavior. Individuals expect to have done what they feel was rational. It is the same for criminals, most people suffering from insanity, the lawyers and judges, the scientific intellectual genius, and the executive bureaucrats. We all rationalize our actions and intentions to fit the model of who and what we think we are, not necessarily what we actually might be.

Whether what people do rationally is right for humanity and society is an entirely different issue. A couple of hundred years ago it would just fine to rape and kill women, as long as it was an American Indian or perhaps black family. Society tolerated that then. If you did not approve and felt that it was rational to protect these women with the point of a knife or gun, then you might just find yourself swinging on a tree by your neck. The context of rational thinking is societal.

The judgment of today's society may not be tomorrows. Our founding fathers were not particularly nice to those who lived in the American colonies and openly supported the British. I am certain that there were acts of terrorism which were blamed on the local American Indians. Of course that would have been an OK thing to do because it is only rational that the United States was right and the British were wrong. American policy was founded on the concept that a higher ideal overrides the day to day rational. The context of rational thinking is politically moral.

These points somehow are lost in the midst of the struggles that have been going on in America today. It is interesting to find out that the FBI was aware of the intentions of some of the September 11th hijackers. It seems that the FBI administration did not draw the rational conclusions from ruby ridge and Waco disasters. Members of the FBI have gone public to state that the FBI backed off of investigations of the September 11th hijack terrorists because they wanted to protect the FBI's reputation. Well their rational plan sure didn't work, because the FBI's reputation is right in the middle of it again.

The FBI did not draw the correct conclusions from their failure at Waco, Texas. It was not the fact that the FBI investigated Waco and Ruby Ridge, it was the manner in which they handled the cases at the end. The FBI management went into a rational for war, not arrest. Let us face the facts America. It was not Waco that paralyzed the decision making process of the FBI, it was the ghost of McVeigh and his bombing of the Okalahoma City Government building. McVeigh's rational for his wrong was that what the FBI did in Waco and Ruby Ridge was wrong. If he were alive today, I doubt that he would have said that it was wrong for the FBI to have investigated. Tim simply hated the use of the power of Government military action against civilians. In his mind this reconciled his rational murder of innocents. After all of the investigations and pointless cover-ups, the FBI seems to have never really understood this.

Since the beginning of its organization, the FBI seems to have suffered a chronic rational conflict of interest within the duties of their management ranks. The fact that there is both an ethical political and social responsibility to the rational of the FBI was never accepted as part of their duty. Moreover, the fact that the FBI act as a balanced peacekeeping organization as well as a law-enforcement organization is yet to be reconciled by the leadership and citizens of this country. As it's name implies, maybe the FBI should be first and foremost an investigative organization. We should never forget that the most important part of the word peacekeeping is the word peace.

Society itself must work out it's evolving rational definitions of law enforcement. No investigative organization should confuse their bureaucratic rational with the objective search for justice through the search for truth.

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