Cahoots

The point of a recent editorial in the NYT, about targeting terrorists, was that there needs to be some sort of oversight of the programs. It said, for example,

The government needs to make public its guidelines for determining who is a terrorist and who can be targeted for death. It should clearly describe how it follows international law in these cases and list the internal procedures and checks it uses before a killing is approved. That can be done without formally acknowledging the strikes are taking place in specific countries...

...The government could establish a court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes wiretaps on foreign agents inside the United States. Before it adds people to its target list and begins tracking them, the government could take its evidence to this court behind closed doors — along with proof of its compliance with international law — and get the equivalent of a judicial warrant in a timely and efficient way.

But that's not, for these purposes, the interesting part of the editorial. It's the opening sentences:

The Obama administration has sharply expanded the shadow war against terrorists, using both the military and the C.I.A. to track down and kill hundreds of them, in a dozen countries, on and off the battlefield.

The drone program has been effective, killing more than 400 Al Qaeda militants this year alone, according to American officials, but fewer than 10 noncombatants. [emphases mine.]

I raise this because, yes, I'm still processing the invective I received recently over my support of our president, from one who believes, with a certainty of religious intensity and for which I simply have no explanation, that Mr Obama is a terrorist plant who aims to destroy the country. The man who has ramped up attacks on terrorists beyond the wettest of George Bush's dreams is in cahoots with them? How can any reasonable person believe that?

Well, no reasonable person can. But what accounts for those that do? How much pollution can they have let into their skulls, how many neurons died defending themselves against it? What is the psychic need that demands they give credence to the obvious insanity (at best) or deliberate lies (more likely, sadly) of such claims? What dark purpose does it serve to the equilibrium of people who accept such an idea against all evidence? I'm completely at a loss.

It's as impossible for me to understand as it is that an entire political party, pretty much alone on the planet, has aligned itself with denial of climate change. Well, in fact I can see some basis for that: greed. To address climate change might cost money in the short run (while preventing unimaginable costs in money and lives in the long). Greed and the rationalization thereof is pretty much the entire foundation of the current iteration of the Republican party and its teabagging surrogates.

But Obama as terrorist? It cost me a friendship (or what I took to be one), and I simply don't get it.

Courage

I've thought for a long time that to pull out of Afghanistan would require an act of political courage that we've never seen before, that I can recall, and that we'll never see in such a polarized country. Bob Herbert agrees, it seems:

Ultimately, the public is at fault for this catastrophe in Afghanistan, where more than 1,000 G.I.’s have now lost their lives. If we don’t have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war, if we’re unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable for the way it is conducted, if we’re not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it.

I think he's right that it's a shared blame. But I think the dynamic is more like this: constant bombardment by the panoply of RWS™ and disgusting inability of liberals to mount an effective response, along with the selfish need of most Americans to equate patriotism with war while avoiding really thinking about it -- much less paying for it -- makes for paralysis. Because overcoming such a charged political climate requires selfless courage; and the screamers know it well, and use it to their advantage.

About this I'm as certain as I am about tomorrow's sunrise: were we to pull out of Afghanistan, there'd be an unprecedented and coördinated barrage of invective from the RWS™, and when the next and inevitable attack on our soil occurs, President Obama would, at minimum be accused of murder. Or worse.

We're wasting lives in Afghanistan, and unending amounts of treasure. In doing so, we're making ourselves less safe, diverting that money from the home front, where it can surely be put to better use. Iraq, on which the jury is still most decidedly out, was, at one time, an actual country. Afghanistan is tribes spread about in the roughest terrain on earth, beholden to no government; and it has been so for centuries. I can't see what would change it; not even were we to send in a million troops and a few more trillions of dollars. If they won't pacify themselves, it'll never happen. They've never been a country.

Nor, were we able magically to turn Afghanistan into a western democracy, or even a pro-western whatever, would we be eliminating terrorist threats. They can come from anywhere, including, as we've seen, within our own borders. Armies can't stop it. Armies fight armies.

It's not worth it. It hasn't been worth it, ever since Bush decided to leave Afghanistan in favor of the debacle known as Iraq. If ever there was a chance to get it right -- and, frankly, I doubt there ever was -- it was then. Now, we're killing ourselves.

I wonder if, deep down somewhere, Barack Obama knows that. In the writings I've read since the McChrystal episode, it seems there's always been a strong contingent in his administration that opposed the "surge" and wanted to find a way out. But, as a war hero once asked, "How do you ask someone to be the last one to die for a mistake?" He's in too deep. Perhaps he thinks of the families of those that have died, those living with deep wounds mental and physical, and hates to tell them it was all for nothing. To tell us what we need to hear, that we lost our chance to prevail in Afghanistan when we left it for Iraq, that we've given them more than nine years to find a way and they haven't, that terrorism knows no country and that our wars have done nothing to lessen the threat but rather has raised it by recruitment and by diversion of resources -- to tell us that, to say it was a mistake by Bush to leave and a mistake by him to go back would take enormous and probably impossible political courage.

If Barack Obama doesn't have that unprecedented courage, no politician does; and, sadly, none likely ever will.

[Update: Here's an article by a person of much more credibility than I, of the same opinion about the outcome.]

Bomb

As the storm of accusations from the usual RWS™ is gathering, (although they're having to talk with their mouths full, as they try to compare the oil spill to Katrina and look for a way to convince their no-need-to-convince-them audience of teabaggers that it's all Obama's fault -- or worse --) let me point out once again what the bomb in Times Square tells us.

1) Preventing all such attacks is impossible.

2) As demonstrated by the events -- including the arrest of a suspect hours later -- following the failed blast, our best defense is (yes, John Kerry was right!) law enforcement. Police work. Intelligence gathering. Proper surveillance. Invading places doesn't protect us from this kind of stuff; in fact, as has been made very clear to me, the Iraq debacle made it more likely. Nor will Ronald Reagan's amyloid-addled missile shield stop guys like this.

3) When the successful attack happens, assuming it's on Obama's watch, while many people rally to a meaningful response, Fox "news" and the RWS™ will do everything they can to multiply the effect by attempting to finish taking the government down.

The rest of us -- people actually interested in seeing our country succeed -- need to think about what can be done. I don't believe our efforts in Iraq ever have or will make us safer. To the extent that our presence in Afghanistan might lessen the chances of Pakistani nukes getting into terrorist hands, an argument can be made for staying. I have no idea. But it ought to be very clear that the end-organ in all this is at home. That's where efforts have the most bang, as it were. That, and continuing to try to improve our image abroad: every person that thinks less badly of us is one that might, someday, provide important information.

It's gonna happen. Not everyone is as incompetent as the Times Square guy, underpants guy, shoe guy. And when it does, as the RWS™ and Fox "news" spend their wind railing at Obama, let's hope the resources are there to act as swiftly as the NY cops, the FBI, NSA, whoever, did this time. In fact, let's demand that enough money be allocated to this sort of defense, as opposed to the Department of Defense, to make it happen. Heck, let's go all the way: let's really do the right thing and agree to pay for it!!

Stick that in your teabag and dip it!

On The One Hand...

Torture-lovers and constitutional rights-haters seem a little silent on this story:

Here we had a serious terrorist threat -- arguably the most important since 9/11 -- and an al Qaeda recruit who was poised to kill a lot of people. Obama administration officials thwarted Zazi's plan, took him into custody, read him his rights, and gave him a lawyer.

And the results couldn't have been better for the United States. Zazi will spend the rest of the his life behind bars, but only after cooperating with federal officials and becoming a valuable source of intelligence.

It's been my contention that Obama's policies on terrorism are much more rational and effective than Bush's ever were, and it seems there's evidence to support that position.

On the other hand...

[Afghanistan] is the longest war in American history. And it is a war for which there is no end in sight. And to my mind, it is a war that is utterly devoid of strategic purpose.

[....] I mean, if we could wave a magic wand tomorrow and achieve in Afghanistan all the purposes that General McChrystal would like us to achieve, would the Jihadist threat be substantially reduced as a consequence? And does anybody think that somehow, Jihadism is centered or headquartered in Afghanistan? When you think about it for three seconds, you say, "Well, of course, it's not. It is a transnational movement."

[...]They can come from Brooklyn. So the notion that somehow, because the 9/11 attacks were concocted in this place, as indeed they were, the notion that therefore, the transformation of Afghanistan will provide some guarantee that there won't be another 9/11 is patently absurd. Quite frankly, the notion that we can prevent another 9/11 by invading and occupying and transforming countries is absurd.

[...] And as with any other international criminal conspiracy, the proper response is a police effort. I mean, a ruthless, sustained, international police effort to identify the thugs, root out the networks and destroy it. Something that would take a long period of time and would no more succeed fully in eliminating the threat than the NYPD is able to fully eliminate criminality in New York City.

I think President Obama is far more thoughtful -- and correct -- about terrorism than President Cheney. And yet even he is not immune to political reality. I don't know if it's part of his calculation or not, but since every smart thing he does -- be it reducing nukes, getting agreements about fissile material, stopping torture -- is greeted by the RWS™ and teabaggers with claims he hates America, maybe he ought simply to do what's right in Afghanistan as well. You know damn well that there will be terrorist attacks here, and that if he sends a million troops there, or pulls them all out, closes Gitmo or builds ten more, it won't matter: to the RWS™ and the TBs, it'll be his fault. Heck, it will have been what he wanted.

Keeping Us Safe

This story may or may not mean much vis a vis the individual, but to me it means a lot about the big picture. The man worked at several nuclear power plants during the Bush administration which, as we're regularly told by the RWS™, kept us safe (as long as you don't count....)

Arrested during the Obama administration, he may or may not prove to have been a dangerous guy. But there's a point: no president can keep us completely safe. In the case of Bush, after he ignored the warnings he was handed about al Queda, the "safety" of the last seven years of his term was, to an unmeasurable extent, pure luck. (By "unmeasurable," I mean just that. I don't doubt that law enforcement was effective as well.)

Much as it's true that President Obama seems to have had remarkable success -- much more than Bush -- in apprehending and killing potential terrorists, it's also true that the real safety net is wielded by those in law enforcement and intelligence gathering. I remain unconvinced that the fight in Afghanistan is worth the effort (although it it helps keep Pakistan's nukes under control, I'd be happy to change my mind), and I'm certain the invasion of Iraq made things much worse for us in nearly uncountable ways. No matter how democratic it ends up. Terrorism isn't a place.

This guy is a warning, if nothing else, and so is this lady: there's no way to prevent all attacks. But our best hope for doing so lies not in fighting wars overseas, but in the smart gathering of intelligence and in the currying of favor among those beyond our borders willing to help. And, I must add, to the extent that there seems to be increased willingness of Pakistan to fight the Taliban, I consider that a great sign.

The credit goes to the smarter policies of the current administration.

Terrorisn't

Guy hates government, is pissed at the IRS, goes on a suicide mission, killing and maiming others on the way. Not terrorism. Not in any way related to the pollution effluxing hourly from Fox "news" and other RWS™. (In fact, to the extreme right wing, he's a hero.)

Woman with a history of violence kills colleagues over being denied tenure. She's a liberal. So are the people she killed. Fox "news" blames it on liberalism. Silent, so far as I've heard, on whether it's terrorism. (Correct me if I'm wrong, because I'd assume someone there thinks it is.)

Man murders doctor who performs abortions, to save babies and send a warning to others. Not terrorism.

Doctor with mental health issues murders fellow soldiers, is a Muslim. Terrorism.

Doesn't it seem the definition is a bit loose? User dependent? Should we just say terrorism is any act of violence committed by a Muslim? Should we add, parenthetically, that violence committed by liberals is ideological and influenced by "their" media, while the same act committed by a right-winger is an individual act with no greater implications? Or might we just allow that it's whatever the namer thinks it is, depending on political agenda and point trying to be made?

Meanwhile, conservatives are getting a good laugh over the airplane incident, while signing on with, and encouraging more of the same.

Don't Hold Your Breath

Let's see if this story gets on Fox "News."

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Soft On Terror

Couple 'a points for those who have swallowed and metabolized the efflux from Fox "News":

1). In his first year on the job, President Obama seems to have taken out more high-level terrorists than Bush did in several.

2). The underpants guy? Given Miranda rights? Happened after he'd stopped talking.

3). (added 2/2): Obama's approach to prisoners at GITMO, compared to Bush's, is as adult to child. This article is revelatory, as are its links.)

I'm sure Glenn Beck will issue a correction real soon.

Because he's feyer.

Un balanced.

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Update, 2/3: Guess who else was read his Miranda rights?

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Terrifying

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Here are a few things I believe about terrorism:

1) The danger is real, and potentially devastating.

1a) Absent a nuclear attack, the devastation will be, to a very significant degree, self-inflicted: political chaos, psychological mayhem, panic, fomented strenuously by the RWS™.2) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have done nothing to lessen the threat.

3) Money spent at home, to beef up security, is of immeasurably greater value than that spent on wars.

4) We can't eliminate the threat with armies (cf: Yemen, Sudan, the next after them; and, of course anywhere in Europe, Asia, South America, Mexico, the US, to name a few.)

5) So far, our response to 9/11 has given al Queda everything it could have hoped for, and more.
5a) That means we're doing much of their work for them, by way of tearing ourselves apart politically, tossing out the window the very values that have allowed us to succeed as a nation, bankrupting ourselves fighting shadows.

Assuming the above thoughts are even partly true, it follows that we'd be much better off ending our wars and spending our manpower and treasure on such things as border security, increased personnel devoted to intelligence gathering and analysis, body scanners, and the like. Money well -- and much better -- spent, far as I can tell.

Amid the recriminations, reasonable and otherwise, following the underwearer, the difficulties have become pretty clear. It's been said (by David Brooks on PBS Newshour, matter of fact, source not stated) that our intelligence services collect, DAILY, as much data as there is in the Library of Congress. DAILY. Our desire to assign blame notwithstanding, searching prospectively through that mass is daunting, nearly impossible. Brooks blithely said we need more of a human touch, more gut instinct, to turn those data into actions. Probably true. But how do you do that when no one is willing to spend (and pay, and collect) the money it would take? How many more people than we currently have are needed for such a task? Specifically, of those happily blaming everything that ever happened or will happen on Barack Obama, how many would be willing to pay the extra taxes, okay reducing our wartime commitments, stop the inflamed rhetoric, address the real issue rather than the politics?

My guess: few enough that it rounds off to none. After all, they just elected another tax-cutter to the Senate. Reduce government. Lower taxes. And, while you're at it, keep us safe.

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Tough Guys

Here's one of those pesky little fact-filled tracts, in response to the RWS™ decrying President Obama's approach to the underpants guy. Seems like Dick Cheney's tougherness-on-terrorness left much to be desired. Included:

The Bush administration -- in which Liz Cheney's papa held a fairly high position, you might recall -- prosecuted, after 9-11, 828 people on terrorism charges in civilian courts. At the time of publication of this excellent report from the Center on Law and Security, NYU School of Law last year, trials were still pending against 235 of those folks. That leaves 593 resolved indictments, of which 523 were convicted of some crime, for a conviction rate of 88%.

With regard to military tribunals, the Bush administration inaugurated 20 such cases. So far just three convictions have been won. The highest-profile is the conviction of Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver. The Hamdan legal saga, rehearsed here, doesn't exactly suggest that military tribunals provide swifter and surer and tougher justice. In the end, he was convicted all right, but sentenced -- not by a bunch of New York City Democrats, but by a military jury! -- to five and half years.

Then, the tribunal judge, a US Navy captain, gave Hamdan credit for time served, which was five years. So he served six months after conviction. Today he's back in -- guess where? -- Yemen.

So there you go. Make of it what you will. And, by all means, don't let the facts stand in your way.

Oh, there's this, too, if anyone cares.

And here's a really good question, from Fareed Zakaria, which repeats a frequent theme of mine:

As for the calls to treat the would-be bomber as an enemy combatant, torture him and toss him into Guantanamo, God knows he deserves it. But keep in mind that the crucial intelligence we received was from the boy's father. If that father had believed that the United States was a rogue superpower that would torture and abuse his child without any sense of decency, would he have turned him in? To keep this country safe, we need many more fathers, uncles, friends and colleagues to have enough trust in America that they, too, would turn in the terrorist next door.

Exactly.

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Predictably Putrid

So here's the thing (Happy New Year, by the way):

That failed bombing of the plane to Detroit was most certainly the result of screwups. Janet Napalitano did herself and her president no favors by initially claiming that the system worked (even if she was, clumsily, referring to the warnings disseminated after the incident became known.) Clearly, we have a long way to go to make ourselves as safe as possible. But I find the response of the RWS™ and their Republican lickers putrid, if entirely predictable.

Recently a friend sent me a link to a very representative sentiment: Obama gets "an F" on protecting us. (I ain't providing the link: why should the author get traffic for such slime.) Whereas the writer of said screed listed the obvious concerns, he emphasized, in perfect RWS™ mode, on the fact that Obama was on vacation. He dredged up the time it took for Obama to speak about the incident (overlooking the fact that Bush took two days longer to address the issue of the "shoe bomber." He decried the idea that the failed bomber was arrested and remanded to Federal Court (exactly as was Richard Reid.) On it went, in that vein.

To my friend I sent a link to another article which correctly listed the concerns any reasonable person would have, but which didn't see the necessity to make some sort of perverse political hay over it by implying it shows Obama is somehow a failure.

Of the greatest concern, to me anyway, is the fact that there seems still to be the communication problems that characterized the pre-9/11 intelligence. But how is that strictly an Obama problem? George Bush had seven years to fix it, and didn't. (This was after, in order, opposing the DHS, privatizing the TSA and grudgingly federalizing it only after it became a monumental private failure, opposing the 9/11 Commission, and failing to put in place approximately 85% of its recommendations.) So, if there's blame to go around, isn't it proportionally more at the feet of the guy who had that seven years, as opposed to the one that had closer to seven months? Just asking.

To his credit, President Obama has stated that the incident demonstrates failures at several levels, in a way Bush never did. He's calling meeting to address them. Call me crazy, but I trust Obama actually to look into it and demand changes; Bush, as we saw, had no interest in such mundane matters. If you couldn't invade it, he'd rather ignore it. I suppose we can blame Obama for not going back in time and preventing the Bush State Department from granting the bikini bomber's visa. Indeed, maybe, before having been elected to the Senate, President Obama should have seen to it that the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission were followed, and that money was allocated to higher level screening. (Interestingly, unsurprisingly, the very senators now blaming Obama for his "weakness on terror," voted against funding airport security a few years ago.) Who'd have guessed, huh?

The friend who sent the link that annoyed me so much has, shall we say, certain reservations about President Obama's intentions. Yet in our conversations he acknowledges that there is literally no way to prevent certain kinds of terrorist attacks in this country; most especially at places not generally suited to (at least for now) the sorts of screenings that are routine at airports. So when the unavoidable next happens, let's remember this simple rule: whatever it is, and wherever it happens, it's always the Democrats' fault, whether they're in power or not. It makes things a lot simpler and easier to understand.

Finally, this: the most important indicator, evidently, of Obama's commitment to fighting terrorism is his use -- or lack thereof -- of the word "war." Never mind that he has, in fact, used the term; or, for that matter, that he has escalated (wrongly, in my opinion) the military presence in Afghanistan. Because he early eschewed the term "war on terror," which is one of the stupidest phrases ever invented to give an incompetent president war powers, Barack Obama is, according to Dick Cheney and the entire cadré or RWS™, failing to keep us safe. It is to laugh. Or cry. (I seem to be doing the latter, mostly.)

Finally finally, this: the panty-bomber came, evidently, via Yemen. Joe Lieberman, predictably speaking for all the deep thinkers on the right, is all tumescent for the next war there. The idea that disproves itself. Invade Iraq to prevent terrorism. Escalate in Afghanistan to prevent terrorism. Invade Yemen to prevent terrorism.... Anyone begin to see a certain logical flaw?

Happy New Year.