What Now?
Now is clearly not the time for petty partisan attacks. While it would be easy to throw in a jab at our “retarded cowboy” of a President, it wouldn’t be mature or contructive. That said, there are a lot of important questions raised by today’s attacks that deserve answers.
Do we have enough Arabic translators to interpret data as it comes into our various intelligence agencies? At this point, there’s no reason for us to have more than a day or two behind in translation. Do our intelligence agencies have a sophisticated enough data analysis system to pick out, say, the term “King’s Cross” being used more frequently in disparate emails, telephone transcripts, or websites over the last week? Are the American and British intelligence agencies sharing information? We already know the law enforcement branches aren’t communicating.
For me and many on the left, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that today’s attacks are proof that the Bush / Blair approach to fighting terrorism doesn’t work. I think that may be a bit simplistic since a statement like that assumes that terrorist attacks are something that can be prevented. I’m not sure about that and nobody will know whether these specific attacks could have been prevented until we have more information. So I’ll refrain from discussing specifics until the experts speak out.
But the knee-jerk response of lefties is mirrored by the response on the right that increasing violence over the last few years is somehow proof that the terrorists are “on the run”. Say what you will about the left’s supposedly misplaced priorities[1]Which I should mention right now is complete, utter bullshit. Aside from “blame America first” loonies that have been cherry-picked out of obscurity by the hyperpartisan right, the vast majority of liberals see terrorists as our nation’s greatest threat. Just because we criticize the methods that Bush / Blair use to fight terror doesn’t mean that we think terrorism isn’t worth fighting., the upside-down logic that terrorist attacks are signs that they’re in their “last throes” and other such nonsense is pathologically absurd. For war supporters, a two-year struggle against insurgents somehow validates initial projections that there wouldn’t be any ethnic strife in Iraq.
The only way we’ll ever be able to defeat terrorists is to finally have an open discussion about the best ways to defeat this enemy. There’s been plenty of debates on the margins, but until the people who make the decisions get over their “my way or the highway” hubris, we’ll be stuck on a path that, based on today’s events, looks doomed to failure.
1 : Which I should mention right now is complete, utter bullshit. Aside from “blame America first” loonies that have been cherry-picked out of obscurity by the hyperpartisan right, the vast majority of liberals see terrorists as our nation’s greatest threat. Just because we criticize the methods that Bush / Blair use to fight terror doesn’t mean that we think terrorism isn’t worth fighting.
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i’m curious if this was just coincidental to the Olympics being awarded to London. Had NYC gotten the olympics, would NYC have been hit? Had France gotten the olympics, would Paris have been hit? There point is to strike fear into people. What better way to scare the world than to attack the city that everyone is looking at as the future home of the olympics? Were their terrorist operatives in all the major cities waiting to attack whichever one recieved the olympic bid?
Comment by tomN! — July 7, 2005 @ 3:08 pm
Blaming new terrorists acts on our government’s wrong-headed policies is perfectly fair, but counter-productive in the extreme.
If your reason for being in power is the prevention of future attacks, if you have asked (and not asked) for your constituents to give up freedoms, comforts and rights, so that you may more effectively achieve your ambition of total safety, then it is not only entirely fair but down right compulsary to hold you to your own standards.
But it does the left no good to blame Bush and Blair for these attacks, for two reasons. On the one hand, we should not be encouraging the immaturity of the body politic, the collective fantasy of safety through strength.
We should, instead, be helping ourselves find the courage, as a nation and a civilization to be the countervaling example to that much-quoted formulation that those who would give up their liberty in order to gain safety deserve neither.
The quote is deservedly popular among those opposed to the PATRIOT Act and the War on Terror, but it seems to imply that the British should wake up tommorow and go back to work. Perhaps they should tweak some intelligence procedures, install bomb detectors on the trains, train the public in CPR and triage. But under no circumstances should they give up their freedoms by hiring more undercover cops, infiltrating mosques, or putting more cameras in Tube stations. That would be throwing away freedoms in order to get safety.
I think this is the right way to go about dealing with terror attacks — we must have faith in each other, and in our way of life, and be willing, maybe, to die for our freedoms. Which is why we can’t attack the Blair (and Bush, and Berlusconi, et cetra) approach to terror on the grounds that they aren’t doing enough. If we attack them, we just feed the irrational belief that perfect safety is achievable, which is the whole basis for their fear-based politics.
Comment by Joe — July 7, 2005 @ 11:13 pm
re: my rambling, incoherent comments, two of the guests on Nightline tonight said what I was trying to say with a great deal more believablity and persuaviness. In the process they totally trashed Richard Clark and all the pathetic hacks who, like him, advocate continung the fantasy-based approach of the War on Terror.
Bottom line, tonight was the Best Nightline Ever!
Comment by Joe — July 8, 2005 @ 12:03 am