There is no "war" against terrorism. What George W. Bush launched and Barack Obama insists on perpetuating does not qualify. Not if by war one means doing the obvious and checking a highly suspicious air traveler's underwear to see if explosives have been sewn in. If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab had put the stuff in his shoes we would have had him because that was tried before, but our government was too preoccupied with fighting unnecessary conventional wars and developing anti-missile defense systems to anticipate such a primitive delivery system.
The explosives-laden underwear--worn by an airline passenger who had previously been flagged as a potentially dangerous fanatic, and who had paid cash for his ticket and had no checked luggage--was the terrorist's weapon of choice, one that could have blown a hole in the side of Northwest Airlines' Detroit-bound Flight 253 on Christmas Day, killing hundreds of innocents. But it is not a weapon to be effectively countered with the deployment of hundreds of thousands of American combat troops. Nor can it be stopped by the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of planes, subs and missiles in our arsenal of Cold War-era weapons, part of an annual defense budget that is higher in inflation-adjusted dollars than at any time in the past half-century.
In response to the 9/11 hijackers, armed with artillery that cost a couple hundred dollars at most, we threw money and, more important, attention at conventional military responses while neglecting the difficult police work and the intelligence evaluation and civilian-focused technology necessary to thwart homeland attacks. Yes, there are evildoers out there that mean us harm, as President Bush declaimed. But they are often the products of the best of Western education who, as examples ranging from the lead 9/11 hijackers--the Hamburg group--to the elite University College London-educated engineer in the latest incident demonstrate, move more easily in urbane Western societies than in Afghan villages.
The technology that could help detect a sophisticated plane hijacker or suicide bomber has been largely botched in development and only halfheartedly deployed even when it is available. On Tuesday, a devastating report in The Washington Post revealed that the full-body scanning equipment hyped after 9/11, which might have detected the explosives involved in last week's incident, is still not in wide use. As the Post stated, "A plan that would have helped focus the development of better screening technology and procedures--including a risk-based assessment of aviation threats--is almost two years overdue, according to a report this fall by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress."
So, screening equipment that can detect plastic explosives exists, but it was not used in this case and, as the GAO predicted, "TSA cannot ensure that it is targeting the highest priority security needs at checkpoints; measure the extent to which deployed technologies reduce the risk of terrorist attacks; or make needed adjustments to its PSP [Passenger Screening Program] strategy." As a result, the GAO concluded: "TSA lacks assurance that its investments in screening technologies address the highest priority security needs at airport passenger checkpoints."
The "systematic failure" in the nation's security that President Obama referred to Tuesday derives from the war metaphor itself and from the assumption, begun with Bush's irrational invasion of Iraq and extended with Obama's escalation in Afghanistan, that terrorism is a military rather than a criminal threat. The terrorists are not rebel fighters rooted, as are the Taliban and the remnants of the Iraq insurgency, in their homeland struggles and subject to being defeated on conventional battlefields.
Rather, they are rootless cosmopolitans of violence, alienated from any stated homeland and free to move easily about the world, armed in almost every instance with valid passports, visas and money to exploit our inability to seriously evaluate our own intelligence data. They can count on our top government officials ignoring blinking red warnings, as the Bush White House did before 9/11, or the alarm of a well-connected and properly concerned Nigerian banker-father.
Preventing terrorist attacks on the U.S. homeland has nothing to do with occupying vast tracts of land or winning the hearts and minds of backward villagers whom we falsely depict as surrogates of an evil empire, as we did in Vietnam and are now doing in Afghanistan. What is needed is smart police work to catch these highly mobile fanatics, and that begins with actually reading and then acting on the readily available intelligence data. It requires detectives with brains and not generals with firepower.
The ballooning of the defense budget after 9/11 has proved a great boondoggle for the military-industrial complex, which suddenly found an excuse to build weapons and deploy conventional forces against a superpower enemy that no longer exists. But our stealth fighters and bombers designed to defeat Soviet defenses that were never built are a poor match against a terrorist's stealth underwear.
But what the heck...? Terrorism isn't a specific group of people - to cite the OED, it's a "policy intended to strike with terror those against whom it is adopted, a methods of intimidation." And the U.S. is just as guilty of utilizing this tactic. What else do you call the incidental killing of civilians by drones, the endorsement of Nicarauguan contras, the carpet-bombing of Laos? We're fighting an idea with that very same idea! Until America ceases its own terrorism, one can only expect like retaliation.
That's right.
Iit a loosely connected network of specific groups of people
Small list of the above:
Al Ittihad Al Islamia;Al-Umar-Mujahideen;Armed Islamic Group; Jemaah Islamiya;Islamic Jihad Union;
Al Qaeda; Fatah al-Islam;Turkish Hezbollah;Caucasus Caliphate Jihad;Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin;Lashkar-e-Toiba
In addition there are thousands of unnamed sleeper cells and autonomous groups all over the world.
Any questions?
Terrorism is a *tactic*. It has nothing to do with Islam itself, and plenty of members of other religions across the world and through history have employed its methods. You're conflating things here. The U.S. commits acts of terrorism, and unfortunately I can't think of a nation whose past isn't stained by it. Except that when poorly funded and surreptitious groups of people bomb a public place and kill civilians, it's called terrorism, but when globally dominant and affluent countries do the same, it's called "a just war".
Said network consists of real people who are training, gathering intelligence and committed terrorists acts all over the world. They did NOT choose the guerrilla warfare. It is the one forced upon them by their weakness and lack of territory control. They would love nothing better than to overthrow some government and form a caliphate with its own army and resources of state.
They came pretty close in Afghanistan, forming a symbiotic relationship with Talibs, forming Al Qaeda Arab brigade within Talib Army. Northern Alliance and America special forces made a short work of that Brigade. But it is rebuilding again (thanks to Bush)
.
The Al Qaeda network and its brand must be fought with ALL tools available-- political, diplomatic, police, intelligence, propaganda, special ops, and military.
The wisdom consists in knowing when to apply which tool.!
Those who focus exclusively on only of those tools are doing great disservice to the cause of global security Obama is smart enough o understand that.
The network is global, the opposition must be global as well.
When will Mr Scheer catch on that the whole Al-Qaida-War-On-Terror meme is a scam?
These are isolated occurrence, which just by accident happen to occur almost daily. These are simply noble freedom fighters and anti-capitalists like Major Hassan and 9/11 hijackers.
Besides, we in the West deserve what we get. Well, actually I didn't mean to include "me" in the "we."
"Me" doesn't deserve to be in that plane above Detroit; receiving health care at Fort Hood; working on the 90th floor of the WTC. I am sure the next terrorist attacker will make a clear distinction between those who listen to Pacifica and those who listen to MSNBC.
Ok fine. Let us assume for the moment this makes sense.
What about the police departments.? Should they have drastically increased budgets, manpower and intellgence tools?
Since I can deduce your answer, why not?
Last year a friend of mine who travels constantly between Europe and the US for business got a notice from USCIS (immigration) that he would be deported for having overstayed his admitted time 8 months earlier. In fact he had notified them himself at the time that he needed two extra days for a meeting, he paid the +/- $200 extension fee and then flew back home.
But apparently they thought he'd never left!
He freaked out and called USCIS:
“But don't you know that since then I've come back 3 times? And that 2 months ago your Embassy in .... renewed my business visa?”
The candid reply from the USCIS person: “It takes some time before we get all that information. If you can fax copies of your arrival records, we will cancel the deportation order.”
His problem was solved, but it shows how incredibly slow the system is.
I'm convinced that - for the price of a couple of bombers and drones - we could have the most advanced and up-to-date database in the world, and stop some of the lunatics before they get on a flight.
It would help to stem illegal immigration as well.
The same security firm has been involved multiple times in "slip-ups" including the huge one at Logan International. In fact, nearly every time an incident like this has occurred involving the US, they are the ones providing security. ICTS.
You may wonder why that has never been discussed. I've been wondering it, too. If the same group keeps screwing up, maybe it's time someone more reliable was put in charge.
Robert Scheer was on the verge but just couldn't take the obvious step. The War on Terror is a farce and always has been a farce. This whole charade was a neocon operation to secure Israel, the petro dollar and from there, to extend the empire into the Caspian and Central Asian regions while both containing the Russian Federation from its hoped for resurgence into it's former Islamic republics and preventing the Chinese from moving on the resources of Central Asia themselves.
Mr. Scheer, no matter how articulate you present your argument, you are attacking a strawman and thus falling into the neocon trap enforced by the mainstream media. You said it in the first paragraph, "There is no 'war' against terrorism. What George W. Bush launched and Barack Obama insists on perpetuating does not qualify." If it was a snake it would bite you.
Anyone that wonders why none of the justifications given publicly make any sense whatsoever would benefit by opening a map, and just look at it. That's pretty much all that you need to do to get a clue.
hrew money and, more important, attention at conventional military responses."
This statement factually incorrect on so many levels it boggles the mind
1. We did NOT throw conventional military response at "9/11 hijackers." becuase none of them survived the hijacking.
2. Training and preparation of 9/11 hijackers cost around millions dollar by most credible accounts. Not "couple of hundred dollars."
3. The military conventional forces attacked Taliban miltary conventional force defending Al Qaeda and i in fact incorparated 055 Al Qaeda brigade within its armed forces.
4. Taliban was ousted by Afghans themselves ( Northern Alliance). Few actually Americans fought in that conflict.
I mean, we are supposed to believe this guy was working for "alqueda," that he had a bomb in his underwear but it didn't work right, and that he was trying to destroy the plane. But the people on the plane were told it was a guy who brought "fireworks" onto the plane. So either the flight attendants and pilot were lying to stop people from panicking, or we are being lied to now to start panicking. We don't even have all of the facts, but already air travel is looking more and more grim. We pay too much to fly to deal with this kind of knee-jerk, too-little-too-late security overreaction.
The response has to be evolutionary. However, the problem is that our politicians are spectacle-minded and our public is clamoring for a 'do something!!" response that doesn't lend itself to a quiet upgrade that surprises the enemy.
Seems to me they need to a) switch security companies because they one they have is incompetent, b) pay attention when a son's own father reports that he is a problem and c) bother to do proper cross-referencing of lists.
This was an example of incompetence at multiple points of failure. Taking off our shoes isn't going to help when the people running the show from top to bottom don't even bother to do their jobs.
They throw gobs of money at military hardware of immense sophistication after a bunch of people with box cutters downed those plains! then we attacked the wrong country! now we attack another country and ignore the people boarding plains loaded with explosives!
That doesn't cost nearly as much as this freak-out response, but it will get the job done. Unfortunately, it's also not something politicians can brag about, and that's always priority #1 when a politician decides to endorse a program.