{"id":3613,"date":"2010-01-11T14:35:27","date_gmt":"2010-01-11T22:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=3613"},"modified":"2010-01-11T15:58:03","modified_gmt":"2010-01-11T23:58:03","slug":"terrorism-and-opportunism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/terrorism-and-opportunism\/","title":{"rendered":"Terrorism and opportunism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I recall a time in the not-too-distant past\u2014just over one year ago, say–when being a \u201cwar-time president\u201d carried a certain aura of sanctity, lest criticism of the Commander-in-Chief demoralize the troops fighting that \u201cwar.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Times have changed along with the administration.\u00a0 Such is the way of politics.\u00a0 But the implication that decisions taken by the Obama administration contributed either to the hatching of the 12\/25 plot or to the failure to detect it strikes me as particularly opportunistic.\u00a0\u00a0 Any alleged failures in the intelligence community were a long time brewing; the idea that bureaucracies as large and sclerotic as those governing intelligence gathering and analysis suddenly took a new direction after January 2009 is absurd.\u00a0 Yet here<\/a> is former Navy Secretary and 9\/11 Commission member John Lehman alleging that:<\/p>\n

The president [that would be President Obama, BTW, not Bush] has ignored the 9\/11 Commission\u2019s report.\u00a0 This whole idea that we can fix things by jumping higher and faster is ridiculous. The fact is that the system worked just like we said it would work if the president failed to give the Director of National Intelligence the tools he needs: it\u2019s bloated, bureaucratic, layered, and stultified.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The 9\/11 Commission report came out in 2004; any failure to \u201cgive the Director of National Intelligence the tools he needs\u201d or to fix bureaucratic bloat would have happened on the last watch.\u00a0 If Lehman was aware of intelligence tools that the DNI needed that Obama was withholding, he should have spoken up before this.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey rehearses<\/a> the usual litany of missed clues that allegedly were clear enough to have detected Abdulmutallab\u2019s plot:\u00a0<\/p>\n

These included Abdulmutallab’s father’s warning to the State Department that his son was being radicalized and had gone to Yemen; the one-way ticket purchased for cash; no luggage; and intercepted communication referring to a plot involving “the Nigerian” in Yemen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Mukasey does not explain how Obama\u2019s directives resulted in the \u201cdots\u201d remaining unconnected.\u00a0 Was there suddenly a command to pay less attention to passengers who pay cash for tickets?\u00a0 Even if the prevailing assumption is correct that a perfect intelligence system could put together all nascent terror possibilities and plots out of the millions of points of intelligence gathered every day, the reasons why our current intelligence systems do not live up to that ideal accumulated over the last decade and before, in part thanks to pressures from privacy advocates<\/a>, to which Bush and his predecessors acceded.<\/p>\n

Marc Thiessen claims<\/a> that Obama\u2019s decision to shut down the CIA\u2019s secret interrogation centers would have \u201ccaused another attack,\u201d but for the actions of Abdulmutallab\u2019s fellow passengers.\u00a0 He provides no evidence that we were anywhere close to finding the tracks of the relevant Al Qaeda branch before Obama shut down the program, or that we would have been likely to pick someone up over the last year who would have described or provided leads about the plot.\u00a0 Thiessen is absolutely correct that human intelligence is vital to making sense of signals intelligence, and that the decision to confine the CIA to Army Field Manual interrogation techniques carries a great risk of missed intelligence.\u00a0 But it is purely speculative whether that decision had any bearing on the present case.\u00a0 Surely the build-up of Al Qaeda in Yemen is not just a post-January 2009 phenomenon; officials prior to the current administration apparently missed its significance as well.\u00a0\u00a0 (The CIA, of course, has not always <\/a>enjoyed such conservative confidence regarding its War on Terror credentials.)<\/p>\n

The battle over whether Obama uses the phrase \u201cwar on terror\u201d enough would strike me as silly, except for one massive consequence of the phrase: the rights accorded an interrogation subject.\u00a0 After making a few trivial jabs at other post-12\/25 phrases that he deems insufficiently bellicose (such as \u201cno smoking gun\u201d), Michael Mukasey rightly points out that actionable intelligence often has a short shelf life, and cannot wait on a plea bargain.\u00a0 True enough.\u00a0 Giving Abdulmutallab a lawyer in this case strikes me as reckless.\u00a0 But in that vein, given the ephemeral nature of much intelligence, one does wonder whether the detainees who have been held for years in Guantanamo really have much more information to offer anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are plenty of willing attack dogs currently in government and outside to go after Obama\u2019s policies.\u00a0 It\u2019s disappointing, in my view, that people of Cheney and Mukasey\u2019s stature have taken on that role as well.\u00a0 If the parties in power were reversed, the Republicans would probably denounce the strident second-guessing on the part of past administration members.\u00a0 I would wish that those prior leaders behaved with greater forbearance and respect for the offices that they once occupied, and with recognition that their current occupants are most likely operating in good faith.\u00a0\u00a0 The ex-administration attack dogs would undoubtedly respond that the fate of the nation depends on their speaking out candidly and without restraint against Obama\u2019s alleged mistakes.\u00a0 But then at the very least they should get their facts straight<\/a>, such as regarding whether the previous administration spoke out immediately about failed terror attempts.\u00a0\u00a0 If this is really a fight for our civilization, as conservatives argue, one could hope that we might behave in a more respectful, principled manner, rather than seizing political advantage wherever we can find it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recall a time in the not-too-distant past\u2014just over one year ago, say–when being a \u201cwar-time president\u201d carried a certain aura of sanctity, lest criticism of the Commander-in-Chief demoralize the troops fighting that \u201cwar.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Times have changed along with the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[353],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3613"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3616,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3613\/revisions\/3616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}