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Time For Sanity

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Amid all of the television news specials, turgid essays and grim pictorials we have seen on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks – there have been a few encouraging glimpses of sanity.  Several commentators have pointed out that Osama Bin Laden got exactly what he wanted when America reacted to that tragedy by spending trillions on military assaults, which ended up killing unknown thousands of innocent Muslims – also known as “collateral damage”.

How many otherwise peace-loving Muslims will be attracted to Islamist extremism because of outrage over a “war on terror” they perceive as a “war on Islam”?  How badly has our economy been damaged because a military invasion of Iraq was sold as an effective way to prevent another 9/11?

Another tragic change Bin Laden brought to America was the inflammation of a pre-existing National Security Gestapo, which had always been hell-bent on having its way – individual freedom and privacy be damned!  We have witnessed how Barack Obama has been more than happy to accommodate those forces – many of which are private contractors – deliberately placed out of the reach of that pesky Freedom of Information Act.

How did we get to this deteriorated situation?  The mass media bear a large share of the responsibility.  Their need to out-sensationalize the competition helped fuel a consensual mindset, ginned-up with rage and ready to support whatever junta could strike back at our enemy with unrestrained force.  We were told that this enemy was terrorism itself – a tactic.  Our government had declared war against a tactic.  Anyone who questioned that battle was characterized as weak or unpatriotic.

It is only now – ten years after the tragedy – when people are willing to take a rational look at how our political leaders and our media establishment reacted to (or took advantage of) these events.

Spencer Ackerman wrote an article for Wired with the title, “How to Defeat Terrorism:  Refuse to Be Terrorized”.  In the political world, the refusal to be terrorized requires the courage to stand up to intimidation and accusations of being “weak on terror”.  In fact, our political leaders have been rendered weak from terror.  That weakness has resulted in significant deterioration of our personal liberties as well as capitulation to those lobbyists and pressure groups demanding unlimited expenditures in the name of “homeland security”.  Spencer Ackerman provided this explanation:

Look at the charts that Danger Room’s Lena Groeger compiled.  She tallies $6.6 trillion in defense spending after 9/11.  There is nothing that al-Qaida could possibly do to justify even a slice of such a monster expenditure.  Why did it happen?

Former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke has an answer.  “There’s going to be a terrorist strike some day,” Clarke told Frontline for its “Top Secret America” documentary this week.  “And when there is, if you’ve reduced the terrorism budget, the other party, whoever the other party is at the time, is going to say that you were responsible for the terrorist strike because you cut back the budget.  And so it’s a very, very risky thing to do.”

*   *   *

It’s much harder to be the one to stand up and say the threat of terrorism is too minor for such expanded surveillance, and the government needs to stop.  When libertarian Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) made precisely that case, Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) subjected him to cheap, hypocritical demagoguery.

The only way this changes is if citizens change the political incentives for politicians.  Two-bit terrorists will always be around, sadly.  But when the Harry Reids get major political blow-back for attacking the Rand Pauls, then – and only then – will the 9/11 Era be truly over.

Another important theme of Ackerman’s essay is the absence of an “end game” for this war on terror.  After conceding that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta may be entirely justified in claiming that al-Qaida is on the verge of strategic collapse, Ackerman emphasizes that “it would be foolish” to relent at this point:

But all of that is only justifiable if the new U.S. Shadow Warsundeclared, largely covert wars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond – actually end soon.

*   *   *

When Barack Obama ran for president, his national security team told me, in an extensive series of interviews, that a major focus of his presidency would be to confront what they called the “politics of fear” – the national-security freakout that led to counterproductive post-9/11 moves like invading Iraq.  But since coming to power, Obama has accommodated himself to the politics of fear far more than he’s confronted it.

*   *   *

Only when citizens make it acceptable for politicians to recognize that the threat of terrorism isn’t so significant can the country finally get what it really needs, 10 years later:  closure.

President Obama created a new challenge for himself:  By killing off Bogeyman Bin Laden and with the imminent destruction of the world’s largest terrorist organization, he is now faced with the duty to lead America out of this dark age of terrorphobia.


 

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The Biggest Challenge For Hillary

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December 1, 2008

The recent attacks in Mumbai, India focused international attention back to the continuing problem of organized terrorist activity.  As Hillary Clinton is presented to the world as our next Secretary of State, the more sensationalist elements of the media have their focus on terrorism.  Terrorism is highlighted to the exclusion of the other pressing matters to be faced during Secretary Clinton’s upcoming tenure, presiding over that all-important bureaucracy in the neighborhood known as “Foggy Bottom”.  Nevertheless, Secretary Clinton will have several other pressing issues on her agenda  — “leftovers” that have stumped the previous administration for the past eight years.  Among these abandoned, stinking socks on the floor of the Oval Office, the least fragrant involves the situation with Iran.  The Bush years took that bad situation and made it far worse.  A December 1 article in the Tehran Times focused on the remarks of Majlis Speaker, Ali Larijani, about what might lie ahead between the United States and Iran.  While suggesting that the Bush Administration “sabotaged” efforts to resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, the article mentioned Larijani’s criticisms of what was described as the Democrats’ Iran containment policy.

A report in the December 1 Los Angeles Times examined the expectations of Arabs and Israelis, with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State.  Discussing various forecasts concerning American strategy towards Iran, the article noted:

Some analysts predict the Obama administration will try instead to broker an Israeli-Syrian accord, aimed at drawing Syria away from Iran’s influence and diminishing Iran as a threat to the Jewish state.

Elizabeth Bumiller’s article in the November 22 New York Times described the “working chemistry” that has developed between Barack Obama and Ms. Clinton.  This chemistry resulted in a softening of Clinton’s position, expressed during the primary season debates, about negotiating with Iran:

But although Mrs. Clinton criticized Mr. Obama for being willing to sit down and talk to dictators, he has said he would have a lower-level envoy do preparatory work for a meeting with Iran’s leaders first.  Mrs. Clinton has said she favors robust diplomacy with Iran and lower-level contacts as well.

In the November 24 Jerusalem Post, Douglas Bloomfield gave us a refreshing look at how the Obama – Clinton foreign policy team might function:

Hillary’s great challenge will be to remember who IS President, who ISN’T and who WAS.  She will have to focus on rebuilding relationships damaged during the Bush years of “my way or the highway” foreign policy, taking the lead from the man she once described as not ready to be president.

*  *  *

In the Middle East peace process, as in other policy areas, Obama seems intent on charting a pragmatic, centrist course.  While that will disappoint both the Jewish Right and Left, it could prove a welcome change after eight years of the Bush administration’s faith-based foreign policy and not-so-benign neglect of the peace process.

As Inauguration Day approaches, the Bush Administration’s legacy of complete incompetence in nearly all areas is being documented by countless writers around the world.  By invading Iraq, Bush-Cheney helped Iran realize its dreams of hegemony.  Bush’s mishandling of Iran’s rise as a nuclear power became the subject of a thought-provoking opinion piece by David Ignatius in the November 30 Washington Post.  Mr. Ignatius noted that Iran had neither enriched uranium nor the technology to enrich uranium (centrifuges) when Bush took power.  As Bush’s days in the White House wind down, we now see Iran with nearly 4,000 centrifuges and approximately 1,400 pounds of enriched uranium.  The 2006 precondition that Iran halt uranium enrichment before the United States would participate in diplomatic efforts to address this issue, exemplifies the handicapped mindset of the Bush-Cheney regime.  As Mr. Ignatius pointed out:

It’s impossible to say whether Iran’s march toward nuclear-weapons capability could have been stopped by diplomacy.  But there hasn’t yet been a good test.  Because of bitter infighting in the Bush administration, its diplomatic efforts were late in coming and, once launched, have been ineffective.

By the time we finally have a President and a Secretary of State who are capable of taking on the dicey task of negotiating with Iran on the nuclear issue, it may be too late.  Hillary Clinton’s biggest challenge in her new job has already been cut out for her by the Bush Administration’s nonfeasance.