Futile finger pointing

Townhall.com ^ | 3/24/2004 | Tony Blankley

[Utah Girl]

This week’s September 11 hearings and former anti-terrorism staffer Richard Clarke’s just released charges of Bush Administration incompetence should be seen as the latest example of how America historically has reacted to the outbreak of a major war.

The sudden commencement of major war is so shocking and disruptive of normal civilized life that there seems to be a psychological need for the event to be explained in terms of treachery or stupendous incompetence. It is too disturbing to accept the reality -- that normal government officials, performing as they normally are expected to, were inadequate to avoid the catastrophe.

The considered judgment of history tends to find the causes of major wars to be the failure of existing systems of governance to properly manage newly emerging great historic forces. But in the moment of crises -- and often for decades afterward -- the melodramatic storylines prove the more compelling. The appeal of these human stories is only exacerbated by the cynical career survival instincts of the politicians both in and out of power at the moment of disaster

[Utah Girl]

I just love Tony Blankley's columns. He is so eloquent and straight forward.

[LiteKeeper]

read later

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That really is an excellent piece.

Rumsfeld touched on some of the same points today at the hearings.

[Cap Huff]

The warning here about the failure to respond to the Madrid attack is clear. So far the EU has responded by calling for mobile telephone companies to require names and addresses for purchasers.

That will do it. Now let's all go back to our self-satisfied socialist somnambulism.

[ThePythonicCow]

An excellent point in this article - even if we had avoided 9/11, if perhaps Bush had learned of it and stopped it cold, another such tragedy would have occurred.

Not until such an event would America, or various other nations and peoples, be sufficiently galvanized to fight the wars, defeat the nations, kill or imprison the tens of thousands of intractable terrorists, necessary to defeat the radical islamist terrorists. And not until we fight such a major war, and defeat them profoundly, will the thread of continued terrorist attacks be abated.

9/11 had to be - or something in its stead.

[Grampa Dave]

"The warning here about the failure to respond to the Madrid attack is clear. So far the EU has responded by calling for mobile telephone companies to require names and addresses for purchasers."

Thanks for posting how the Socialists handle the dangers of Terrorism and the Terrorists who bring about the Terrorism.

If we elect John F'onda Querry, this will seem like a radical action. He will allow al Qaeda to have embassies in DC and all major cities to be used to launch more terrorist actions in America.

[Cap Huff]

Here's the full story I posted on another thread yesterday:

An AFP summary of the measures being approved to combat terrorism in the EU:

http://www.eubusiness.com/afp/040323022847.7576p9zo

"Here is a summary of the main points, proposed by interior ministers at emergency talks last Friday and approved by foreign ministers Monday:

-- appointment of a new "coordinator" to oversee the fields involved in the anti-terrorism fight -- including police and judicial work, intelligence-sharing and cracking down on extremists' financing.

EU diplomats, playing down talk of a "terrorism tsar", said the new post was expected to form part of the department of EU foreign affairs chief Javier Solana, rather than become a new agency.

-- creation within six months of a new intelligence "clearing house" to pool information on extremists. But this will stop short of the "European CIA" demanded by EU members Austria and Belgium.

"That would not be useful ... We have to network the intelligence services that exist," said German Interior Minister Otto Schily.

-- a "solidarity clause" pledging all-for-one support if an EU member is attacked. The clause is already envisaged in the EU's draft constitution, but agreement on the document as a whole has been delayed.

-- new rules by December requiring Internet service providers and mobile telephone companies to retain information on their customers, as part of efforts to keep track of extremists.

The EU is also calling for accelerated work on other measures agreed after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States:

-- implementation across the bloc of a new EU arrest warrant, which has yet to take effect in Austria, Germany, Greece, Italy and the Netherlands.

-- use of "biometric indicators" such as fingerprints and iris scans in EU passports and identity papers;

-- reinforcing cooperation at the EU police agency, Europol, its judicial agency Eurojust and among EU police chiefs, who are met on Monday and Tuesday in Dublin;

-- further work on blocking extremists' financial networks;

-- bolstering transport security on land along the lines of measures already taken at sea and in the air; and

-- quick agreement on a proposed EU law to compensate victims of terror attacks."

This is pathetic.

[Grampa Dave]

Don't forget that the brave French will ban scarfs or something like that with Arabic School Girls.

The socialists never solve a serious problem. They just add to their bureaucrats to monitor the problem as they make it worse or allow it to become a bigger problem.

[Cap Huff]

Right, they never solve serious problems . . . . they create them!

[OESY]

Interesting parallel: Honest Abe misled the American people by leading them into a war to preserve the Union, and only later acknowledging it was also to end slavery.

Does it really matter since slavery was abolished or, back to the present, since Iraq was freed of Saddam and his schemes to produce and use WMD, even if we have not yet found them, but only his SCUD delivery systems? I feel safer.

[prairiebreeze]

ping to insightful op-ed

[Peach]

Thanks for the ping, prairie, although the last sentence was enough to make me pretty depressed again.

BTW, FNC is waiting to show coverage of a speech by President Bush at some event. Live.

[prairiebreeze]

It's just what George Tenat said today. That another attack was coming. And the finger pointing will continue.

Thanks for the heads up on the Pres. speech.

Did you see that OhioW's Eric will be home Friday? :^D

Prairie

[Peach]

I was JUST there this very second telling her how wonderful it was...

[PISANO]

His observation is correct and one which George Bush should have used to UNDERSCORE HIS REJECTION of a 911 commission. Which, by the way, has come to be about as non-partisan as Ted Kennedy's spew that George Bush concocted lies to go to war with IRAQ out of whole cloth while vacationing in Texas.

The blame game ALWAYS results from these commissions and the losers are always the American People.

[Peach]

Are you watching the president and the slide show? He's a riot!!!

[prairiebreeze]

Yes, saw it! Got a warm response too I thought. Wonderful sentiments and tribute to the troops at the end too, which is typical for this President and was totally foreign for the Clinturds

Prairie

[arasina]

I do too. This one is especially well-written and to-the-point.