Posted on 09/18/2001 4:50:17 AM PDT by Liz
We know now that America has been the victim of a large, well-planned, and well-executed terrorist act. The parameters are yet to be fully explored, but that won't stop the usual suspects from pontificating (and, yes, that includes me) on what happened and what needs to be done as a result. A few modest observations:
• As I write this we only know the rough outlines of what has taken place. We do not know exactly who the perpetrators were, though we have heard from Vice President Dick Cheney that there is "no question" that Osama bin Laden had a role. But many groups may have been involved, and we do not know their motivation, or for whom or for what particular objective they worked.
• "Don't know" means "don't know" and nothing more. Absent hard information, talking about who it must have been and what we need to do about it is a waste of air and energy.
To discern the important facts, we have the Federal Bureau of Investigation as our principal investigative agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency (along with National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency) as our principal foreign-intelligence services. Getting the most important information is their job, not the job of the news media, which will only repeat what they are told. Gathering this information will take time, because we need to get it right.
• Terrorism is a political act, performed for political objectives. The general aim of terrorism is to force changes in the targeted society through the shock value of the crime committed. Therefore, if we make radical changes in how our country operates, the bad guys win. We do not want that to happen.
Whoever planned this operation is watching us right now, and they are probably having a pretty good laugh. We can't stop that. What we can do is to maintain that which they most hate, which is a free society. We've worked too hard to become what we are, and we can't allow a few savages to change it for us.
Next, our job is to take a step back, take a deep breath and get to work finding out who it was, where they are, and what to do about it.
Terrorism is a crime under the civil law when committed by domestic terrorists; it can be an act of war when committed by foreigners. For domestic criminals we have the FBI and police. For acts of war we have our intelligence community and the military. In either case we have well-trained people to do the work. If we let them do their job, and give them the support they need, the job will get done as reliably as gravity.
The foreign-source option seems the most likely at this time. The first line of defense in such a case is the intelligence community. The CIA is an agency of about 18,000 employees, of whom perhaps 800 are field-intelligence officers--that is, the people who go out on the street and learn what people are thinking, not how many tanks they have parked outside (we have satellites to photograph those).
I've been saying for a lot of years that this number is too small. American society doesn't love its CIA, for the same reason that it doesn't always love its cops. We too often regard them as a threat to ourselves rather than our enemies. Perhaps these incidents will make us rethink that.
The best defense against terrorist incidents is to prevent them from happening. You do that by finding out what a potential enemy is thinking before he is able to act. What the field intelligence officers do is no different from what Special Agent Joe Pistone of the FBI did when he infiltrated the mafia under the cover name of Donnie Brasco. The purpose of these operations is to find out what people are thinking and talking about. However good your satellites are, they cannot see inside a human head. Only people can go and do that.
But America, and especially the American news media, does not love the CIA in general and the field spooks in particular. As recently as two weeks ago, CBS's "60 Minutes" regaled us with the hoary old chestnut about how the CIA undermined the leftist government of Chile three decades ago. The effect of this media coverage, always solicitous to leftist governments, is to brand the CIA an antiprogressive agency that does Bad Things.
In fact, the CIA is a government agency, subject to the political whims of whoever sits in the White House and Congress. The CIA does what the government of which it is a part tells it to do. Whatever evil the CIA may have done was the result of orders from above.
The Chilean event and others (for example, attempts to remove Fidel Castro from the land of the living, undertaken during the presidency of JFK, rather more rarely reported because only good came from Camelot) caused the late Sen. Frank Church to help gut the CIA's Directorate of Operations in the 1970s. What he carelessly left undisturbed then fell afoul of the Carter administration's hit man, Stansfield Turner. That capability has never been replaced.
It is a lamentably common practice in Washington and elsewhere to shoot people in the back and then complain when they fail to win the race. The loss of so many lives in New York and Washington is now called an "intelligence failure," mostly by those who crippled the CIA in the first place, and by those who celebrated the loss of its invaluable capabilities.
What a pity that they cannot stand up like adults now and say: "See, we gutted our intelligence agencies because we don't much like them, and now we can bury thousands of American citizens as an indirect result." This, of course, will not happen, because those who inflict their aesthetic on the rest of us are never around to clean up the resulting mess, though they seem to enjoy further assaulting those whom they crippled to begin with.
Call it the law of unintended consequences. The intelligence community was successfully assaulted for actions taken under constitutionally mandated orders, and with nothing left to replace what was smashed, warnings we might have had to prevent this horrid event never came. Of course, neither I nor anyone else can prove that the warnings would have come, and I will not invoke the rhetoric of the political left on so sad an occasion as this.
But the next time America is in a fight, it is well to remember that tying one's own arm is unlikely to assist in preserving, protecting and defending what is ours.
Mr. Clancy is a novelist.
Clancy, you got all of the greatest FR people in the world working on it, buddy.
"Since the Taliban is a militia I would expect to meet you there. Weren't you the one posting a bunch of misleading drivel about the militia's role in the Amercican Revolution?
You remember me?
I remember pointing out the dangers of a standing army, among them- engaging in Unconstitutional foriegn adventures (like bombing Iraq for 10 years, earning the hatred of the Islamic world for no reason other than $$$ or bloodlust), which have a way of coming back to haunt the free people of the nation, the very ones who should have been wary of the standing army in the first place. Braindead and brainwashed, even this concrete lesson is lost on a once-free people.
"After the @ss-kicking you received from the Freepers who know something I am surprised to see you raise your head again."
After the WTC bombings proved my point in the first place, I don't see as how you have a leg to stand on.
But the fact is the warmongers have won the day.
Have fun in Afganistan, as long as you really are one of those who stands into danger, at least you back up your bravado. Too bad New Yorkers have to pay for it, but hey- that's on them.
Clancy, I'll say it again. You got all of the greatest FR people in the world working on it, buddy.
You and a bunch of others......liberal louse Church didn't see the
effects of his actions....but then libbers never do (or they don't care).
Liberals are blind to cause and effect of their failed policies.
Whereas conservatives see nothing else but, thankfully.
The Clancy article is brilliant. Funny how we have to hear the truth from a novelist. I remember reading his novel about the airliner crashing into Congress. I thought about the possibility ever since. When the small plane actually struck the White House, I thought, "Surely they will protect the DC airspace now!" But no.
I am a little tired of hearing, "We never thought it could happen." The first WTC bombing provoked no national response. Secondly, we cannot judge terrorists by what we think New England gentleman will do when really peeved. There is no comparison. The Arab radicals are the people who gladly blow up and kill children in Israel. They have no sense of shame. Hitler had more shame than the terrorists.
From now on we have to protect ourselves against what could happen (nuclear, biological, chemical), not against what has happened in the past. The whole idea is to do something unprecedented, to catch us where we are weak at the moment. And we must strike hard and persistently at all sources of terrorism, all forms of support.
Islam hates us because we are representatives of the West and it is in its deepest essence a backward, primitive religion. This is perfectly illustrated by its attitude on women. Clitorectomy is an answer to the female problem to the muslim.
Had we no standing army even a fool such as yourself should be able to see that the U.S.S.R. would have laid us in the dust. We have nothing to fear from our standing army and its activities are not unconstitutional. The Founders' fear of the standing army was because they believed it would be used as an instrument of oppression of our own people. That fear has been shown to be misplaced. Involvement outside of our country with permission of Congress is not unconstitutional except in your fantasies. It is not unconstitutional though often ineffective.
If you ever develop a minimal understanding of the constitution perhaps it would be useful or interesting to talk to you. But so far it is merely a bore.
The war was declared by the enemy not the U.S. standing army or no. Islam is incapable of living in peace with any other religion its enemies are anyone with a mind set past the 15th century so I guess you are safe.
ONLY TO YOU,OSAMA AND OTHER AMERICA HATERS IS THIS ATTACK ON THE U.S. JUSTIFIED.
Video piracy became the priority of our Intelligence Agencies in 1995Now a agency like the CIA has no direct Constitutional authority ... the authority to form and operate it is indirect, it is an overreach of executive power. Not that what we'd want to be done is an overreach -- the collection of intelligence, but to place that collection in a seperate, unaccoutable agency. Seperate from the Army, Navy, Justice, Customs and Immigration -- all of which not only have the grant of Constitutional authorization, but most importantly for any such spy agency to be effective, are the actual end-users of such information.
CIA directed in 1995 to seek Video Pirates
It is utter folly, and risks mulitiple disasters, to give intelligence over to any organization which has no means to use it. You have the constant situation of an agency seeking a customer. That is what Frank Church saw, and why the agency did then, and will again, if allowed, G-d forbid, to run reckless out of control, a will-less wonder seeking whatever fancy.
Ultimately in such malformed, misbirthed, agencies there does becomes one customer. That customer is the employees themselves. Lacking a grounded mission, their perks and pensions become the product.
The Navy's Intelligence service has a clear minimal mission, it is at least to protect the ships, ports and sailors. When that intelligence mission fails men are held to account. The agency corrects itself.
In an ungrounded, mission-less, whatever-mission-comes-along-today agency like the CIA, the agency sends out its most valued asset -- PR and the crack team of excusers. Pensions must be protected at all costs.
So when follies like the Clinton-era video piracy missions come along the men and women pensionaires have no choice but to go along.
G-d bless Linda Tripp.
An Act in addition to the act, entitled "An act for the punishment of certain crimes against the United States. "
SEC. I Be it enacted . . ., That if any persons shall unlawfully combine or conspire together, with intent to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States, which are or shall be directed by proper authority, or to impede the operation of any law of the United States, or to intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the government of the United States, from undertaking, performing or executing his trust or duty; and if any person or persons, with intent as aforesaid, shall counsel, advise or attempt to procure any insurrection, riot. unlawful assembly, or combination, whether such conspiracy, threatening, counsel, advice, or attempt shall have the proposed effect or not, he or they shall be deemed guilty of a high misdemeanor, and on conviction, before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, and by imprisonment during a term not less than six months nor exceeding five years; and further, at the discretion of the court may be holden to find sureties for his good behaviour in such sum, and for such time, as the said court may direct.
SEC. 2. That if any person shall write, print, utter. Or publish, or shall cause or procure to be written, printed, uttered or published, or shall knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States, or either house of the Congress of the United States, or the President of the United States, with intent to defame the said government, or either house of the said Congress, or the said President, or to bring them. or either of them, into contempt or disrepute; or to excite against them, or either or any of them, the hatred of the good people of the United States, or to excite any unlawful combinations therein, for opposing or resisting any law of the United States, or any act of the President of the United States, done in pursuance of any such law, or of the powers in him vested by the constitution of the United States, or to resist, oppose, or defeat any such law or act, or to aid, encourage or abet any hostile designs of any foreign nation against the United States, their people or government, then such person, being thereof convicted before any court of the United States having jurisdiction thereof, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand dollars, and by imprisonment not exceeding two years.
SEC. 3. That if any person shall be prosecuted under this act, for the writing or publishing any libel aforesaid, it shall be lawful for the defendant, upon the trial of the cause, to give in evidence in his defence, the truth of the matter contained in the publication charged as a libel. And the jury who shall try the cause, shall have a right to determine the law and the fact, under the direction of the court, as in other cases.
SEC. 4. That this act shall continue to be in force until March 3, 1801, and no longer....
Whatever evil the CIA may have done was the result of orders from above.Those orders are classified or deniable, of course.
But the most important thing is the disregard of individual common sense and "agency" -- the concept of delegation, encompassing both authority and responsibility.
This was also the excuse at Nuremburg.
In that sense agency can not write off "evil deeds" as the result of orders from above. Indeed, we have but one final master, and no human order can be obeyed which violates His orders.
BTW I want to see bin Laden match your screen name.
I am of the opinion that Clinton and company were so busy being worried about the typical American as an enemy, that policy and priorities were directed that way, and our foreign threats ( which in their mindset, IMHO, never existed, but needed only understanding and 'engagement' ) were largely ignored.
Arrogant Clinton and his minions were too condescending of foreign threats to consider a response.
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