Posted on 07/02/2002 2:10:40 PM PDT by knighthawk
On Jan. 29, President George W. Bush talked about the urgency of the war on terrorism: "We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events while dangers gather." But in Washington this summer, so far as we can determine, waiting remains the bureaucratic style. There is so much waiting, so much confusion and delay, that even the greatest admirers of the United States may find it hard to avoid asking a painful question: Are today's Americans capable of performing the titanic job that history has assigned them?
They prosecuted the Afghanistan war with professionalism, and this week the president outlined the beginnings of an honest program for peace in Israel. Otherwise, it has lately begun to appear that the American leadership class is faltering. Something has happened to their will, or to the President's control over government. They have not transformed themselves in the way events demand. For much of Washington, the war on terrorism has gone out of focus.
For a long time before Sept. 11, and for long time after, FBI agents were paralyzed by fear. They were afraid not of foreign terrorists but of American judges, American politicians, American rights-seeking groups and FBI bureaucrats. They understood that terrorists were establishing themselves in the United States but knew little else. As Steven Emerson points out in his recent book, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, FBI agents were prohibited from conducting the analysis most people imagined was part of their job. Unless they knew a crime had been committed, they were ordered to wait and do nothing. They couldn't attend public meetings where speakers called for the destruction of the United States, and they couldn't collect clippings on charities connected to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda. This rule (partly the result of legal and political decisions, partly arising from the FBI's fear of doing the wrong thing) helped make Sept. 11 possible.
Between that date and this spring, the FBI eluded public scrutiny. President Bush (who hates to fire people) avoided assigning blame, and congress was equally reticent. The FBI did all it could to cover up and then to minimalize its failure. Finally, FBI agents began revealing how much was known before Sept. 11, and how little was done. Reluctantly, congress and the FBI executives began telling some of the truth.
As they did so, amazing information came out: After Sept. 11, the prohibitions against surveillance were not lifted. Nor was the rule that every FBI action required prior approval from Washington. Those regulations didn't come off, in fact, until May.
During the period after Daniel Pearl was kidnapped, but before he was murdered, his colleagues at The Wall Street Journal learned something equally startling: They, the journalists, were better able to follow events connected with the kidnapping than the FBI. The FBI was also amazed. As L. Gordon Crovitz of The Journal said, "Time and again, the agents were surprised by how quickly we were able to bring them news reported from wire services and newspapers in Pakistan and other background information." FBI agents still lack the online news services now common among journalists across the world.
The FBI lumbers into the future, it does not sprint. It has grown top-heavy with executives who spend their lives manipulating Congress and the public. But Washington has many other cases of encrusted bureaucracy. A truly horrible statement has been making the rounds in policy circles: Only another crime, as terrible as Sept. 11 or worse, will produce new attitudes in government.
Many compared last September's atrocities to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Both events seemed incredible, and both demonstrated gross failures of U.S. intelligence. But responses have differed sharply. In 1941 and 1942 Americans realized they had to change. "Mobilization," a term already in use before Pearl Harbor, suddenly became the governing principle in politics and industry.
And then, after six months, came the Battle of Midway. It's odd that Americans, who never cease to remember Pearl Harbor, usually forget Midway. This year the 60th anniversary, June 3-6, passed without much public notice. Yet Midway, a great American victory, was as crucial as Pearl Harbor. The disgraced and demoralized U.S. Pacific Fleet turned itself around and, though outgunned and outmanned, defeated the Japanese, destroyed four of their aircraft carriers and destroyed their strategic plans. As Winston Churchill wrote, "at one stroke, the dominant position of Japan in the Pacific was reversed."
Carrier warfare was as new then as international terrorism is now, so the American warriors had to experiment at every turn. They won by the very qualities that American government agencies seem to lack this year: flexibility, imagination, and daring. In 1942, those qualities sprang naturally from the American spirit.
Commander Mitsuo Fuchida, who had led the attack on Pearl Harbor, later said that the cause of Japan's defeat at Midway lay deep in the Japanese national character. Others agree. Last year, in Midway, the most recent study of that battle, Hugh Bicheno wrote: "The tyranny of the guiding question 'what will people say?' was stronger in Japan than in most other societies." For Japanese officers, he explained, the strongest warning against any course of action was, "don't do it, you will look bad." That sounds something like the United States in 2002.
The Feds need to hire Mossad to teach them some effectiveness to counter terrorism.
According to MILNET there was an EL AL plane hijacked by the PLO in 1968, an attempted hijack in 1970 and a bomb in the baggage compartment in 1972.
They are, obviously, way ahead of anyone else in the world at foiling terrorism.
If the US (and ROW!) hadn't tied their hands all these years, there wouldn't be a "Pali" problem.
Many FReepers, myself among them, have been saying this for some months. Our political leaders are afraid to appropriately take on Islam, for they would be castigated by the liberal lamestream media, academe, and the National Socialist Democrats.
I bet there are more Freepers who are well informed on these issues than FBI agents.
Making that distinction (to 'terrorist' profiling) would be quite useful in these politically correct times, I would think. Yours is an excellent suggestion - hopefully someone in the higher echelons will see this and in turn cause the gov't and media to adopt this terminology. Maybe then we can make some real progress at home.
Journalist Express for a good start.
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