Terror Talk
In the wake of another botched terror attack, it’s worth noting that the Islamists’ post-9/11 track record is pretty terrible (keep in mind this is in spite of the well-documented incompetence of Homeland Security). So: is it time to reconsider the threat posed by transnational terror networks? James Fallows has persuasively argued that we should “end” the War on Terror, and at first blush, the Obama Administration seemed to agree, though its underlying approach to counter-terrorism hasn’t changed all that much from its predecessor’s.
Here’s the problem: I find John Mueller’s terror revisionism persuasive, and I’m generally sympathetic to people who think our current national security consensus exaggerates or over-estimates Al-Qaeda’s capabilities. But what do I know? I don’t have access to the reams of intelligence the White House receives every day on possible terrorist attacks. I don’t get classified briefings from the CIA. A common conservative trope is that once in office, Obama was forced to moderate his positions on surveillance, interrogation and counter-terrorism because he was faced with the same grim reality Bush had to deal with. This is quite obviously a self-serving talking point, often followed by all sorts of ridiculous claims about the terrorists’ “will” and “brutality” (plenty of unsavory characters are willful and brutal; that doesn’t make them a threat to national security), but I wonder if it contains a grain of truth. Debate, deliberation, and analysis are supposed to shape our approach to foreign policy; what happens when this entire process is shut-off from the public eye? I am emphatically not in favor of taking everything the president asserts on faith, but I wonder if there’s something we’re missing here.
I suppose we’ve dealt with this sort of thing before: the public wasn’t exactly privy to the details of Cold War-era planning, and sensitive national security information is routinely kept under wraps. What’s striking about the global war on terrorism, however, is that we haven’t even reached a level of consensus about the extent and nature of the threat, a question that implicates our entire strategic approach. No, I don’t think we need to be debating the advisability of every single air strike in Peshawar, but it would be nice to have a real discussion about the extent of Al Qaeda’s capabilities.
I’m not sure how to initiate that discussion, but I don’t think a real debate on the nature of Islamic terrorism is possible without making more information available to the public. Right now, critics of the status quo are stuck on the outside looking in, unable to marshal an effective response to “you don’t know how things look from the Pentagon.” It would be nice, for once, to get a sense of how things actually look to policymakers who review threat assessments and intelligence reports every day. Moreover, I don’t think you can have a serious, fair debate about issues related to counter-terrorism – interrogation and warrantless surveillance, for example – without some broader frame of reference. Call it the “Cheney doctrine” of public disclosure: release as many memos and intelligence documents as possible on the dangers of Islamic terrorism, compare them to what we know now, and see if our current approach is vindicated.
UPDATE: As if on cue, Jay Nordlinger chimes in with a succinct defense of the “better safe than sorry” school of thought. As I said, it’s difficult to have a fair discussion on these issues without all (or even most) of the relevant data, but what really rankles is Nordlinger’s inability to even acknowledge that a) national security scare-mongers don’t have the best track record of assessing foreign threats and b) the significant trade-off between civil liberties and a maximalist approach to counter-terrorism.
http://lhote.blogspot.com/2008/07/glenn-loury-makes-case-that-we-should.htmlReport
Damn, beat me to it.Report
Part of the problem is that the government has a long, long wishlist of stuff that they want to be able to do but that pesky Constitution keeps getting in the way.
“Terrorism” is one of those things that becomes a datapoint in the discussion that can help change the minds of reasonable, moderate people when it comes to how much power the government has to have.
After all, after you change the minds of the reasonable, moderate people, the only people screaming about the Constitution and Liberty are the extremist nutcases. Hey, a dead guy can’t enjoy his liberty, can he? Why not move to Somalia? I understand that they’ve got a failed state! Love it or leave it!
And government gets its wishlist.Report
I think there is quite a bit of info out there if people really want to dig into it. Unfortunetly soem of gets boiled down into partisan debates and scare tactics.Report
Damn misspellings, just assume all the words are spelled correctly. The government really should have saved me from a response with incorrectly spelled words.Report
Why do you refer to the incompetence of DHS? The FBI has the counter-terrorism mission. DHS was indeed set up as a result of 9/11, but it doesn’t have counter-terror as any part of its mission.Report
I’ve long argued a similar point Will. Once Obama was elected he gained access to information that would probably make most of our heads spin (insert Hollywood image of Area 51 and the JFK assasination here). I think that’s at least in part the reason he has pumped the brakes on the torture witch hunt. I suspect he knows that we DID get some actionable intelligence from some of the interrogations and for many Americans that will be enough to close the book on the question of torture necessity.Report
Jim –
Read the Jeffrey Goldberg article I link to above. DHS is in charge of a lot basic counter-terrorism enforcement, including airport and port security. According to Wikipedia, its primary mission is to protect the United States from terrorist attacks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Homeland_Security
Mike –
I suppose that’s possible, but we really won’t know either way unless there’s a more open, comprehensive discussion about the extent and nature of the terrorist threat.Report
If the threat hasn’t dissipated after six years, wouldn’t that be an indicator that what we’re doing isn’t working? Weren’t we told in 2007 that Al-Qaeda was back to “pre 9/11 strength”.
The burden of proof seems to be on those who want to scale back the war on terror rather than on those who would continue it indefinitely. That’s definitely the way that the “closing Gitmo” debate unfolded.
Nobody wants to be left holding the bag should another attack occur, which is why nobody will break from the pack and propose real change or reexamination. Any conclusion other than “stay the course” is deemed unrealistic or unacceptable. I doubt that will change no matter how much intelligence is made public.Report
Graham –
The political logic of “staying the course” is pretty ironclad, but there has been significant push-back against a few status quo policies. To me, that suggests that some reform is possible under the right circumstances.Report
Will,
Airport security and passenger are really not that central to counter-terrorism; in fact they are prettyb peripheral.
You already know better than to trust wikipedia, but in this case it’s not so far of the money as far as the legislation that set up the department is concerned, but as always, the truth is in the nuances, and the nuances within ICE, the primary enforcement agency in the department, the one with the biggest stake in counter-terrorism, are that counter-terrorism is simply not a primary focus. And that is essentially a legislative decision. The public is a lot more concerned about illegal aliens than they are about terrorists, and the funding refelcts that.
As for Mr. Goldberg, he is a wonk, so he believes what he reads, which is whatever is available to him and not much more. Consider the source.Report
Jim –
According to department’s founding document (http://www.dhs.gov/xabout/history/publication_0015.shtm), its primary mission is to protect the United States from terrorism. This is also pretty peripheral to my larger point.Report
I’ve read that there are ten million illegals in the United States. I’ve read that Afghanistan exports ten thousand tons of opium. Yet the bad guys have been unable to sneak one bomb or gunman into this country in the last eight years. How is this possible? Are our defenders that good? Are our enemies incompetent? What am I missing?Report
Tons of good points in this, Will. It’s true – it’s very hard to have a real, productive discussion without all the information. Then again, policy is so often driven by misinformation (see: lead up to Iraq War) that I’m not sure more information would do us much good. For every piece of information we get, a piece of misinformation accompanies it. And people believe what they want to believe. Just tread through NRO for a while and it’s easy to see how misinformation is just as important a part of our debate as information is.Report
Isn’t it exaggerating a bit to call today’s arrest the outcome of a “botched terror attack”? I’m not suggesting this was entrapment — there was pretty clearly predisposition — but is there any indication these twerps would have gotten anywhere near a credible attack without hand-holding?Report
Ken –
Agreed. Maybe it wasn’t clear in the original post, but I refer to it as botched because of how bungling the suspects were.Report