I read with interest, as I always do with Christopher Hitchens, the journalist’s latest thumb-sucker: Safe Cracking – The Silliness of Security Alerts. Much of it makes sense, but his conclusion is problematic:
The only assurance that one can decently demand of the administration and of Congress is the assurance that we are actually at war and that all measures are being taken to achieve victory. To couple this with the demand for personal safety is surely to be self-evidently absurd, not to say pathetic. Just as you don’t have to go to Afghanistan or Iraq to be in danger from Islamist bombs and bullets, so you don’t have to go there in order to demonstrate a little fortitude. “Safe sex” may now be a platitude, but “safe war” would be the silliest oxymoron of the whole lot.
I want to agree with the first part, but how indeed is the public to understand that we are at war if there are no terror alerts from the administration? From the Congress, the talking heads…? Let’s be serious. That ain’t gonna happen. If it is not brought home to the populace in a relatively graphic, even though extremely imperfect, manner, they will soon forget – if they haven’t already. [Until the next attack.-ed. Yup.]
Hitchens glosses over another point when he writes: But what possible good can it do, on the receipt of such “specific information,” to put armed men on the streets and in the subways? Assuming as we must that such high-profile attacks would be conducted by suicide-killers, in what respect do more “visible” measures make any difference, except to alert the potential perpetrators?
But what if that is the very point? What if the idea is to warn the Islamists that we are watching those specific sites and to stay away, even with their “suicide killers”? This would disrupt their plans, at least for the moment, and leave them open to counter-attack, I would think. Of course I write with no personal knowledge of what the intention here was, nor does Hitchens. That’s the problem when commenting on intelligence matters – you just don’t know what really happened. And I must say in Hitchens’ defense, I have rarely seen him rely on unnamed intelligence sources whose need to have their axes ground seems endless. Read it all, of course.
What if the idea is to warn the Islamists that we are watching those specific sites and to stay away, even with their “suicide killers”? This would disrupt their plans, at least for the moment, and leave them open to counter-attack, I would think.
******************
BINGO!!!
If we disrupt their plans, that’s a win for us.
And Hitchens is making the very bad assumption that we only have to worry about their “suicide killers.”
The OK city bombing wasn’t a suicide mission.
I don’t believe the WTC bombing was a suicide mission.
Warnings do a few things.
Alert the authorities to take extra precautions or to be on the lookout for a specific type of activity.
Alert the public to be on the lookout for a specific type of activity.
Alert the terrorists that we may be on to them.
Isn’t it interesting that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 all we heard about was that, if only we had been warned. Now we are warned and it is pooh-poohed as a gesture for to score political points. If that aint 9/10 thinking I don’t know what is.
Of course, it’s understandable if you feel that President Bush, et al, misled us into a war in Iraq. Even despite the various reports that say, yes there was something to be concerned about with Saddams behaviour and available intelligence estimates.
Estimates. That’s what it all comes down to isn’t it. The intelligence community can only provide estimates for what is not known. Some people already knew this and accept it. I guess others are just comming to that conclusion.
But considering that the only reason for going into Iraq that matters is Saddams material breach of 1441, the rest is academic as far as I care.
The trouble with Security Alerts is that – if nothing happens – if they are successful, in other words – then the government will eventually be seen as the kid who called ‘wolf.’ If this ‘war’ is so ‘different’ – then why maintain Cold War Era secrecy? I know that there are lots of moves at every level in the USA to deal with various kinds of attacks (I watch CSpan), but I think it is a big mistake to think that it is the job of bureaucracies to ‘protect’ the People.
The genius of the American people is your ability to form associations at the neighbourhood level. It is this genius that will make the “Homeland” secure in the long run.
Agreed!
Very short-sighted to assume it’s going to be suicide bombers and nothing else.
Another major event to add to the list: Madrid. No suicide bombers there, right?
What’s more, Israeli forces have repeatedly foiled suicide bombers.
Actually Heather, one of the few jobs the Federal government should be doing is protecting the people…
Now I also agree that we have much further to go in bringing Homeland Security down to local levels.
[quote]We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, [b]provide for the common defense[/b], promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.[/quote]
What do I believe about the warnings, forewarned is forearmed in my book.
If the government came out with a warning for my area that said there was a risk of attack by means of a chemical weapon, I’d be taking extra precautions. I’d study up on what needed to be done in the event of such an attack. I’d keep the supplies handy I would need in the event of such an attack.
Warnings that are to general, aren’t as helpfull as this last warning was.
Surely armed guards would not substantially stop a dedicated suicide killer? If the desire is to maximize death and destruction there are far too many opportunities to do so and not enough armed guards in the entire world to pre. I think the Israeli experience has shown that there is no sure-fire way to prevent these kinds of attacks (except when the killer is inept and identified early enough). If you guard one building, a different one can become the object of the killer. The truth, as Hitchens hints at, is that there is no way we can be entirely safe from attack, especially when the plot intercept point has already percolated down from the planners to the human fodder they use to implement their murderous plan. The only way to prevent attacks is to stop them in the earlier stages and take out the top terrorists who conceive and develop them. You will only know you are successful when no attacks occur over a very long time.
I have come to accept that my country is at war and have altered my life accord to the risk as I perceive it. The odds of being involved in a terrorist attack in the U.S. appears to me to be small, so I just go on with my life, knowing that any number of other things out of my control might also happen to end it abruptly (e.g., random acts of violence by common criminals; bad drunk drivers; etc. etc.). The one thing I can do is to support an aggressive policy of taking the battle to the terrorists wherever they happen to be holed up. That is the only way the war can ever have an end.
heather,
Neighborhood associations work because of the educational aspects. Recognition of suspicious behavior is identified and people are encouraged to “know their neighbors”. Loitering unknowns are monitored and suspicious activity is reported to the authorities. Really basic, common sense stuff but it is effective.
WRT terrorists in our midst, the basic info cannot be broadly disseminated without being blasted as being “profiling”. The House minority leader is trying to promote a new bill against profiling as I write in the hope that it will provide more ammo against Republicans.
I can write a decent profile of what a terrorist looks like in five minutes. It would cover at least 98% of the ones already identified. A rational government might publicize such a profile rather than putting armed guards on the sidewalks in front of banks.
I don’t think that Hitchen’s explores the truly assinine aspects of our current security response to a sufficient depth. If he goes deep enough, he’s going to run into himself.
What Hitchens misses is that warnings are not just for the public at large, but for the police departments across the country. An elevated security alert is the trigger in many cities for increased patrols, automatic towing of vehicles near major buildings, etc. Maybe the security impact isn’t that large, but it is directionally positive.
As someone who criticized the previous terror alerts for not being specific, I shouldn’t complain about getting one that mentioned locations. Too bad one of those locations is half a block from my place of work. Oh well.
From a Chekhov story:
“At the door of every contented, happy man there should be someone standing with a little hammer, someone to keep reminding him with a tap that unhappy people do exist – and that, happy though he may be, life will round on him sooner or later. Trouble will come for him …”
For Americans the terror warnings have become that little hammer.
Actually, Dr.Sanity, I believe if you look over the suicide bombings in Israel, you will see incidents where an armed guard forced the bomber to detonate himself before getting into the venue – thereby reducing substantially the casualties ensuing.
There is a program, in those areas that choose to participate, where anyone can provide assistance in the event of a terrorist attack. I’ve been meaning to sign up but the election season has my time a bit stretched.
Tom Ridge is certainly aware of the “cry wolf” effect. The job of deciding who and how to alert is obviously a difficult and thankless one.
As the time since the last major incident increases, the harder it is to get people to take it seriously.
However, the kinds of weapons available to terrorists, and the likely need of Al Qaeda to exceed 9-11 in order to maintain street cred both mean that an attack that gets through is likely to be devastating. A truck bomb, where the truck is a semi, might be enough to destroy the structural integrity of at least part of a large office building, as a smaller one did to the Murrah Building. One thing rarely reported about the Oklahoma City bombing is that a month later (when I was there), damage was visible in structures blocks away. The blast was so powerful that it flattened a building that was shielded from the blast by a block of one and two story buildings, which themselves suffered a bunch of damage. Imagine that same explosive, except a lot more of it, in a concrete canyon in Manhattan, and one bomb can kill a very large number of people. Or, take Sarin gas, made from one of the binary shells we found (oh, wait, we found no WMD). Aerosolize it into the HVAC of a large builting.
And we haven’t even gotten into biological or nuclear.
That’s a good point Roberts and I concede it. It is definitely worthwhile to try to reduce the number of casualties from a suicide attack. I guess what I was trying to say is that you ultimately cannot prevent casualties by a strategy that only uses armed guards. It is too easy to be outmaneuvered by the killers.
dr sanity – our strategy doesn’t “only use armed guards.”
As published in the 2003 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism:
1) defeat existing terrorist organizations,
2) deny terrorists the support of nation states,
3) diminish the underlying factors that lead people to embrace rather than shun terrorists like Bin Laden, and
4) defend the US homeland and its interests abroad.
The government is working on all these fronts at once. And working with 90+ allies in the pursuit of these objectives. How’s that for multi-lateral, and how is Kerry going to get more states on board?
Even with all this work, we will never be invulnerable. We can be safer, just as seat belts and air bags make car crashes safer, less risky. Yet there are still auto fatalities.
I would comment that it does not seem to me that the point of all this is, or ought to be, to “reduce casualties.” Rather, it is to kill enemies.
One “reduces casualties” by surrendering. One ELIMINATES casualties–by winning.
I believe I would be in favor of reinstatement of the draft just so young people could come to understand the purpose of uniforms, guns and armed guards.
BTW, Roberts is quite right that we’ve probably read dozens of stories about suicide bombers shot and killed by or in the presence of armed opponents. This forced the intifada to begin sending girls and children to kill themselves. It may not be coincidental that the intifada sputtered out less than a year after that.
Peter G: – try the next building over – which is really the next block since the building in question takes up and entire block (and is big, silver and stands on stilts). My building has now closed one of the two entrances (the one on the side AWAY from the potential target) and is conducting pathetic bag inspections at the remaining entrance – the one facing the target. Oh, and I get on the Subway at the Wall St. station. This week has been no end of fun.
“But what possible good can it do, on the receipt of such “specific information,” to put armed men on the streets and in the subways?”
Excuse me, Hitch, but there have been armed men in our subways since 9-11. And since you frequently travel to NYC, you know that.
Yehudit–
Not necessarily. I understand Hitch generally travels by rickshaw when in Manhattan. Black limos in the outer borroughs.
OK, I’m NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE (help! held hostage by a BLOG!) but I have a Grand Central story.
The place has had lots of National Guardsmen on duty, ever since 9/11.
One day last fall I went in to the city with my 17-year old autistic son who promptly got lost coming out of the men’s room while I was still in the women’s room.
I was panicked; he had vanished. So frightening.
Naturally I turned to the National Guards who were there (seeing as how finding missing autistic teenagers should do nothing to distract them from their job preventing mass terrorist attacks . . . ) and those guys spotted my son instantly. It was stunning. I could not see my own son in the crowd, and it took them 5 seconds. The guy said, “There. The young man with the black backpack.”
I’ve mentioned before that I’ve just finished writing a book that has quite a bit to do with human perception, which is not great. Normal humans do not “see” anomalies.
These guys did. I’m glad to have them there.
Catherine,
What’s the title of your book? I would imagine that anything that you write would be interesting.
As for the warnings, it is just too cheap a shot to criticize them. Of course we should get them, and we should just stop trying to complain.
Catherine, thanks for a very enlightening comment. Your research about human perception might teach us a lot.
Back during my Air Force years, I read an interview with the Security Police (Air Force MP’s) in the base paper. “If nothing happens, we’re doing our job,” one of them said. And that’s the whole thing about security: there’s nothing to “notice” when things are going right.
Yeah, these color-coded alerts are driving all of us nuts, but I’m glad to know there’s someone somewhere keeping an eye on the threat level.
And here’s where the analogy of “crying wolf” breaks down: because there really IS a whole pack of wolves prowling around out there, and most of the time we don’t get to shoot them in the act of attacking the sheep. And most of us can never see the times we’ve scared the wolves away.
Catherine:
I used to work with a male nurse who had served in Viet Nam. One day we were standing in a parking lot and talking and he mentioned that someone was watching us. The amazing thing was he had his back to the lady and somehow saw her and I was facing her direction and did not. I guess getting shot at helps develop the eyes in the back of your head sense.
I think the point to these warnings is to help us all develop these senses. Intuition. Have you ever walked in a door and just known that something was amiss? We need to be able to do the same thing in office buildings and subways and airports and malls….
I adore Hitchens, but think he often projects his oh so British sang-froid onto the people of his adopted homeland–in my opinion, a huge (if flattering) mistake.
We are at least two attacks away from all Americans “accepting” the facts on the ground–that we are at war at home as well as overseas, that the govt cannot possibly defend us all, that things may get worse before they get better.
Kudos to CH, however, for daring to question the wisdom of annointing the victims of 9/11 as somehow more victimized than all victims before or since (unto the end of time). The absurdity of this premise remains oddly unrecognized. 9/11 Widows now set themselves up regularly as Delphic oracles. Madness!!
We are not prepared for suicide bombers, the type with explosive belts and detonators. By ìweî I donít just mean law enforcement or National Guardsmen, I include the press, the public, you and me.
Think about the first attack ñ it might go off without a hitch. What happens later that same day when some poor cop sees a ìsuspiciousî person who looks a bit overdressed? What goes through his mind? Does he risk a headshot from a safe distance? Does he wait to verify that it is indeed a suicide bomber? What happens when he shoots and heís right? What happens when he shoots and heís wrong? What do we do with him? Would a jury convict? Could a jury not convict? Who would lead the lynch party?
We ainít prepared psychologically for this.
We all did fine when that Egyptian limo driver sent his wife home, loaded his guns, and went off to LAX to kill some Jews. Fortunately, trained and prepared security guards took him down. There was no real outcry simply because the guy was without doubt attacking and had murder in mind.
We can hope that volunteers remain rare, that the logistics of getting the right explosives proves difficult, but hope is a poor defense.
Kid:
My grandfather homesteaded a farm in Oklahoma. When he was a young man he took a 22 to field in case he encountered desperados. People get used to a lot and they do what they have to. Eventually.
Terrye -
I agree and keep a weapon of some sort available to suit the circumstances and local law.
But imagine what would happen if a NYC cop killed what he truly thought was a suicide bomber with a bomb belt. The chattering class would be after his head for murder one, he and his fellow officers would be besides themselves with grief over the death and anger over the response, politicians would be on all sides of the issue, their blasts fueled by the ethnic background of the victim, etc. Even one cool head would be hard to find.
Meanwhile politicians would be fighting over laws shielding cops, creating rules for free-fire, or imposing impossible restrictions on the use of deadly force.
If you think that police shootings have led to problems in the past, youíve not seen anything yet. Many cops have thought about this and pray daily that they are never in the situation where they have to decide within a few seconds what kind of threat they are facing and what the appropriate response is.
Whilst governments do make gestures,the sequestration of iron railings during WWII come to mind,people do get used to alerts being part of their lives.There were the daily air raid sirens,everybody dropped everything and went to the shelters until the all clear,in the maternity ward I was born in, all the pregnant women had to get under their iron beds.People will adapt and cope.
What happened to all those ornate iron railings? They got stacked up in fields and were eventually scrapped after the war.
Kid:
Convince the mothers that their children are in danger and then stand back.
I do know what you mean. The Human Rights Watch is all adither concerning the rights of the folks at Gitmo and they know exactly who and what those people are. They assume that the problem is the guy in a uniform, not the terrorist.
Here in the Arizona desert, a simple trick would help.
It never really gets cold here. Make it illegal to wear bulky clothing.
Also, many Arizonans are armed.
QED
Although many people (including Hitch, apparently) complain about the terror warnings, I’ve yet to encounter anyone proposing a better alternative. Usually the complaints range in decibel levels, depending upon who is doing the complaining. When the rant is over, there’s nothing left-no better solution, no genuine endorsement of eliminating the color coding system. The critique usually just peters out with the critic patting himself on the back for his cleverness.
The warnings remind us all of the WoT and rouse us from whatever comfortable position we are in. Of course they can be annoying, but there are far worse things one can suffer than annoyance. Although some critics of the system argue the “crying wolf” position, there is a big difference between the boy who cried wolf and us. The wolf has already bitten us; we already know it’s there. So unless government agencies really screw up (always a possibility in my mind), I think it’s up to us to emotionally manage the false alarms. Many ask what sacrifice should Americans make on behalf of WoT-higher taxes?, the draft?, national mandated service?, etc. Well how about we learn to suck up these warnings without acting like two year olds who’ve had their toys taken away.
Ongoing ambiguity is very challenging for people to deal with. It places us at higher risk of fighting amongst ourselves since most people aren’t feeling in a position to concretely fight with the real enemy, nor are we able to see a yardstick measuring our success or failure in the WoT. The rage is gonna go somewhere. It’s likely to remain ambiguous for some time to come.
The President suggested the WoT be renamed more accurately.
I heartily support that suggestion. A war on fruitcake Muslim gangsters enamored of killing women and children along with themselves for the express purpose of winning the globe for Islam sure tightens the focus.
An embargo on a billion people who support them emotionally and financially, fortunately, is unnecessary. The Arab world has been economically embargoing its own self for centuries. The last data I saw indicated that all but four Arab states have a long-term secular decline in GNP ever since they gained independence.
Resources gather, in the Arab world, in readily identifiable families who can’t avoid running their cash through the Western world because Islam can’t construct a banking system or a secular state stable enough to justify entrusting trillions of dollars to. We know who the financiers are, and we know how to beat them.
There have been Muslims murdering their neighbors since there was Islam. Islam is a religion with, we could say, an unusually aggressive Missions Board. If you thought Jehovah’s Witnesses were relentless…Half the world is absolutely expert at knowing who the actual murderers are, where and how to find them, what they do and when they do it, and what they’re going to do next. Far less of the world, more’s the pity, is expert at defeating them.
Probably we can help them with that, if we can focus on a relatively simple problem with a relatively simple solution.
What made Weimar Germany produce so many fruitcakes that Naziism could occur? What made Japanese young men so nihilistic that they would fly airplanes into ships on suicide missions?
Who gives a shit? They don’t do it any more.
My grandfather homesteaded a farm in Oklahoma. When he was a young man he took a 22 to field in case he encountered desperados. People get used to a lot and they do what they have to. Eventually.
Terrye — that’s funny. Where in Oklahoma? I ask because my grandfather (in his young days) may have been one of those desperados.
We ended up in Colorado after he and a posse had a disagreement over some unconventional bank withdrawals….