Just when I was hoping to forget about constructively criticizing Kos and struggle with how to constructively criticize LGF, Stirling Newberry, over at Daily Kos lays a huge egg.
Here’s what he says, in criticizing Rice’s testimony today:
The picture that emerges is that Rice believed that dealing with terrorist threats was a matter that little people on the ground who were “alert” would catch the people responsible, freeing the people at the top to talk about the “structural” changes to America.
Yes, in fact, that’s how it’s supposed to work. The people on top think up strategy and policy and the folks on the street carry it out.
And, in fact, how it did work. In fact, it has worked without the benefit of policy direction or grand strategy.One Border Patrolwoman stopped the Millennium Plot to blow up LAX:
At Victoria, U.S. immigration pre-clearance agents were mildly suspicious of Ressam. They made him open his trunk, but saw nothing. He presented his fake Canadian passport, and the computer check turned up no previous convictions or warrants in the name of Benni Noris. Ressam drove his rental car, with its concealed bomb, onto the ferry heading for Washington state. Upon his arrival at Port Angeles, a U.S. customs agent became suspicious of his hesitant answers to her questions, and she asked for identification. Agents began searching the car. As they discovered the explosive materials — which they at first took to be drugs — in the trunk of the car, Ressam tried to run away. He was caught and arrested.
Flight 93 did not hit the Capitol because the passengers – the ‘little people’ Kos dismisses – stopped it.
In his interview in the Atlantic, Security expert Bruce Schneier points out that
“The trick to remember is that technology can’t save you,” Schneier says. “we know this in our own lives. We realize there’s no magic anti-burglary dust that we can sprinkle on our cars to prevent them from being stolen. We know that car alarms don’t provide much protection. The Club at best makes burglars steal the car next to you. For real safety we park on nice streets where people notice if somebody smashes the window. Or we park in garages, where somebody watches the car. In both cases people are the essential security element. You always build the system around people.”
(emphasis added)
There are a lot of things to criticize the Bush Administration for. There are a lot of things to criticize Condi Rice for.
But Kos has picked the wrong horse here.
The reality is that we would all be better served by pushing down the role of securing our country against terrorism to the ‘little people’, rather than to large, rigid, unresponsive policy-driven organizations.
Go read the Atlantic article for more on why, or better still go read Schneier’s book, ‘Beyond Fear‘.
Back to Kos, I think, simply that the root issue remains that Bush et al decided to respond to the sponsors of the terrorist acts, rather than the individual actors. That’s a legitimate policy distinction, and one where, as I’ve said in the past, I fall on the side of the White House.
But to somehow assume that the President and National Security staff will personally foil every plot (although the image of Condi Rice dressed up as Wonder Woman might be pleasing to some) – or even manage the response to every plot is ludicrous.
It’s up to us; not as vigilantes or even armed defenders, but just alert neighbors. And baggage handlers.
One approach to the War on Terrorism is to built giant formally structured security systems, backed by massive, centralized technology, and as the complex, ‘wicked’ world keeps asking questions the system can’t ask, add pages and pages to the three-ring binders of regulations and policies the minimum-wage front-line employees must follow. You can hire and retain them based on their ability to follow the rules, even when it means taking the wire clippers away from a uniformed Special Forces soldier—who has his mouth wired shut because he’s wounded, and needs the cutters to cut the wires in the event he has to throw up. Or who want to take away the Congressional Medal of Honor from an 80-year old man flying to give a speech at the Air Force Academy.
It will involve a massive investment in machines that will be rushed into production and still be obsolete long before we have finished paying for them.
I obviously don’t think much of this model in this application. I think it is based on old, Taylorian models in which you attempt to break the process into a finite series of discrete steps, and train the human portions of the system in performing these exact steps as precisely and efficiently as possible. It also removes the necessity for any kind of judgment or expertise on the part of the employee.
Update: Praktike busts me for not reading the byline, and thinks I’m completely wrong
come on, this is a gross misreading.
what kos means is that condi thought the details of counterterrorism were beneath her, because she was a maven of grand strategy. clarke maintains that high-level attention to detail is necessary, and leaning on the agencies is a key part of that.
this is a point worth debating and not dismissing in such a cavalier fashion, as it has serious ramifications.
and as a matter of fact, after 9/11, Condi did ramp up the NSC in this fashion, and she did the same thing wrt Iraq this fall, when Blackwill was brought back on board to coordinate.
…and further, Stirling Newberry wrote the post.
Again, someone from the Left is trying to lay blame on the Administration. We know what organization is to blame for Sept 11 and it is not within the United States Government. It is Al Qaeda. By demonizing the Administration who is on our side they are diverting attention from the true enemy, militant Islam.
The role of the 9-11 commission is not to assign blame to either Clinton or Bush’s administration. Its’ role is supposed to be to find out where the security failures were and figure out a way to prevent it from happening again. Instead it has devolved into a political sideshow that will accomplish nothing of importance.
We could seal our borders, we could racial- and ethnic- and religio-profile, we could expel all non-citizens, and we could nuke those we suspect of being or harboring terrorists. But those are all preemptive strikes against a perceived enemy, which we are scolded is unacceptable, or, at least was when Iraq was the target.
You are right, and it doesn’t matter whether the topic is home security, national security, education, or healthcare: the responsibility for making sure the details are done correctly properly falls to you and me.
Come on, guys, let’s all put the the blame on where it squarely rests – the scumbags who thought up of all these plots to try to bring Americans down. Okay? Now let’s move on with the blame game and start thinking about how we all in our own ways can take the wind out of the sails pushing these scumbags. Because the more time we spend jawing about hindsight and such, the more time these scumbags have to come up with nefarious plots that will likely hurt even more people than in the 911 attack.
Sure, A.L., there is a serious issue lurking around here somewhere. However, Newberry’s post doesn’t have it, and attempts to rewrite his silliness to create one hardly make the point.
You rightly call him on his silly criticism of Rice – criticism which really demonstrates the vapidity of the anti-Bush administration themes.
When you think about the implications of the approach that consistently seeks to close the barn door after the horses have skedaddled (a technical term employed in the Virginia countryside) it isn’t so much that the approach is wrong, but that it betrays a rather breathtaking ignorance of how to deal with what John Warfield calls “complex problems,” or what A.L. has referred to accurately as “wicked problems.” (I think the terms have almost identical meanings.)
The systemic problem with terrorism as a tactic is that the terrorists are always seeking and probing for weaknesses and blind spots, so a “success” is going to correspond to the first such blind spot they come across. And if that door happens to be latched they’ll proceed to the next, and the next… and since we’re an open society they’ll eventually find an opening that suits their purposes.
What we can do is raise the cost of their activities while simultaneously undermining their resources. That will certainly involve a certain attention to detail, but it’s a different sort of detail that “mole-whacking.” And more to the point, there are much better metrics to enable you to tell when you’re doing a good or poor job that transcend the “success” of the most recent sucker punch.
I have a British friend who, after watching the Rice interview, put it succinctly:
Lola said:
let’s all put the the blame on where it squarely rests – the scumbags who thought up of all these plots to try to bring Americans down.
Well said! As our “leaders” self-immolate here, the REAL bad guys are out there laughing and plotting the “next big thing”.
Scott, response for your British friend:
1. Being a president is a 27/7 job and there’s no way any president could get off with being totally sealed off from the world. Notice that he goes off to Cabin David every weekend he can and he is still in contact with the outside world. They’ve set up a mini-White House down on his ranch.
2. One can’t just immediately start searching every skyscraper and stripsearching every airline passenger. Were we to do that right away, ACLU would be yelling loud and clear about rights being violated (and they are anyway). One has to go through the laws on books to make sure there are laws in place to enable this. Especially if it ends up in court. Then you have to get all the local and federal police on the same page. No mean feat, this. We can be efficient, but there’s only so much we can get away ad hoc without stepping over bounds that would tie our hands because the i’s hadn’t been dotted all over the place.
Following up on my comment, here’s what Bush has done today:
Newberry either is being disingenous or he is poorly informed and shouldn’t be commenting on this topic.
To begin with, having the National Security Advisor involved in the low level details of all the various “what if” analyses and in reviewing intel reports of every vague chatter that comes along would be stupid. THAT’S WHAT OTHERS ARE PAID TO DO. What SHE is paid to do is to advise the President on policies, strategy and actions we might take, and on how things are going when we act.
Sometimes the details become relevant and pressing. When that happens her job is to evaluate them as they are passed up to her.
Now, this hits home for me because I’ve been in senior executive jobs. Even in small companies, there is no WAY I could or should keep track of all the things my organization is doing. If I have to do that, I need to fire a bunch of people and hire new ones who can do those jobs for me.
Clarke got demoted, in essence, because he didn’t realize HOW to help Rice do her job by doing his in a useful manner.
Now … on the the desperate need for structural change. Rice was dead on when she targeted that as a major priority. From a comment I made in the Rice post below:
Dr. Rice made short-hand comments that probably deserve expanding if we’re going to talk about who’s blaming whom.
The wall between FBI & CIA is only one of several structural impediments to dealing with terror attacks inside the US. To some degree the Patriot Act has already opened the door to fixing this particular issue.
A much deeper problem is that our intelligence gathering and analysis process has some deep structural problems. Read the new book by Wm. Odom, retired head of the NSA, or Amy Zegart’s Flawed by Design for a sense of how and why this is true. The entire national security apparatus that was created after WWII – including DOD, NSA, CIA etc. – was the product of a certain time and certain technologies. They no longer serve us well, but reworking them will be difficult and contentious. The highly partisan grandstanding of the 9/11 committee on camera won’t help that process along.
Finally, in the widest sense, intelligence and law-enforcement communities operate on very different cultures and incentives. That will take time to change even if we had no concerns about privacy or civil liberties getting in the way.
All of this is well known to Washington insiders. It has been discussed in commissions and reports over the last decade. So when Condi Rice stated that these structural issues would have made it every unlikely that we would have prevented 9/11, she wasn’t just ducking responsibility. She was reminding Congress that the ball has been in their court for a long time to authorize changes to the system. And she was reminding them that the consequences of their having ducked this challenge when Odom chaired the commission during the Clinton administration was precisely that 9/11 was a lot harder to prevent.
And THAT is why she opened her statement – and closed it – by saying the current Administration would welcome their recommendations for changes. Because Congress has had commissions before but couldn’t get up the guts to tackle actual changes. Now, after 9/11, if they don’t there really will be some blame to be laid at their door, even granted that authorized changes take a lot of time to put into practice.
Robin, why did Condi revamp the NSC after 9/11?
Praktike, there have been several tactical shifts in organization since 9/11. None of them has been structural or strategic in scope because the real problems are built into the system by law and by 50+ years of organizational practices.
As an instance of tactical shifts, there was the move in early 10/03 to have Rice oversee Iraqi reconstruction issues so as to provide a single place where money and other priorities request by both the military and the CPA could be approved more expeditiously.
But the structural changes I’m talking about go to the heart of how our intelligence, national law enforcement and national security functions are divvied up among various agencies. Here’s an example that Odom cites.
The National Reconnaisance Office, a joint USAF – CIA organization, basically oversees the development and launch of reconnaisance satellites. Think: imagery, but not signals (NSA) collection.
USAF launches and operates them, the CIA is the organizing agency that determines what capabilities will be required and, often, what images will be collected. (A few years ago the National Imagery and Mapping Agency was added to serve as a clearinghouse for space-acquired imagery and requests for image collection.)
Now, NRO and the USAF community that supports NRO collectively have some technical expertise that you just can’t find elsewhere. NRO’s uniformed, civilian and contractor staff are incredibly dense with PhDs, space operations experts etc. It takes that kind of expertise to a) sort through all the wants and desires to specify which specific collection capabilities are feasible and which ones we can afford, b) oversee the contractors who bid on designing and developing those satellites and their sensors etc. and c) get them tested, built and launched.
But this incredible expertise, and the people who use those satellites to capture specific imagery at the request of users, doesn’t necessarily meet the needs of a commander on the battlefield for images of the terrain and the enemy. In particular, for good reasons, analysts who normally review NRO images might well not notice important information in a battlefield image.
In addition, there are other kinds of intel a commander needs that isn’t within NRO’s scope at all. Hence the existence of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
A similar situation obtains with the NSA, which does signals intelligence capture and analysis.
We’re all familiar, if we read the news carefully, with the fact that there are significant firewalls which historically have prevented the FBI from obtaining and using information collected by NSA. In fact, NSA has been forbidden from collecting or using a wide variety of sigint if it concerns a US citizen within the US territory.
But there is no way in hell that the FBI can or will duplicate NSA’s expertise in such things.
Hence, the Patriot Act which put some doors in that firewall so that relevant information could be passed more easily from the intel community to law enforcement and vice versa.
But unless those communities are restructured top to bottom, the likelihood that that info passing will be a) timely, b) focused and c) effective is iffy. Rice, her staff and the other agencies might try their best to make it work, but they are fighting an uphill battle at best. T
his is true for a lot of reasons, including the culture and mindset of the two communities, which are very very different. You can pass a message from NSA to the FBI all you want, but unless the FBI understands how that info was collected, and why it is credible, and how to use it, it may well be misunderstood or ignored.
That’s why Condi Rice said, in essence, that even if the pre-9/11 threat chatter had been more specific, it wouldn’t necessarily have led to a successful prevention of the attacks.
Our current national security and law enforcement systems were developed half a century or more ago. Their shape, purpose and legal restrictions served us well for their time, despite the fact that some aspects of them have their roots in organization turf-protecting.
But in the age of internet communications, encryption we all can download/use and of terror networks dispersed across many countries, that system now serves us less well. Until it is rethought, restructured — and those changes made to stick at the operational level — “shaking the trees” harder will not automatically produce homeland security.
Armed L,
At the risk of wading this well-swum pool…
I don’t think Stirling is actually saying that the people at the top should or shouldn’t spend their time ‘foiling every plot’. Although he may have feelings on that issue, it’s not particularly central to his claim. What he is saying is that Rice can’t claim that her job is remake America to handle big structural problems like rogue states while ignoring the little stuff like non-state based terrorist networks without undermining the legitimacy of her position as national security advisor. You can’t pick the threat you address based on your desire to remake the country and expect to evade responsibility for the choice you have made.
In Stirling’s words:
The two are incompatible as a governmental philosophy – it represents the declaration that Rice, and the other members of the inner circle have total authority to change American “law and custom and culture” to achieve their ends, but they are not in any way accoutable for the results of their being in charge.
So it’s not that Stirling is disputing her choice of priorities, although I would certainly do so, he may not. Rice has burnt through her credibility because she won’t take responsibility for her prioritization of threats, and continues to both misunderstand her role as the person who is supposed to ensure the national security and the much greater responsibility that implies when you choose to take that role and use it to remake American society based on far-reaching assumptions.
One more point:
while it’s important to figure out what we didn’t do that we could have, prior to 9/11, I find the fingerpointing more than useless.
Rice IMO is right to point to strategy and structure as the main issue, because the tactics of uncovering and preventing attacks prior to 9/11 pretty much were determined by the agency structures, cultures and sense (or lack of a sense) of urgency.
We will hear that the FBI dropped the ball big time. If they do so AFTER 9/11 we should hang them up by their thumbs (figuratively speaking). But it is very hard for me to imagine how that agency’s law enforcement mentality could have been motivated into an intelligence-gathering urgency before that time.
Remember – the FBI had been stung by the Waco fiasco. Headquarters was riding herd to make sure no field agents went off half-cocked over perceived “big threats” like that again, not when the media and Congress could second-guess them about whether the threat was real.
In that climate, and after the bad blood between the FBI and Justice under Clinton, I can’t imagine the FBI taking the warnings of Richard Clarke – a Clinton holdover – seriously, especially when all he had were vague intercepted messages and a fervent belief that yet another group of religious nuts (remember Waco???) were dangerous.
Fair enough, Robin. I think the problems at the FBI are among the deepest we face — an entrenched bureaucracy, independent fiefdoms, a backward approach to technology, and a lack of historical focus on terrorism.
This needs to be addressed. But the perfect is sometimes the enemy of the good.
What I’m saying is that there is something to the idea that “shaking the trees” is about the best you can do while you’re waiting for structural and cultural change to happen. Leaning on and indeed beating the hell out of the FBI is a short-term solution to this problem. What the commission said yesterday is that the FBI was not being leaned on sufficiently. I think that’s a fair criticism.
As for the NSC, the extent to which counterterrorism and the CSG are seen as a high priority gives them more leverage in shaking the trees. Someone who has the ear of the principals (and the president) is inherently more powerful than someone who has to go through a gatekeeper to get to them. I don’t think that can be spun away.
Stoller, Rice isn’t trying to remake society.
The ONLY mistake major mistake she may have made was in judging how close we were to another attack attempt.
The reality is that the Clinton administration left our preparedness in such a mess that it needed time to untangle. On those occasions when Clinton did take action in response to an attack, it tended to be too little, too hasty and way too low level.
Give Rice and Bush credit — they realized they had far more than a little series of law enforcement problems with a handful of overseas nuts to deal with. And during the time you think their priorities were wrong, they were very active in addressing the problem as they saw it. Among other things, they were busy beefing up security on US assets overseas, which is where all the recent attacks had occurred.
Again, if Clinton hadn’t gutted embassy security budgets and if he hadn’t made us look so weak, Rice might have inherited the luxury of getting it *just* right on the timing of a domestic attack.
If, if, if.
I’m not an expert at what Dr. Rice does. But I’ve been peripherally close to the intel community, and closer to the military community, and I have a first hand sense of how complicated this stuff is. Monday-morning quarterbacking from people who don’t, is cheap and worthless.
As to the value of the commission, it would have been much better a year or so ago, rather than in the midst of the political season. That was the White House’s mistake.
But partisan finger-pointing aside, think about the consensus that is emerging on both sides of the aisle:
-Threats much be faced before they are gathered
-Retaliation must be swift and forceful
-Information must be shared
-The agencies still have problems they need to address
I think that’s a good thing.
And further, I think most Americans believe they have a right to know what their government does and doesn’t do.
praktike, why on earth do you think Rice had ANY leverage on the FBI prior to 9/11 and the Patriot Act?
Sure, she could talk to Bush about lighting a fire under an agency whose Cabinet agency did not, BY LAW, report to or coordinate with the NSC, pre-9/11. But she’d damn well better have something more specific and actionable than vague chatter and concerns if she tries.
RKB, you’re right. The National Security Advisor and the President of the United States have no leverage over government agencies.
People are conveniently forgetting that the CIA and FBI also operated under some very specific statutory restrictions on their operations – only some of which were addressed by the PATRIOT Act.
And I see little attempt by those critical of the Bush administration to make their criticisms coherent with their criticisms of the PATRIOT Act.
Meanwhile, the ACLU is suing to end the use of the TSA’s misnamed “NO-FLY” airline passenger list.
Imaginary people on some imaginary other thread are criticizing the Patriot Act.
I’ve often thought that John Kerry was pretty much substanceless, but I guess I’ll believe praktike when he asserts that Kerry is imaginary.
The link by the way contains Kerry’s criticisms of Ashcroft and includes false claims about the PATRIOT Act and section 215 in particular.
Am I John Kerry? If you want to debate famous Americans, go right ahead.
I can do that, too.
For instance, Bush is wrong when he says that his clean air policies are better for the environment than existing policies.
What does that have to do with whether Condi Rice viewed counterterrorism as a priority and acted accordingly before 9/11?
Well, nothing.
Stuart Buck has this where he shows an even more explicit case of what I’m talking about with John Podesta’s factually challenged attempts to “fact check” Condi Rice ( using a nominally non-partisan org for partisan purposes BTW ).
Again, John Podesta isn’t me.
One dimension of Robin Roberts’s details that he didn’t present is the fear and loathing between intel organs concerning budgets and funding. To a large extent they complete with each other to do very similar jobs in arbitrary geographical target areas. In order to guard these budgets and target fiefdoms, they manage information so that other agencies usually get analysis, and at best get sifted data. That way, their continued existences are perpetuated through such info management. You could see resonances of this throughout Tenet’s testimony, where he claimed the CIA couldn’t get everything right all the time. By implication, nobody else could even try, as they don’t have the sources or mission authority/budget to do the same job. So Commissioners, you don’t even get to choose between two options. You get a largely unreformed CIA.
That’s right, Praktike. Despite your sarcasm, prior to 9/11, the National Security Advisor had NO – I repeat, NO – leverage over the FBI.
If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand either how the agencies are organized or how deeply the firewall between national security and law enforcement was and to some degree still is.
Now, having said this, I will acknowledge that the FBI did have a statutory responsibility for counter-intelligence inside the US.
However, that role had historically been VERY limited in practice and the FBI very very jealously protected itself against instrusions by the CIA.
Partly that was just stupid turf protection. Partly it was built on an intentional effort by the legislation that created both agencies, to keep the CIA out of domestic issues. The result is that the FBI has always been overwhelmingly a law enforcement agency that acts AFTER events, not a counter intel agency that pre-emptively PREVENTS events.
Yes, the President has leverage over the FBI. But just saying we’re really worried and we have a lot of non-specific chatter, is going to produce WHAT — prior to 9/11 ??
Look, I’m not saying that we can’t identify something someone might have done differently. But the overwhelming predominance of factors mitigatged against this having the effect people are implying, i.e. that the plots and plotters would have been identified and stopped. If we got really lucky, maybe – but don’t kid yourself that it was likely.
Look: I know intel people. I know a few intel analysts. They don’t share details of their jobs with me, but I know enough to realize how much skill, luck and effort goes into interpreting raw clues and raw data in the right way and in time to use it.
The idea that the FBI could have magically summoned those skills because the national security advisor – FROM WHOSE INFLUENCE THEY WERE INTENTIONALLY PROTECTED BY LAW AND CUSTOM —- That idea is less than persuasive to those who’ve been around the agencies.
And yeah, that needs to change. But judge what people did by what they had to work with, not by what you wish they had.
Post 9/11, after the first successful attack on US civilians on US soil, things changed. They changed so much that most of us forget what it was like before that day. The Patriot Act offered a legal basis for CIA / FBI cooperation in limited ways. More needs to be done.
“The reality is that we would all be better served by pushing down the role of securing our country against terrorism to the ‘little people’, rather than to large, rigid, unresponsive policy-driven organizations.”
Bush and Clinton’s first term tried this. We got the Brushfire Rebellion, Ruby Ridge, Waco, the First World Trade Center bombing and Oklahoma City from it.
Secondarily, which was also in the post, if it is a case that the “big people” are doing “big picture”, then they are 100% accountable for that big picture. Rice wanted it both ways, first to be judged by “well, there wasn’t enough information coming up” and “I didn’t have an intelligence product” – at the same time the Executive had cut counter-terrorism as priority at Justice and particularly at FBI, demoted the main counter-terrorism expert and failed to bulletin key pieces of information.
If “begnin neglect” is your model for dealing with terrorism – a model which, as the evidence shows – cost dozens of American’s their lives, and quite possibly allowed 911 – then “neglect” needs to be practiced.
Stirling- You’ve extrapolated concerning Rice’s desire to be absolved of responsibility due to the details behind why the attack was successful and our defenses incompetent. By your logic, Roosevelt and all the service chiefs and secretaries should have resigned on 8 Dec 1941.
Sterling- Was Clarke never replaced? You imply that his particular position was not refilled or his responsibilities transferred to another person.
Finally, what do you mean by the verb “to bulletin”?
Tom, I’m not so sure the “geographical distinctions” between intel agencies is all that trivial, if you mean the difference between the counter intelligence duties of the FBI (domestic) and the CIA (foreign). And their jobs are NOT “very similar” at all — the skills, equipment and sources for, say, reconaissance imagery is very different than for signals intelligence, and both are different from human intelligence gathering.
Yes, there are turf and budget stupidities.
However, the decisions that established the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and Joint Chiefs of Staff after WWII were based, among other things, on
a) the intention to safeguard civil liberties here by keeping the other intel agencies out of domestic spying and
b) on the very different capabilities, processes and sources that distinguish signals intelligence (NSA) from human intelligence (CIA) and later, from technical means such as satellites (NRO) and more computer-based signint.
I’ve deliberately left out the military use of intelligence, which is a whole ‘nuther issue.
Now, William Odom (who ran the NSA for years and is no fan of the CIA) makes a careful argument about what will and won’t work in the way of reforming the intelligence gathering system. (I am including counter-intelligence here. Historically it has meant catching spies. Identifying and catching terrorists before they plot is a similar, but somewhat different task.)
Odom has a lot to say about the CIA and in particular, he strongly suggests that the head of the CIA and the Director of Intelligence no longer be the same person. He has more ideas too, and I’m still reading some other, differing analyses on this.
But I will give the CIA this – they were forced to gut their human intelligence capability in the 90s. Is it any surprise, then, that they had not penetrated the Islamicist networks when those networks are bound by a religion, language, culture and often family ties that most Americans don’t share?
Lots of stuff to clean up in these agencies, but let’s get real about how this complicated mess happened.
One other comment re: Praktike’s critique of intel agencies.
Tow very real reasons analysis is often shared rather than raw data:
1) raw intel often needs to be evaluated in the contect of how it was collected and sometimes those capabilities do NOT reside in the user agency
2) sharing raw date means compromising sources.
Again, the Odom commission and Odom’s own book discuss these tradeoffs in some detail.
That should be ‘Two very real reasons’. Preview is my friend, even when I’m dashing things off between other engagements.
Robin- I should have not restricted my comments to geographies. The FBI/CIA boundary is just one of these, but a better one is the confusion that results in active war zones. Getting CIA data to the active services is a consistent issue, with analysis usually coming late or never to boot.
Then there are the other 10 or so alphabet soup agencies. I’ve come to find that DOE runs weapons proliferation satellites that are classified. How this is coordinated with DoD or the CIA is hard to see. The NRO is another loose cannon. To some degree they are separated by different missions, but to anyone who could actually review these missions (as most are so compartmentalized that only Rice or Bush could do the review) the duplication would probably be staggering. So in practicality, all of them get underfunded as if they were all fully funded they would simply run into each other continuously.
I’d support what Trent Telenko published in this forum about 2 years ago. Strip all intel and special ops out of all the services and other departments and put it into the fifth DoD service, along with responsibility for space operations.
you know, I purchased “fixing intelligence” a few weeks ago, but have been reading “ghost wars” instead. I think I’ll get around to it soon.
Thanks for your comments.
Praktike and Newberry are right.
If it’s not the NSA’s job to pressure people and especially NSC principals to fall in line and execute the President’s policies – then whose was it? That’s the job description of the NSA – to advise the President and coordinate National Security policy.
You can’t have it both ways. Either Rice was advising the President adequately on terrorism, and she was responsible for seeing those instructions executed adequately. Or she didn’t adequately prioritize it because she didn’t push it hard enough, because it was her job to make all the other people fall in line.
It was her job, and basically in her testimony she said it wasn’t her fault. Which may be fair enough, but it also means that she should NOT be NSA because it IS the job of the NSA to tell the President what the priority should be.
She could have said that she had called it wrong, and had failed to advise the President properly because she hadn’t assessed the information to be urgent enough – I would have accepted that. People can differ on interpretations or make mistakes. The fact however that she implied that it wasn’t her role at all to do so was damning.
We don’t expect Presidents to be experts or bureaucratic champions. We expect them to hire specialists and advisers or appointees to implement their policies. That’s why the President has an NSA in the first place. To specifically deal with National Security at the highest levels on his behalf. That’s why they call them National Security Advisers.
Advisers, not Administrators. They are not confirmed by the Senate like the Directors of the CIA and FBI. That’s why they can argue that they shouldn’t testify due to executive privilege whereas the DCI and Director of the FBI can’t. Do you think Rice should be giving orders to Rummy and Powell also? Or that she is responsible for the performance of State and DOD also?
For the record, and as an avowed ABB leftist, I want to say that I am sick to death of the left making pre 9/11 failures the primary issue.
The primary issue should be Bush’s miserable failure to focus on Islamist terrorist organizations post 9/11. Several sequential antiterrorist directors have quit because the focus on Iraq prevented them from pursuing Al-Qaeda effectively. Afghanistan received a tiny fraction of the funding or troop strength of Iraq and is now controlled by druglords and returning Taliban elements who support Al-Qaeda. Special forces units were kept hunting for the now-impotent Saddam for months while Bin Laden ran loose. Pentagon proposals to neutralize a known Al-Qaeda cell were cancelled by the White House three times in 2002. More money went into the Iraq war last year than the Afghanistan war and Homeland Security’s newly increased annual budget combined.
Even if Iraq were a threat to us, it was prioritizing a hypothetical threat over a known one … like requiring pedestrians to wear bicycle helmets now that a disastrous fire proved to us the hard way that houses sometimes burn down. We did get a few small fire extinguishers on the way, but a hell of a lot more effort was put into the damn helmets without much analysis about whether pedestrians were really at risk from head injuries. Maybe Bush’s dad sells bike helmets or something.
Bush’s neglect of Al-Qaeda and the roots of Islamist terror in favor of the Iraqi regime is beyond criminal and has placed the US at severely risk. He only managed to sell it because a year of carefully crafted speeches conflated 9/11 and Iraq in the minds of most Americans, including many who should be smarter than that.
I apologize to the board for my heated tone… I usually strive for more balanced rhetoric, but at the moment I’m too ticked off at my fellow liberals for carping on the wrong damn issue. It takes the heat off what’s really important.
I’ll resonate with IdahoEv, concerning the post 9/11 period being what is critical. The obvious conclusion concerning pre 9/11 is that business as usual methods don’t work with unusual situations. So all prior administrations and this one merely assumed that normacy would continue ad infinitum.
Where history will judge GWB is concerning what happened after a discontinuity such as 9/11. Can he turn around the ship so that it doesn’t hit the second reef? We’ll see, and the only thing that Rice’s testimony illuminates is just how much inertia this ship has. Perhaps ‘downsizing’ some of it might not be such a bad idea after all, though it would be unprecedented as an approach in the federal government.
I think the media is the one making pre-9/11 stuff a major issue, since the 9/11 Commission is investigating it and holding very high-profile hearings right now.
Praktike- my inference there is that if they lacked the commission, then they might have to cover, on site, the Iraq situation. And then their lack of people on the ground (as usual, as happened ever since Oct ’01) would again show that the major pulps and networks are unprepared to really cover anything for a protracted time outside of NYC or the DC beltway.
IdahoEV.
The roots of Al Q post Afghanistan moved to Iran.
Iraq/Afghanistan is the key to Iran.
Iraq is not a secondary theater it is the key.
I do not trust any arm chair general who has not read “Strategy” by Hart. So my question is: have you read “Strategy”?
I flat missed Stirling Newberry’s comments in the thread above, and since he’s the author whose post I’m criticizing, I ought to take a look at them and respond.
He said:
and
First – Ruby Ridge and Waco – how in the world do we get to these from a discussion of terrorism?
Neither one has anything to do with foreign or domestic terrorism, except as a rationale for later acts of domestic terrorism (OKC). And operationally, I’ll point out that it was – in both cases – the highest levels of the Federal antiterror organizations (FBI HRT et al) who FUBAR’ed these operations; in the case of Waco, the Attorney General herself approved the operations. In both cases, local law enforcement would have been a much more appropriate response.
Next, it’s pretty clear to me that Stewart is mixing up two points. The first one is whether the approach is ‘terrorism as crime’ in which you have isolated perpetrators who you then try and deter or capture once they commit an act. The next one is the question of what kind of organized response is most likely to work in preventing terrorist acts.
Yes, Bush I and Clinton did approach terrorist acts as isolated criminal events, and yes, lots of us have come to believe that this was a less fruitful approach than dealing with the underlying organizations.
But I think he’s missing my core point: We do have to defend, as well as attack – and micromanagement of threat assessment and response at the top levels is a losing game, for a host or reasons.
Better models are available, and they don’t involve Condi Rice sitting in the Situation room deciding which flight school students should be interrogated.
More when I post in response to Bob Kerry’s oped today.
A.L.
“For the record, and as an avowed ABB leftist, I want to say that I am sick to death of the left making pre 9/11 failures the primary issue.
The primary issue should be Bush’s miserable failure to focus on Islamist terrorist organizations post 9/11. ”
Thanks, IdahoEv. We can point our fingers until they fall off – and I’m guilty as the next person of doing that. But I also am dumbfounded at the partisanship I see in defending Bush admin actions. I’m no lefty (let me say I’m vigorously against dumbass ideas like national healthcare, and very procapitalism…as long as I don’t have to pay for the health insurance of underpaid Wal-Mart employees…which is about as socialism-promoting as capitalism gets). Anyway, as a sort of common-sense-loving moderate…I keep waiting for somebody to offer me a reasonable explanation of the following:
The US is attacked in the most major way ever on our shores, by Osama Bin Ladin and co. We respond, not by decimating Osama and his evil followers, but by waging war on…Iraq!
What is this, government by the retarded for the retarded? That’s sure how it comes off to me.
Yes, it’s wonderful that we got rid of a murderous dictator — and if that’s our standard for waging war on a country, there’s a long list of other murderous dictators in front of us. If it’s WMD we’re after, well Kimmy’s sitting on a bunch of nukes over there in Korea, but we’re not doing too much about that.
Come on — somebody answer me — not with defending the current administration in mind as you write every word — but by persuading me with the (supposed) common sense behind what we did.
I find it astonishing that so many here who are criticizing the actions of the National Security Advisor so clearly demonstrate that they do not understand the structure of the United State’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence apparatus at all. All I see here are criticisms of Condi Rice for not doing George Tenet’s, Robert Meuller’s/Louis Freeh’s and Lt.Gen. Hayden’s job.
Richard’s and Robin Burk’s points are going right over your heads.
Amy,
You’ve asked a question that requires an in-depth answer. Let’s look at the situation as if you were in charge back in 2002.
Afghanistan’s Taliban (really, al-Qaeda) government is gone thanks to us, and al-Qaeda can no longer use it as a secure base. So, we did that. America went in with a small number of forces because going in with overwhelming numbers was impossible given the supply lines, and because it would just repeat the Soviet approach in Afghanistan. You’ll recall how poorly that turned out. That’s why we’ve been so cautious – and it cost us at Tora Bora. Now most of al-Qaedaq sits across the border.
The warlords are being dealt with by slow political maeuvering and a slow build-up of national Afghan institutions (incl. an Afghan Army) instead of major US military operations, for the same reasons. Move aginst them, and they unite against you. Back to the Soviet experience again.
Sometimes, more gets you less. This would be true no matter who was in charge back in America.
Bottom line: What you see is about all you can expect in Afghanistan, though a bit more aid might be nice. The PRT model of paramilitary aid teams is also worth following with interest.
Pakistan already has nukes. Their ISI’s links to the Taliban and al-Qaeda are a matter of record, and large sections of its “lawless frontier” provinces feature widespread support for al-Qaeda. The government is reluctant to confront the jihadis too openly, as this is dangerous for them. Especially because when they do, jihadi infiltration of the military and intel apparatus results in the jihadis being tipped off in advance. You won’t get much overt help there, or permission to operate in their territory. You’re the President. Your plan, ma’am?
Korea… Given that the South Koreans prefer a policy of enablement (that’s “enablement” in the friend-of-alcoholic sense) toward North Korea, we have very few options there. The only thing we do know is that negotiating any more “agreements” just pays Kim et. al. to go ahead and break them, and so makes no sense at all. Current efforts are focused on drawing in the Chinese, Russians, and Japanese, but especially the Chinese who may see several new nuclear powers in their backyard (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) if they don’t find a way to put pressure on Kim. And there we sit, because it’s a slow process.
If you have an idea that no-one else in the world has come up with, please share.
NEXT…
Now that you’ve got Afghanistan and Korea as under control as they’re going to get, you have the larger problem to deal with of widespread support in the Islamic world for terrorism, an ideology of carefully cultivated hatred for West fostered by their regimes and institutions in order to distract attention from their massive societal failures, and the perception of same as a cost-free approach for regimes and other organizations that sponsor it.
If you refuse to grapple with these issues, then destroying the Taliban will net you nothing, and the source of the war against you remains untouched. So, what do you do?
The Saudis’ funding of Wahabbi religious extremism including al-Qaeda and many of the world-wide madrassas who teach ignorance and hate and recruit for AQ is a huge problem. Past experience with the Khobar Towers bombing and other incidents has shown that they really have no interest in dealing with this, or cooperating with america in any meaningful sense in this area. Indeed, it seems to be a quid-pro-quo deal that makes Saudi Arabia itself immune from attack in exchange for this funding and support, and the weakness of their regime means they won’t give that deal up except under the most extreme pressure.
You can’t isolate the Saudis because they have too much oil (they’ll just buy other allies, and no sanctions will stick), and if you invade then the rallying cry of “save Mecca and Medina” will touch off an all-out war with most of the Islamic world. America would win that one, but you probably don’t want to kill 100 million people or so unless you absolutely have to. Right?
Oh, and the USA has troops in Saudi Arabia, just in case Saddam decides to invade again. This is a major bone of contention in parts of the Islamic world, and as long as they’re needed there your options for confronting the Saudis over their other behaviour are very limited.
Your plan?
Then there’s the problem of a world in which a number of Islamic regimes, answerable to no-one but themselves and with clear state ties to Islamic terrorism, are developing chemical, biological, and nuclear capabilities.
Take Iran. The #1 world sponsor for terrorism, including terrorist atacks far beyond the mideast. some of their client groups have openly vowed that chemical and biological attacks are part of their long term strategy. They have an active nuclear and chemical weapons program, plus they’re building ballistic missiles. There’s discontent over there, but it isn’t at the rebellion stage – and the nation still remembers the last war with Saddam in the 80s, and sees him as a problem if they ever become weak or divided. There’s also no way that any of your Gulf allies will provide bases for an attack on Iran, because they have large Shia populations. It might be possible for the Marines to land, set up a beachhead, then bring in other forces slowly by sea. But that would be very, very risky in military and political terms. Especially since the EU is very cosy with Iran’s mullahs for business reasons.
What do you propose to do about this, Mme. President?
Syria is Iran’s ally. Has WMD. Major supporter of terrorism, including several major terrorist acts against Americans. Your only routes to Syria, however, are through Turkey, Israel, or Lebabon. Turkey almost certainly won’t let you. Going through Israel has problems that are self-evident. And the LAST place you want to touch is the eternal quagmire of Lebanon. Plus, it’s run by Alawites, who are only 10% of the population. Take their Ba’athist regime out, and you’ll be trying to police the remnants of 2 utterly failed, anarchic states.
You could do it, Mme. President. Do you want to? You tell me.
Iraq. Technically, you’re still at war – and Iraq has violated the ceasefire. It’s also refusing to cooperate with efforts to keep tabs on its WMD program. You’re getting intelligence that suggests possible links to the 1993 WTC bombings, an assassination attempt on a US President, and even al-Qaeda. Like all intelligence, it’s uncertain – but what if it’s true? Connections with some terrorist groups are certainly a known quantity, and Saddam has a long history of making disastrous miscalculations fed by overconfidence and underestimation of risk. In the “Evil Mideast dictators club,” this guy is in a class by himself. Torture, mass murder on a unique scale even in that part of the world, ecocide, you name it. Plus, there are real questions about the country’s stability and succession – Saddam’s sons are less rational than he is, and more brutal.
The Kurds have a quasi-state under protection of a no-fly zone that costs billions to maintain. That may prove helpful, as will your bases nearby in Kuwait. The souther shi’as have risen in revolt at least once, so they’re a wild card. And Saddam’s conventional military is much weaker. That’s helpful. You’re certainly in a better starting position here, if you want to start somewhere (or, you can rest on your laurels after Afghanistan – your call).
Less helpful is the fact that the sanctions that were supposed to keep Saddam bottled up are being undermined by the Russians and especially the French, and the UN is typically ineffective in enforcing them. Pretty soon, Saddam will have a free hand again. This will be seen, widely, as a major failure of U.S. policy, will and prestige in the region.
That’s a dangerous outcome.
ALL parties already question the U.S. commitment to dealing with Islamic extremism (or indeed, any threat), since there’s a general belief that the USA will not risk major efforts that may result in casualties. The operation in Afghanistan, while impressive, is still seen in many quarters as proof of that because of the way it was conducted. This belief stunts their cooperation with you. As a result, very few are inclined to take risks, or end the lack of civil freedoms coupled with quiet incitement against non-Muslims that forms much of the political culture of the Middle East. So, don’t expect a whole lot of cooperation in tracking or going after al-Qaeda within those countries. Especially if efforts to contain Saddam are seen to fail.
In fact, barring something to change the equation the understated non-cooperation from the Arab world that has characterized the past decade is your best prediction. Probably coupled with quiet suggestions to radical elements that they should go off and make trouble elsewhere. Problem is, YOU’RE the elsewhere.
On the other hand…
* Iraq is very central.
* Coup attempts against Saddam have consistently failed. There have been several of them. Volunteers are now rather hard to find.
* Overthrowing Saddam would eliminate the dangers of Saddam’s regime, currently a partly-known but dangerous variable.
* It would also end the need for troops in Saudi Arabia.
* In factm overthrowing the regime and giving the Shi’its there greater freedom would stir Saudi Arabia’s Shi’ite population across the border to demand more rights of their own.
* IF we can succeed in giving the Shi’ites greater freedom. Or should we just pick a military strongman who won’t give us trouble in future and isn’t as brutal as Saddam? The State Department favours this option.
* This could force the Saudi rulership to confront their Wahhabi clerical establishment, who will oppose this, or face increasing Shi’ite unrest. Win-win situation if you think the Saudis aren’t our friends.
* Iraw back in full production makes the world less dependent on Saudi oil. Note: you can also do this the French way, via a sweetheart deal for American oil firms linked to the lifting of all sactions. Do you try?).
* Syria and Iran would face a USA with a land bridge into their countries, and so much greater opportunity for military action or subversion aimed at their regimes.
* A successful Iraq – and it has a history of modernity and secularism – could be a magnet for a very different kind of trend in the Arab world, as opposed to other responses to modernity which have all been based on dictatorship (socialism, clan ruled dictatorships, Islamism). This could create an Arab society that’s successful on its own terms, thus mitigating the overwhelming sense of societal failure and pointing toward a different option.
Of course, you could also fail. That is always a possibility in statecraft.
* Iraq is very tribal. That will make things complex.
* Saddam’s rule will have left deep scars. Can civil society be put baqck together, or is it a Humpty-Dumpty situation?
* Syria and Iran’s regimes in particular will see your efforts as a life-or-death threat.
* Nor can you expect much support in the rest of the Arab world, less dangerous dictatorships but still dictatorships with no interest in a different model taking root. Their ideal is Saddam gone, followed by chaos in Iraq. That’s perfect from their point of view – the threat gone, the West’s attention focused on Iraq not them, and no alternative model.
* Europe would rather pay off dictators under the table. They won’t be much on board either, especially the French who are openly bought.
Yes, you could definitely try and fail here.
So, I ask again… Mme. President, what do you want to do?
Amy, I’ll pat Joe on the back in agreement and direct you to my ‘*Liberal Hawk*‘ post from way back when that sets out my rationale (which overlaps Joe’s by quite a bit).
You’re asking the dead-right question, and one of the reasons to firmly smack Bush & Co. upside the head is because they’ve done such a piss-poor job of answering them.
Where’s FDR when we really need him?
A.L.
Sorry, Amy, I forgot one of the most important constraints.
If you make too much noise about forcing widespread social and political change in the Arab world, the Kuwaitis say they’ll stop supporting us and so will Bahrain. The pressure from other governments would be too much, and they see it as too dangerous to even talk about until their primary external worry (Saddam) is gone.
That will deprive us of our bases near Iraq. Indeed, it will deprive us of much of our governmental support in the Arab world – most of whom would see that as an open threat. Which it sort of is.
After Saddam is gone may be a different situation. We’ll count on your fine political instincts to judge that…
Hmm, you know, my recent contributions are sort of derailing this debate. So I’m about to make them into their own post – and people who want to comment can do so here…