TheAgitator.com
What We Should Do
Tuesday, April 20th, 2004Lots of you repeatedly ask, if I’m against Iraq, opposed the PATRIOT Act and various other loosenings of criminal and civil liberties protections, and against harassing immigrants, but I still blame the U.S. government for failing us on September 11, what exaclty would I do to prevent another attack and keep us safe?
It’s a fair question. And I’m working on an answer. In the meantime, go read what Jim Henley would do. I agree with nearly all of it.
Yeah, I can see you guys backing this up:
“We tell Kim Jong-Il that if he so much as glances in the direction of anyone remotely associated with Osama bin Laden, including the Pakistani ISI or the “government” of Saudi Arabia, we will make his country look like a jamboree of Osirak reenactors. And if we get the idea that he’s trying to sell a nuke, we will provide him more than one of our own.” - Henley
Right, and it is nice to have what, almost 3 years to second guess the guy who had to act immediately, then roll out your own plan in retrospect.
It was hard to read in that funny vertical format, but agreeing with him was like agreeing with “Well, more bus service will get more people to where they want to go. All we need is roads and gas unless we already have them which we kind of do in most places . . .” and so forth. Hard to argue with for more than one reason.
Constitutional excresences? Start w/ the 17th Amendment and work your way forward. The Patriot Act is small potatoes compared to what’s been allowed since well before 1934 or 1964 or 1984, let alone 2004. I read Cato’s plan for wholesale cutting of most Cabinet-level departments. Sounds good to me.
As well, I’ve wanted to put decorative explosives into the N Korean presidential palace at the same time various barracks and bridges were being used for the new generation of GPS-guided cruise missiles for a real long time. Hello-goodbye, threat removed. What was the last thing Qaddafi did that was newsworthy? He opened Tripoli to American cruise liners. Ho-ho-o-o-o, now there’s a terrorist!
How, though, pray tell, do we disengage ourselves from positions of readiness to deal with a threat that has no boundaries, capital cities or industry to destroy and yet stay ready to do just that? Don’t Tread On Me is grand, but if we pull everything back to our own borders, how, then, do we hound them to the ends of the earth?
We must have a strategy that’s as well known to our allies as to our enemies, so they know what we’re doing there and why. If not, it’s, well, it’s kinda like what we have now.
Like the man said:
“How can you be in two places at once when you’re not anywhere at all?”
Because I’m only a clone, any plan I hatched would elicit, “Break’s over, back to the cube.” So I won’t. But what I’ve seen so far couldn’t build a plastic P-51. Color me unimpressed.
He lost me at “Americs’s universities are the glory of our educational system.” If he believes that, then I can hardly take the rest of what he says seriously.
Favorite quote
“It’s not like we don’t know how to bomb Iraq.”
So Ms Dani, what would be the glory of our educational system if not our Universities?
corquando, in order to end state-sponsored terrorism, its leadership must be deposed. There probably isn’t an easier way, unless you get lucky and a leader has an apparent change of heart (Libya).
‘Grass Roots’ terrorism is not so easy to weed out. i.e. OKC bombing happened without state sponsorship (apparently anyway). Countless other acts of terrorism are/were ‘grass-roots’ and impossible to take out by invading a country. The perpetrators adapt, move out, and carry-on as before. That type of terrorism requires us to be everywhere we need to be to deliver a fatal blow the moment we get good solid intel on terrorist locations/activities.
I think that’s what Henley was arguing for.
A nimble pack of freaks will not build a base for us to attack. Those days are gone. They know it (they aren’t that stupid) and we know it (we aren’t overly stupid).
Deploying large numbers of troops in overseas bases costs a fortune and offers little in return. i.e. if you were to employ elite military teams to attack a cave or two in country X, you don’t need 10,000 soldiers cheering you on from a base in country Y. All you need is a few key locations available for logistical support, not 150. Instead of those 10,000 troops use 100 teams of 100 soldiers to hunt the scum down. Invest in good intelligence, and be just as nimble and mobile as them. I think it’s the only way it would work.
The other arguments that Henley presented, although valid, would be impossible to implement given our current political situation. (Those who can, read between the lines.)
Our educational system does not have any glory. It stinks, generally speaking.
Actually, America has the best universities in the world. A testament to this is how many foreigners come here or want to come here to study. Take a look down the list of Top 25 Colleges and show me another country that can boast 25 schools of that caliber. There just isn’t one.
Ms. Dani–
Beg to to differ. We have the best advanced training and research in science and engineering in the world. We train a good chunk of the world’s top scientists. And there’s a LOOONG line waiting to get in. Not just from China and India, either. About 1/3 of my departmental colleages are European.
There are many things wrong with our educational system, but it does not stink from top to bottom.
I think that’s what Henley was getting at, anyway, with the “glory” comment.
Waiting works if the history of militant Islam is only 25 to 35 years old.
Unfortunately it is much older than that.
Ms. Dani’s comment was probably condeming the liberal bias in our universites and not the quality of education.
Henley wants it both ways. He advocates we stop policies that provoke terrorists and yet he supports the continued presence of military personnel in the Middle East. What happens when the ire of Al-Qaida moves from U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia to U.S. presence in the Arab world (Turkey, Qatar, Oman)? As he stated, the law of self-perpetuation means this transition should be expected.
He advocates we pull financial support from Israel because it ought to be self-sustaining if it is truly a viable entity. Then why does he also advocate the continued military support of Oman, Qatar, and Tukey? Shouldn’t they be self-sustaining as well? The unstated message is that Henley thinks our support for Israel does more damage to us than our continued support of Arab nations. He may have a point there, but he didn’t make it.
Though he clearly states this plan does not instantly remove all dangers, he does not eliminate the notion that his plan will eventually remove all dangers. That’s where his plan falls apart because, in truth, his plan is an attempt at a lesser-of-two-evils strategy but he doesn’t make that point clear enough.
As with Pres. Bush, Henley may be correct in his policy but his presentation makes seeing the merits very difficult.
Four comments and this thing is already ripped to shreds! Ok, let me at what little is left.
“But I’d make it a requirement of a student visa that recipients take a heavy dose of humanities”,
Oh yeah, liberal arts is gonna save us all. Bet them Volvos will be sellin’ like hot cakes now!
“I’d also have the State Department screen applicants better”
Hot damn! That’s a terrific idea! Why didn’t the rest of us think of that!? Actually this could be a handy approach to many problems. Just have the government agency in charge DO A BETTER JOB!
“If they want to nuke Tehran, that’s Tehran’s lookout”.
Radley I’m hopin’ that was the part you DIDN’T agree with. Any way keep him talkin’ till the men in white coats get here.
“I’d be willing to provide American troops to help overmatched foreign governments against anti-American terror groups in their midst…
That’s a description of current policy… but he would avoid the pitfalls of current policy by “due diligence to make sure we weren’t just being suckered into settling someone else’s quarrel for them”. So same policy I guess just with “cooler” people in charge. As Corquando has pointed out, unimpressive.
“We tell Kim Jong-Il that if he so much as glances in the direction of anyone remotely associated with Osama bin Laden, including the Pakistani ISI or the “government” of Saudi Arabia, we will make his country look like a jamboree of Osirak reenactors. And if we get the idea that he’s trying to sell a nuke, we will provide him more than one of our own”.
Uhhhhh, yeah. Could we maybe make this like plan B or C? This alternative is why Bush’s “regime change” is the preference of most grown-ups. Because it deals directly with the real problem with countries like N. Korea. All Kim Jong Il needs to believe to be undeterred is that HE PERSONALLY would survive any attack. He doesn’t really care about the populace. They’re already busy dying on their own thanks to him. Regime change poses the question all us libertarians know is on the minds of dictators. That is,would YOU like to be in charge of your country or not?
Radley I think your friend needs to cut back on the TV action series viewing. Nobody is gonna be deterred by the nuclear option as John T Kennedy points out. There’s more but why should I have all the fun? I have a feeling there isn’t gonna be much of this thing left by the time this thread is done.
It is not fair to criticise bush for failing to stop airliners being used as missiles, that had not been done before and no one was expecting it (and not even al quaeda were expecting it to be so successful)
It is however fair to criticise him to for failing to learn the lesson, and the lesson is simple: unauthorised people must not be allowed to get onto the flight decks of commercial airliners.
The simple fact is that 9/11 was a crime for which no one has yet been brought to justice.
Iraq has nothing to do with bringing the perpetrators to justice, in fact it makes it more likely that they will not have to answer for their crimes.
Invading Iraq played right into Al-Quaedas hands, Osama couldn’t have wanted it to turn out better. That is what Bush should be critiscised for.
But I’d make it a requirement of a student visa that recipients take a heavy dose of humanities, especially American studies courses
Has he ever taken an American Studies class at a US University??? The are quite radical. Maybe have them take philosophy or asthetics or something like that
in defense of what I previsouly wrote about our educational system, I believe that I DID say “generally speaking.”
And michael is right that I was referring mostly to liberla bias in schools, but that’s what we get for socializing education.
This stuff gives me a headache.
Generally stuff that comes in the form of damned if you do, damned if you don’t has me reaching for the aspirin.
Iraq is a classic example.
A ‘War on Terror’ is another.
Jim Henley starts out by blaming American “interference” for agitating the terrorists.
Problem is, the terrorists don’t just want to keep us from “interfering” with them — they want us to not “interfere” with anyone else within their reach, even if that “anyone else” might like to interact with us.
They don’t just hate us for the Shah, or for Israel — or even for Hugh Hefner, Victoria’s Secret, Budweiser, or hip-hop. They hate us because we respect the right of the individual to make his own choices — which is anethema not only to Islamofascists, but to anyone who believes they have the right to forcefully dictate your every action.
They know that if that idea takes root in their societies, their dream of their preferred, imposed order is toast … and they are more than willing to kill for that order.
And keep in mind — that hate is also often mixed with envy, as well; they know that our own prosperity is a both a great selling point for “the American way” and a condemnation of their own worldview.
ANY interaction with people from these societies, even if it nowhere approaches “imperialism”, even if it provides great benefit to those involved, opens us up to attack.
In other words, unless any and all forms of terrorism are actively and forcefully opposed, the interconnections of our global society are jeapordized — even in places where Al Quada has no interest, for there will be others, even with divergent worldviews from the Islamofascists, that will be willing to emulate them once they are perceived as succcessful.
Also, remember that Islamofascism is inherently an expansionist ideology. In the long term, they will not stop at the Jordan … or the Med … or possibly even the Atlantic, especially once they are able to circumvent the checks-and-balances in the nations they will dominate, and hijack their resources.
And historically, those who are willing to resort to terror, regardless of ideology, have a strong tendency to either be, or become, expansionist.
The question is: do we take the fight to the terrorists — state-controlling, state-sponsored, or independent, regardless of ideology — when and were we choose …
… or do we wait for them to come to us, after they expand and strengthen themselves?
I agree that improving our intelligence and our flexibility of response — fighting “smarter” — is a prudent approach.
However, many want to pursue this as a way to avoid resolute opposition to terrorism … treating these thugs as street criminals instead of the national enemies they are.
That would be a mistake. This is war — for that is the way our enemies see it.
“Right, and it is nice to have what, almost 3 years to second guess the guy who had to act immediately, then roll out your own plan in retrospect.”
Had a liberatian plan been followed, we may not have had these problems. Yet, those who caused the problems are put in charge of fixing them? Usually, when someone fucks up at work, they get fired. Unfortunately, our government NEVER fires anyone, and even if they are replaced, it only with somone that thinks the same and will continue to fuck up. Libertarian solutions don’t ever work though right? Maybe if we actually ever tried one once…
The liberal bias in academia is primarily an affliction of the various “soft subjects” like arts, humanities, and social sciences.
“Hard subjects” like engineering, sciences, math, etc. tend to be far more neutral or conservative.
I think this is primarily do to the fact that it’s much more difficult to avoid reality in those subjects. All the critical studies theory in the world won’t change the fact the bridge you designed just collapsed.
Stormy Dragon … this engineer definitely concurs with your analysis.
Those of us who deal in the “hard stuff” are held accountable by the results obtained from applying our ideas, almost every day.
OTOH, when the theory behind the “soft subjects” is applied, the accountability of results can have a time lag of years … and the effects of academic freedom and tenure, while necessary to maximize the idea pool, act to suppress this accountability, as well. The accountability of peer review is subject to corruption by institutional and associational politics, so it is not always reliable, either.
As a result, half-baked theories for educating our kids (just one example) are applied for far longer than they should be, based upon their merits.
How stupid, the premise is that if we stop being friends with Saudi Arabia and Egypt then the fanatics won’t hate us as much. If we do that then the fanatics will gain control of those countries and create new Taliban’s on a much grander level with much more money.
Why can’t you little brains just get this simple point straight, the fanatics believe that everyone should think the way they do or die. They prosper and grow under tyrany and our failure to support our friends will allow this to happen.
Then the Israel angle is just idiotic. We might walk away from them but as soon as they do something that Europe does not like then Europe will turn on them in a second. I can just see Israel nuking Syria and Iran and Europe congratulating them.
Just outright stupid.
“It’s a fair question. And I’m working on an answer”
With all due respect (it is your website, after all), it is fine to oppose the war and Patriot Act, as well as blame our leader’s response to the terrorist attacks, but you should have had YOUR solution formulated LONG ago.
Until then, your comments are just complaints - quite possibly valid, but without offering a better idea, your arguments lack persuasiveness.
Some have feared that anti-Israeli terror groups would make the US actually evicting Israel’s Jews by armed force the price of peace.
Is this not the worst sentence ever written? Was this translated from Japanese?
I’ll be interested to see what you would have done Radley.
I also think it important to recognise the benefit of hindsight. I’m not a big fan of a lot of aspects of current American foreign policy, but I try to filter out those criticisms which only appear in hindsight (eg. no WMD in Iraq) from those I genuinely think I could have foreseen at the time (the astonishing lack of planning for the post-war phase).
When you say ‘What would I have done? I’m still working on it.’ it shows that you acknowledge how difficult the decisions were to make. We’re getting on for 3 years after now, and most people are still working out what should be done.
“Nobody is gonna be deterred by the nuclear option as John T Kennedy points out.”
Actually my point was that I don’t believe Henley’s tough talk on North Korea for an instant, and neither would North Korea. A nuclear option has some deterrence, but in Henley’s hands the option isn’t credible.
Henley doesn’t know North Korea has nukes any more than he knew Iraq had WMD. Suppose you could show today that agents of North Korea had recently discussed the sale of a nuke with agents of bin Laden. Does anyone seriously believe Henley would then favor a nuclear strike on North Korea? Does anyone seriously believe Balko would?
Oh and if they did, what happens when you sift through the radioactive debris that was North Korea and you can’t find any WMD?
Give us a little credit here.
John T Kennedy”
Oh I got your point. BTW it was a first punch knock-out. Great job! Bet the rent money, nuking N.Korea won’t be part of Radley’s plan.
Radley I hope YOU also got Bernard and Roger’s point.
They’d kinda like to see how much better than “dumb,diabolical Bush” you’re gonna do. After all, Bush has formed and implemented a plan over the last two and a half years. For some time now he’s been ‘wrong,wrong,wrong’. Mostly with the benefit of hindsight.
Assuming you don’t agree with Henley on using nukes, it will be interesting to see what you come up with. I can hardly wait.
Rich said, “They don’t just hate us for the Shah, or for Israel… They hate us because we respect the right of the individual to make his own choices…”
There will always be extremists and loons screaming out their message, but it’s our interference that has provided them with foot soldiers. Whether or not we’re to blame for disenfrachising the unwashed masses, many of our foreign policies over the last century have made us the obvious target when they’re looking for someone to blame. (I also think those policies have often indicated a lack of faith in a free market, but that’s for another thread.)
Jeff — it is far, far more than any “interference” on our part that has produced this problem.
The reality of our “interference” is seen through the prism of the corruption within their own governments — and reality is distorted by the assumption that, since their own governments are crooks, so are we. In fact, these governments capitalize on this, by acting to shift the peoples’ focus to the evil Americans, and away from the evil in their midst that is causing even more problems.
And, you get even more distortion of reality when both the governments and the extremist groups are able to frame the debate, by controlling the flow of information within their spheres of influence.
Add to that the extremists’ — in the government, the mosque, and elsewhere — willingness to brutalize or even kill dissenters, and you get a clearer picture of what produces the foot soldiers.
As appalling as these situations are within their own borders, the problem comes to a head when these movements become expansionist — as both Saddam & Sons and Al Quada were/are. When they move the battle front to those who have willingly interacted with us in the past, in order to assert what they consider is their “rightful” authority in these areas, we will draw their fire — even if we had left Iraq alone, and even if we left the MidEast entirely in the future.
Also consider that some of the mistakes we made were a result of a misguided foreign policy that was … even under Republican administrations … dominated by the Leftist view that the direct projection of decisive American force is inherently “imperialistic” and therefore should be considered only as a last-ditch effort — and even then, conducted in an extremely limited manner. This approach has done much to reinforce the perception that we are in bed with the tyrants.
If we had not listened to a UN that not only made the above foreign policy their centerpiece, but treats democrats and dictators with equal respect (and is now shown to be as greedily corrupted as the worst of both), we would have acted decisively in 1991 — well before Al Quada became entrenched — and the Arab world would have seen a totally different face of American influence.
We’re doing that job now … twelve years later than we should have … and it is working. Check here …
… and here.
Never said it would be easy … and it may take a little time for a ground-down (by Saddam & Sons, not the USA) Iraqi populace to step up and shoulder the burden.
But at least they will not be foot soldiers … or slaves … or bomb makers … for Saddam & Sons, ever again. And we know what the intentions of those “leaders” were … whether we ever find the WMD, or no.
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