A closer look at counterterrorism
December 22, 2003
There’s a comment on “Yippie Skippy Liberals”:http://www.thudfactor.com/archives/003477.php#003477 I thought I’d respond to here. Scott (not the Scott of the Gamer’s Nook, who usually haunts this blog) poses a few questions, so I thought I’d give some answers.
Let’s take Tom’s response point-by-point:
bq. Notice lately that Libya is giving up the goods on its nuke program? So maybe a strong aggressive response to 9/11 against all those who are terrorists or support terrorists has had _some_ positive consequences?
One thing I remember from college psych class is that “correlation is not causation.” Which means: just because two things happen near each other does not mean one is the cause and the other the effect. In Libya’s case, sanctions seem to have played a significant role. I don’t doubt our invasion of Iraq had some impact on the decision, but it seems Col. Q had a host of other reasons for cooperating as well, thanks in large part to policies that have been in place since Reagan bombed.
bq. Would a liberal President (e.g., Al Gore) have had any deterrence-creating reaction to 9/11? He would have put together a Blue Ribbon panel to investigate.
It’s hard to say what Al Gore would have done. There are some of us who think Al Gore wouldn’t have done much about 9/11 because there wouldn’t have *been* a 9/11. Why? Presumably because he would have payed more attention to the Hart-Rudman report (among other things).
Bush responded to the Hart-Rudman report by saying “that’s nice” and appointing his own committee to look into it. Democrats do not have a monopoly on committees.
But whether or not Gore would have prevented 9/11 is conjecture, and we can play this one-up game all night. ‘My guy would have,’ ‘yeah, well, my guy would have.’ It’s all fantasy. Alternate-history science fiction.
Do I really think Al Gore would have done any better? Why, yes. That’s why I voted for him; I thought he was _loads_ more competent than Bush. But honestly speaking, we’ll never know what coulda-woulda-shoulda happened.
bq. Have we suffered any domestic terrorism since 9/11, after taking out Afghanistan and Iraq?
How much domestic terrorism did we have under Clinton, Bush I, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon… Just because there haven’t been any more attacks doesn’t mean that what Bush has done has been effective enough or even appropriate; or that actions taken by other presidents were less effective.
bq. When you get punched in the nose, you can either stand there and bleed on your shirt, or you can figure out who is responsible, and punch them right back.
I think this is a fair response. But I do think we should punch the *right* person in the face. Why we got involved in Iraq when we haven’t settled our score with the real people who planned and carried out 9/11 is beyond me.
And that’s the entire thrust of the Yippie Skippy argument: this may have been the right war (I think it was) but at the _wrong time_. We have far too many other important tasks on our plate than this. If you can demonstrate to me how the capture of Saddam, a secular despot, is action against Osama bin Laden, a religious Fundamentalist and avowed enemy of Saddam and the Secular arab world he represented, then I might be more willing to conceed that this was action I should be thrilled about.
But right now what I see is billions of dollars going into Iraq when we should be spending it hunting Al Queda. I *don’t* think our priorities are in order.
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December 23rd, 2003 at 10:12 am
I think your responses are well taken and reasonable. But, allow me to retort (do you mind if I have a drink of your tasty beverage? Sorry–I love Samuel Jackson!)
For a long time, American foreign policy towards terrorism has been appeasement and ignoring the Middle East. That INCLUDES Republican Presidencies as well as Democratic. In essence, we got punches in the nose, over, and over, and over, and our response was always rather milquetoast (well, Reagan’s bombing Libya wasn’t–but it also wasn’t a principled, consistent response–it was more tit for tat). Appeasement and ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. Bullies will pick and pick and pick if they think they can. They especially love a big kid they can pick on that is afraid to fight. Up until recently, the US has been the big kid that was afraid to fight in the Middle East.
I hope that we are both wrong and that we DO commit sufficient resources in the Middle East to finish what we started (i.e., help these people build stable Democracries and an infrastructure that will support it).
Your point re: punching the right person in the nose is well taken. I previously explained why I find the action in Iraq to be moral. I don’t know of any evidence that directly ties Saddam to 9/11. I strongly suspect there are some. And I am extremely displeased with the dancing for joy in the many streets in the Middle East as our towers tumbled to the ground. You dont have to like us, but you’d better respect us. Can you imagine Americans dancing in the street at the prospect of a bunch of civilian Iraqis being butchered? But my suspicions are surely ~not~ sufficient grounds for invasion. Neither are Bush’s or anyone else’s, without some concrete evidence.
But do you ~rreally~ believe that there is no causation between major Middle East military action and Libya suddenly exposing its own nuclear aspirations? Why not under economic sanctions, that have been imposed for ~years~? This argument strains credibility.
A final note on civility. Thanks for yours. I have read Coulter’s as well as Al Franken’s. There is entirely too much of this nastiness going on. Of course, there is a market for it. This stuff is going on precisely for the same reason that your Jerry Springer out-sells your Phil Donohue. It’s sensationalistic. But it is also detrimental to meaningful discourse, especially on topics so important as national security, and the health of the great nation that protects our individual rights to have these exchanges.
December 23rd, 2003 at 12:58 pm
Thanks, Scott. You say:
You may have missed that I said:
I am sure at least part of Libya’s movement was based on a desire not to have US Doctors poking around in Q’s hair for lice. But to credit the Bush Doctrine with that victory is a little much for me. We are also waiting to see how the Bush Doctrine works in other countries: will North Korea, Iran, and Syria work the same way? Or will the be encouraged to accellerate WMD development? These are the concerns I have.
I do agree that for years we’ve done too little. But I’m afraid what we’re doing now is the *wrong* thing, and that it will make matters worse in the long run. Sometimes doing *something, anything* is worse than doing nothing at all.
December 25th, 2003 at 3:06 am
It’s interesting to note, too, that the whole Afghanistan affair was already charted out for the Bush Administration well before they ever took office, and was, indeed, written up by Clinton’s point man, Richard Clarke. However, the new administration pushed off any debriefings by the exiting administration about current threats and reasons to take out Afghanistan for their own pet projects.
“On October 12, 2000 the USS Cole warship was successfully attacked in a port in Yemen by what were believed to be Al Qaeda forces, and 17 American servicemen were killed. In response, according to Time, the Clinton administration’s point man on terrorism, Richard Clarke, drew up a blueprint a year before 9/11 for a concerted and prolonged war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Clarke’s plan, presented to his superios on December 8, spelled out, in the words of one Bush official talking to Time in August 2002, “everything we’ve done sine 9/11.” - _The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq_, p.26
Obviously, our administration can’t even get it’s act together enough to take care of something the departing administration left behind, including a pretty fair warning that there would be issues. Said Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger to incoming Condi Rice, “I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism generally, and on Al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.”
Yet, the Bush administration pushed back and pushed back any debriefings on the subjects until it was far too late, and we were now facing the aftermath of 9/11.
Fits well with your answer: It wouldn’t have /happened/ if there were a democrat in office.