The Washington Post published an interesting article that deserves discussion. Now of course I confess this goes right to my point of view and what I have argued in re Iraq:
Former Aide Takes Aim at War on Terror
By Laura Blumenfeld
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 16, 2003; Page A01
The article is on Rand Beers, who was a Bush White House anti-terror specialist until a few days before the current unpleasantness in Iraq began. He resigned a 5 days before the war began.
Now I am not sure about his choice to join Kerry, so if possible I’d like to exclude this from the discussion (that is Kerry et al.).
Rather it is this:
Well, at the very least I can say, having known a large number of bureaucrats, it takes some balls to do something like that. Some balls indeed.
On his background
Well, it strikes me as fair to say the Bush admin. is certainly more focused on offense than not.
Further to his point of view:
Emphasis added
Here of course is what piqued my interest, for this has been precisely my feeling and in re the kinds of State and other specialists I know, his estimation matches what I have heard informally.
Again emphasis added. And once again, precisely my feelings. It has been hard to escape that the war was launched with a WWI rationale, that is the clockwork of military mobilization and the costs involved locked policy makers into less-than-optimal decision making frameworks, and inappropriately drove policy, rather than policy driving the military framework. Expensive to keep the troops in, scaremongering re the immediate threat rather than rational analysis, skewing the results…. The recipe is all there.
Further, I must agree with the estimation following:
Bingo.
Omitting a longer discussion on his anlaysis that domestic security measures are woefully inadequate as I have no opinion on this.
On his departure, insofar as some will no doubt go for the smear response:
Well, the man has balls, that is for sure. He may or may not be right, certainly on the foreign policy front I agree with the brief insight to his views, but am unable to judge the domestic side
Further to the background and what should be unsettling in re the actual office:
Well, seems well respected by colleagues and does not have the air of a crank. Again, I note this as the smear campaign is to be expected in response.
Again I omit a large section on domestic security, to move on to a critique of the White House.
Well, I am not sure I would necessarily agree with the final clause, but I would submit that the emphasized section rather goes to the issue of the mistaken judgment – one rather hopes it is that – on Iraqi NBC programs and threat.
There is more on his rational for joining the Kerry campaign, which I would prefer not to discuss insofar as it gets away from the core.
I don’t have much to add, since I agree largely agree with what Beers has to say. In particular, it seems to me that the Bush administration’s handling of Afghanistan has been disgraceful, with most of that nation quickly reverting to the terrorist safe haven that we went in there to eliminate. His general description of the administration’s wrong-headed approach to combatting Islamic terrorism also fits with my observations.
Plus, my early vote is going to John Kerry, so I happen to like that part pretty well too.
Thanks for the link, minty. A few observations:[ol][]FAIK everything Beers says may be true and fair.[]It’s smarter politics for a Dem to allege that Bush is messing up the war on terror than to allege that there are no WMDs in Iraq IMHO.[]A cursory reading of the headline makes it sound as if this “former aide” had switched to become a Democrat. However, farther down, the article says he has served both parties and he’s a Democrat. []There’s nothing surprising about a 60-year old choosing to retire and getting hyped on politics. That description fits me as well.[*]The article would be less impressive if the headline accurately said, "Retirement-age Democratic federal bureaucrat retires, joins Kerry campaign, and enunciates Kerry’s talking points.[/ol]
If those are Kerry’s “talking points,” as you put it, I have not seen them before. Beers’ criticisms are wide-ranging, quite specific, and apparently well-informed. Would you care to comment on Beers’ analysis? There’s quite a lot of interesting stuff in that article, you know.
But in addition to having a political stance, the fellow clearly is an authority on which he speaks and the only newsworthy aspect is the reason WHY he chose to resign.
Did the war with Iraq aid or hamper the war on terror?
Is Homeland Security Dept. doing a good job?
Regarding #1, the arguments on both sides are still pretty speculative. Since the war, Israel and the Palestinians have embarked on new negotiations, the Egyptian intelligence chief urged terrorist groups to cooperate with Palestinian Authority officials, there have been significant demonstations against Iran’s terrorism-supporting mullahs, and we haven’t seen major new terrorst attacks. So, on the evidence to date, the war with Iraq seems to have done more to quell terrorism than to exacebate it.
Regarding #2, I don’t agree at all with Beers that they should be giving more grants to localities. Such grant money is often spent wastefully.
The Homeland Security effort is far from perfect IMHO. It’s easy to find example of foolish actions by Homeland Security Dept., particularly in the impact of some of their bureaucratic regulations. OTOH Stephen Brill (who is a Democrat) praised Tom Ridge’s performance in his new book, After : How America Confronted the September 12 Era
OK, back to redrafting the two petitions Homeland Security/BCIS has rejected, although neither the person’s job nor the legal requirements for the visa category have changed since the prior 4 approved visa petitions.
Regarding the assertion that the feds should not be “giving more grants to localities” because “[s]uch grant money is often spent wastefully,” I could not disagree more strongly. While it is necessarily the task of the federal government to conduct the international aspects of the fight against terrorism, the state and local governments have huge roles to play in the domestic portion of that fight. Those governments must have the resources to secure the safety of their citizens, both prospectively and reactively.
It wasn’t the Department of Homeland Security that went charging up the stairs of the World Trade Center; it was FDNY and NYPD.
Seriously, taxpayers will have to pay for local security arrangements. I think the process is apt to be more effective if Dallas pays for Dallas’s security and New Jersey pays for New Jersey’s. Money collected locally tends to be spent more carefully and wisely. When money is collected by the feds and allocated to states and localities, the allocation process tends to get political and inefficient.
The inherent problem with relying on local revenue to fund local homeland security needs is that al Qaeda cannot be relied upon to plot only against targets whose security needs have been adequately funded. Quite the opposite, in fact. The nation cannot afford to merely shift the risk of attack from Washington D.C. to Los Angeles or Detroit.
Could you expand on this point? What would you expect federal funding to accomplish? What local steps are needed that will not occurm if we wait for local funding? Which of them will actually occur if federal funding is increased?
Security needs for key installations and likely terror targets–utilities, transportation hubs, government facilities, sports arenas, ad infinitum–need to be assessed and provided for.
Emergency response personnel–fire, police, medical–need to be trained to handle potential terrorist attacks, including coordination with other federal, state, and local agencies and response teams. They also need to be provided with the requisite equipment so that they can respond effectively in the event of an actual attack.
That is only the tip of the iceberg. America today appears only marginally more prepared to meet the threat of international terrorism than it was two years ago.
I’d just like to say that Beers pretty much confirmed all my fears before and during the war. This war wasn’t about countering terrorism. Although, the argument could be made that it was a form of American terrorism. We made up reasons to attack Iraq, and we’re occupying that nation. If the war was about terrorism, why not finish up the job in Afghanistan? Why create the possibility of more terrorism by attacking another Middle East nation, unprovoked?
Lost in all this is the fact that the nation simply can’t afford to adequately protect all potential high profile targets.
Do we:
Protect all large scale professional sporting events?
Scan every single container coming into the country?
Increase staffing at INS and border guard to adequate levels?
and a host of others? I just don’t think the current tax structure will handle it.
Quite true, all those hundreds of billions of dollars of Bush tax cuts certainly translate into security cuts. And just at a time when we’ve managed to create a whole new batch of jihaddis through our misadventures in Iraq.
Will you accept a nearly no-cites explanation from someone other than minty?
I can give a little information. A big, big part of homeland security is watching for border incursions. As you know, thousands and thousands of people every day have little or no problem entering and exiting the United States undetected.
Say another election comes around and the “buzz” to which we are not privy coincidentally sparks an elevation of the Threat-O-Meter, that requires extra vigilance on the part of Federal, State, and local law enforcement. We cannot simply patrol the borders, because they are too porous and it would be utter folly to protect only the immediate border areas and leave other areas immediately behind it unwatched. Good vigillance requires a defense in depth of stepped up patrolling well inside of the borders and, ideally, across the entire nation.
And that, in turn, requires increased police overtime pay, a compressed vehicle and equipment maintenance schedule, additional training, extra fuel, and perhaps even the addition of part-time or full-time positions. And that costs money–lots of money. Local governments don’t have lots of money, and if they’re going to assist the federal government in the federal government’s duty to protect the borders of the United States, it makes sense that federal money had better be spent to fund and coordinate the operation.
You can make the local governments financially responsible for those duties, but you know what they’ll do? They’ll spend what they have and when they run out of money people will quit and go home. Or you can make border towns raise local taxes and watch people migrate to less secure areas that don’t charge such high taxes, ensuring poor security everywhere. Or you can give the money to states for distribution to local governments like we are doing, but when the states themselves are considering ducking the next orange alert for financial reasons, it would be silly to think the states are actually going to distribute that money instead of keeping it for themselves.
The law which created DHS specifically states that state governments are to be the distributors of funding to local governments and Indian tribes. A few months back Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell mentioned that there are 21 officers to cover three million acres of reservation lands along 70 miles of U.S.-Mexican border. That’s one officer for every ten miles of border, three shifts a day, with no defense in depth. As I’ve mentioned before, the chances that a state will willingly distribute funds to an Indian reservation which is off the state’s own tax rolls are small enough to fit inside a Froot Loop.
When state governments don’t distribute that funding, security breaks down, and it breaks down at the local level: on the ground, exactly where the terrorists are to begin with. We know this, we’ve known it, and it looks like finally something is being done about it in Congress, against the wishes of the very Administration which created the new bureacracy to begin with. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: right now Homeland Security is security in name alone, and I’m hoping against hope that I won’t be proven grotesquely correct.
We’ve seen this problem rise its ugly head up here in Seattle, in the form of the issue of port security. It’s been a problem ever since last year, that the city of Seattle couldn’t get promised federal funding for security improvements and escalations made to our ports. Finally, in April, we got $11.2 million dollars, which helps, but isn’t nearly enough.
By way of backing up what Sofa King and minty have been saying, here’s some of our elected officials talking about it, from the second link above:
Greg Nickels, Mayor of Seattle:
By his estimate, between 2002 and 2003 spending, we’re already going to exceed the funding given to us.
Representative Jay Inslee:
Again, the money helps, but more is needed.
Representative Norm Dicks:
Seems pretty clear to me on this issue (and, I’m sure, many others)… Homeland Security can pass down as many recommendations and edicts as it likes, but until it has the funds to back them up, it’s pretty meaningless. Local governments do not have the capability to shoulder the entire financial burden themselves.
Counter-terror wise, we got off on the wrong foot immediately. The best possible approach would involve the international cooperation of security apparatus and plain old police work. Naturally, to accomplish this would require close cooperation and even closer sharing of intelligence. In a word: trust.
For a while there, we had the sympathy of the entire world. Hell, even people who don’t even like us very much were having candlelight vigils, everybody was on our side for maybe the first and last time in our history! And GeeDubya pissed it all away being a tough guy. The enormity of this stupidity is simply stunning.
We wanted to Do Something. Something stern, something powerful. As the old saying goes, when you are a hammer, all problems look like nails. When massive military superiority is your strong suit, well, guess what. You go to war. Which is, finally, about as effective as launching an artillery barrage against an incoming fog. Loud, aggressive, impressive, dramatic…and futile.
In the process of pursuing the Sisyphean strategy, we alienated the very people who were standing shoulder to shoulder with us, eager to be of help. We have enraged our potential enemies, and neutralized our potential allies. It is the geopolitics of an enraged, and rather dull-witted, child: lashing out for the sake of emotional catharsis rather than calm, reasoned, and, yes, ploddingly relentless pursuit. Our leaders crave to be seen as Men of Action, they thrust thier chins defiantly, pound the table, and beat thier presumably hairy chests.
A more profoundly short sighted and counterproductive policy is difficult to imagine.
