Unqualified Offerings

The article of the day is Susan B. Glasser’s story for the Washington Post on possible shifts in American anti-terror policy. As the lede puts it:

The Bush administration has launched a high-level internal review of its efforts to battle international terrorism, aimed at moving away from a policy that has stressed efforts to capture and kill al Qaeda leaders since Sept. 11, 2001, and toward what a senior official called a broader “strategy against violent extremism.”

My sincere if cynical reaction is, that is a gravy train that should stretch well past the sunset of the careers of any officials involved in its formulation. Amorphous as the concept of a “war on terror” was, “violent extremism” is an even more ubiquitous phenomenon. Better yet, with the “right” policy it becomes a renewable resource – you keep making more of it as you go along.

Of course, that can be true of mere terrorism too:

Much of the discussion has focused on how to deal with the rise of a new generation of terrorists, schooled in Iraq over the past couple years. Top government officials are increasingly turning their attention to anticipate what one called “the bleed out” of hundreds or thousands of Iraq-trained jihadists back to their home countries throughout the Middle East and Western Europe. “It’s a new piece of a new equation,” a former senior Bush administration official said. “If you don’t know who they are in Iraq, how are you going to locate them in Istanbul or London?”

This is a problem I’ve discussed before. So-called “flypaper” is really Jihad University, like Chechnya, Afghanistan and Bosnia before it.

Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security busts movie pirates, claiming that 99% of them are hard core Trekkies – I mean, Hezbollah agents. Or sympathizers. Anyway, some of them.

The separate reports would fit, among other theories, the possibility that Gene Healy is right that we’ve overstated the threat to America from foreign terror and our magnificent new bureaucracies realize it, and have begun to come up with new ways to occupy their time and justify their paychecks. (”The bleed-out” itself not being enough to keep them interested, perhaps.) DHS was created in the same bipartisan fit of panic that federalized airport security to no purpose. Since large federal agencies are forever, especially ones with an internal security brief, we will be paying for that panic for a long time. As to the grand strategy review, there are no doubt some good people involved asking important questions. But if you’re inclined to put simultaneous faith in the government’s sincerity and efficacy on the matter of securing the nation, one last tidbit from Glasser’s story may dissuade you:

The review may have been slowed somewhat by the fact that many of the key counterterrorism jobs in the administration have been empty for months, including the top post at the State Department for combating terrorism, vacant since November, and the directorship of the new National Counterterrorism Center.

I really, really hope Gene Healy is right.