It’s not a bug, it’s a feature (Updated)
By Thoreau
In this morning’s Washington Post, David Ignatius wrings his hands and worries that the next time the US is attacked by terrorists we’ll have some heated disagreements amongst ourselves:
Based on the tone of the national debate today, it seems likely that the American public would react angrily — but not just at the terrorists.
Liberals would blame the Bush administration for making America a more vulnerable target. Didn’t the war in Iraq inflame Muslim terrorists around the world? Wouldn’t we have been safer today if we had focused on al-Qaeda in Afghanistan rather than embarking on a costly war that has sapped the military and CIA and added to America’s enemies? These arguments aren’t imaginary: We hear them every day, almost as rehearsals for the post-attack finger-pointing.
And how would conservatives respond? They would blame liberals, who, in their view, have weakened America’s anti-terrorism defenses. Couldn’t we have stopped the bombers if critics hadn’t exposed the National Security Agency’s secret wiretapping program? Wouldn’t aggressive CIA interrogation techniques have yielded more intelligence that might have prevented the tragedy? Didn’t congressional demands to withdraw from Iraq embolden the terrorists? I can hear the voices on talk radio and cable news right now.
…
In a politically healthy nation, the news from Britain would have a galvanizing effect. Politicians and the public would pull together and take appropriate steps to prepare for future terrorist attacks on America. There was a moment of shared purpose after Sept. 11, 2001. It’s frightening how totally that mood of national unity has dissipated. I can think of lots of people to blame for the current polarization, but that’s not the point. The point is to get serious, and to get ready.
You know, as inspiring as it was to see everybody standing in line to give blood on 9/11, a lot of bad things happened because a nation was busy marching to the tune of a single drummer. If there’s another terrorist attack, we could do worse than to argue amongst ourselves. As long as those internal debates don’t lead to shootings or half the population sending the other half to a concentration camp, I think some divide and rancorous debate could be a healthy response to a terrorist attack.
So I hope Ignatius is right, and that we do refuse to march lockstep if there’s another terrorist attack. Because if we respond to another attack by marching lockstep behind the government, you can kiss the Bill of Rights goodbye. The sequel to the Patriot Act will be a terror to behold. (Of course, what I really hope for is that we don’t have another terrorist attack.)
Mind you, if there’s another attack I’ll still give blood and send money to the victims, but I don’t want to see anybody falling for the “Oh, it’s too soon to criticize” line.
UPDATE:
First, thanks for all the comments. You guys aren’t the only ones reading this. First, David Weigel at Hit and Run linked to it, while critiquing Lieberman’s call for unity against Iran. Then Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard linked to Weigel’s post, and tossed me a link as well. Goldfarb isn’t impressed by “some dude named Thoreau.” I would go and comment there, except it doesn’t appear that he allows comments.
I know I must be doing something right if the Weekly Standard feels the need to diss me!
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 5, 2007 @ 8:59 am
Marry me.
Comment by Thoreau —
July 5, 2007 @ 9:25 am
But Jim, we don’t even live in Massachusetts!
Comment by Eric Martin —
July 5, 2007 @ 9:32 am
Well, he’s an anarcho-leftist-libertarian at heart.
Comment by Leonard —
July 5, 2007 @ 9:40 am
I have a good friend who, back on 9/12 and onwards, wanted to rush out somewhere to give blood. I advised her, using no information other than some underwstanding of human psychology, that doing so would be a waste of her time. I knew they certainly would have huge numbers giving, and also that as a finite organization with budget constraints they could not handle the volume of people and the volume of blood they were going to get slammed with. Sure enough, I was right.
She went anyway, and saw a huge line, as predicted, and gave up. And then the Red Cross announced they wanted money only, please, no blood, we’re all full thanks! And they ended up discarding twice as much blood as they normally do in the months afterwards, seeing as there was in fact no jump in demand.
I never got in a “told you so”. Bummer.
But if a thing like that happens again… don’t give blood. If they need it, they have the perfect pulpit to beg for it from. If they ask for it, then, sure, that’s a good time.
If you’re the sort that likes the moral zing from volunteering, then the time to do it is now, not when the nation is focused on some problem. Of course, many people don’t really care about helping as much as they do about being seen “helping”, and participating in something big. But I’m sure the enlightened readers here are of the former sort.
Comment by Thoreau —
July 5, 2007 @ 9:51 am
Point taken, Leonard. My main point was that if something bad happens I’ll still join with everybody else in trying to do something for the victims and their families, but I won’t march in lockstep politically.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
July 5, 2007 @ 12:52 pm
Ehn, I got into rancorous debate shortly after the attacks. To this day, I don’t know that it did anyone any good. I arced from “we should hunt these guys down, but this is the awful, inevitable result of interventionism,” to finding myself utterly (and harmfully disproportionately) disgusted with the more hysterical outliers on one side of the argument, which lead to me ending up along Instapundit-ish political lines. Of course, that’s when that crowd ripped into Falwell as eagerly as radical Muslims and when Reynolds actually said Homeland Security proposals were an oppressive joke instead of linking to all the times he’d previously said that…but I stayed there years longer than I can justify, and I have to attribute that to my hostility.
Bruce here once observed (back in 2001) that he found himself watching friends build walls and start lobbing grenades over them. Maybe the answer is just that you’re learning who your enemies/opponents really are when that happens, but there’s something wrong with that. It’s certainly not a useful stance – the anti-war side lost the debate, after all. Once the lines were drawn and the marches marched and the arguments made and countered, nobody changed their minds, we went to war, and we re-elected Bush. Most people continued to support the war even after no WMDs turned up, and it was only when casualties mounted and chaos reigned Iraq that former supporters started to balk. Even now, a lot of folks who’d like to withdraw cite the mismanagement of the war, not any recognition that (like me) they were completely, catastrophically wrong about the winnability and even the premises of the war.
I think the only thing that will help the US the next time there’s a major terrorist attack is a recognition of our limits and that any response to attacks has to be cautious and correct – a lesson that most of us have had to be hit in the face with.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
July 5, 2007 @ 1:00 pm
And oh yeah, because I only clumsily implied it above, people being willing to listen to the naysayers a lot less defensively than folks like me did.
Comment by Dave W. —
July 5, 2007 @ 1:03 pm
Next time there is a serious terrorist attack the immediate debate will probably be between people who think the government did it and those who think the government didn’t do it. Many will march in lockstep with the government position. Many others will not.
Comment by Eric Martin —
July 5, 2007 @ 2:11 pm
Next time there is a serious terrorist attack the immediate debate will probably be between people who think the government did it and those who think the government didn’t do it. Many will march in lockstep with the government position. Many others will not.
Pretty sure that won’t be the main dividing line. Would actually wager big money on it.
Comment by Dave W. —
July 5, 2007 @ 3:12 pm
Pretty sure that won’t be the main dividing line. Would actually wager big money on it.
If it did happen which side do you think you would be on?
Comment by sglover —
July 5, 2007 @ 3:58 pm
Completely off-base and wrong. People will, as ever, look to foreign demons. (And of course, it may well be foreign demons behind it.) Our laughable “journalists” will lead the charge into hysteria.
Comment by Eric Martin —
July 5, 2007 @ 4:51 pm
If it did happen which side do you think you would be on?
Uh, do I get to see the evidence first, or must I make up my mind before whatever happens, happens?
The latter method seems like a severe departure from empiricism and fact-based inquiry.
Comment by Dave W. —
July 5, 2007 @ 5:48 pm
Uh, do I get to see the evidence first, or must I make up my mind before whatever happens, happens?
You will get to see all the evidence that the government chooses to reveal. So, no you don’t get to see all the evidence. You will have to decide which side to be on in the absence of all the evidence. Which side will you be on?
Comment by Eric Martin —
July 5, 2007 @ 5:59 pm
Uh, the government can’t control all access to information. It never could, less so now with all this new-fangled technology stuff.
Sorry, I’ll wait until what happens actually happens before I decide who or what was behind him. Maybe my dedication to the empirical process makes me naive, but I tend to believe that conclusions are best arrived at after the process of fact finding (even taking into account the manipulation and spinning of the process by various interested parties).
Comment by Dave W. —
July 5, 2007 @ 7:11 pm
Uh, the government can’t control all access to information. It never could, less so now with all this new-fangled technology stuff.
Have you seen any pictures of the car bombers who left the bomb outside of Tiger Tiger last week? Have you seen John Doe #2? Would Flt 800 have been any different with new fangled technology? Would the anthrax? Would Flight 587?
Not that all of these were subject to gov’t games, but, really, who can say, and that is exactly how to get a discussion (with vigah!) going. Just because the government sometimetimes doesn’t hide things doesn’t mean they always don’t hide things — or even that us, from our layperson perspective, could tell the difference.
Anyway, Mr. Martin, glad to hear that you are keeping your mind open on this.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
July 5, 2007 @ 9:23 pm
Eric, that was really well said. It describes me far too well, too.
Comment by Dave W. —
July 6, 2007 @ 4:14 am
Sorry, I’ll wait until what happens actually happens before I decide who or what was behind him. Maybe my dedication to the empirical process makes me naive, but I tend to believe that conclusions are best arrived at after the process of fact finding (even taking into account the manipulation and spinning of the process by various interested parties).
Did you know about this exercise in fact finding:
http://www.jaynadavis.com/highlights.html
What conclusions do you arrive at after accounting for the manipulation and spinning by various parties on this one?
Did you know about this exercise in fact finding:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Liberty_incident
What conclusions do you arrive at after accounting for the manipulation and spinning by various parties on this one?
All that stuff about weighing all the evidence and accounting for spinning sounds really nice, but I am not sure how it applies in these two incidents.
Comment by Dave W. —
July 6, 2007 @ 4:58 am
And here is another difficult exercise in factfinding:
A couple of men apparently left car bombs outside a nighclub in London. The men are convinced that they can be seen on CCTV:
http://www.tiny.cc/qTar5
Not only that, but there are media reports that the men can be seen on CCTV:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,21993626-661,00.html
Not only that, but given the high density of CCTV cameras in London, and the known time interval over which this incident took place, it is “bloody” obvious that there were pictures.
But the government doesn’t release the pictures. Which gives the terrorists a chance to go out and buy more bomb components and then try to bomb the airport in Glasgow:
http://www.tiny.cc/qTar5
Now, fortunately the terrorist attack at the Glasgow airport was limited by an inability to get the car bomb into the building and by poor bomb-making. But imagine, for a minute, that the car bomb had gotten into the building and exploded and killed 50 people.
Would you be interested if the UK government had had “crystal clear” pictures that it chose not to release? What I am asking is: would the fact that the prompt release of these pictures could have prevented the second bombing made you interested in that question? If the government simply denied the existence of these images, then how would you account for the spinning and weigh the evidence to determine whether these pictures existed or not?
And one more question:
If you decided that the pictures did exist, were known to the authorities prior to the Glasgow attack and, yet, were not released to the public, to what extent would you blame the UK government for the 50 dead in Glasgow?
Comment by Dave W. —
July 6, 2007 @ 5:36 am
My last response got stuck in the spam filter, so I’ll try a condensed version:
1. First terrorist attack. It is a dud, but police get pictures.
2. Police sit on pictures for 37 hours or so.
3. Terrorists go out during this 37 hours and buy more bombmaking components.
4. Terrorists then drive to the airport and do second attack at the end of the 37 hours.
source
Questions: By sitting on the pictures of the terrorists, did the government effectively let the second attack happen on purpose? If your response is that the government must not have had pictures (or timely access to pictures or clear pictures or whatevs), then what evidence did you weigh to find this fact, Mr. Martin?
Comment by r€nato —
July 6, 2007 @ 8:24 am
the GOP, by cynically using the tragedy of 9/11 to mislead this country into a disastrous war in Iraq (and even more cynically allowing the true culprit of 9/11 to escape at Tora Bora), has given up any benefit of the doubt which would otherwise rightly accrue to the leaders of any nation when subjected to a large-scale terrorist attack.
Quite a few people reluctantly believed BushCo in the run-up to the Iraq war, despite their BS sensors going off, due to a sense of patriotism.
No more. Fool us once…
Comment by ArthurKC —
July 6, 2007 @ 8:40 am
Mr. Ignatius opines that after the next attack he wishes that “politicians and the public would pull together to take appropriate steps”. And we can count on Mr. Ignatius to tell us exactly what those appropriate steps will be. Better yet, instead of setting up straw-persons to shoot down with his lofty and high-minded pontificating, perhaps he should go on record now and tell us what he means by “appropriate” or what criteria he will apply at the time to determine the appropriateness of the steps to be taken after the next attack.
Comment by Stuart Eugene Thiel —
July 6, 2007 @ 8:42 am
Every time this subject comes up I’m reminded of the wisdom of “Mr. Republican,” Senator Robert Taft, two weeks after Pearl Harbor:
Comment by liberal —
July 6, 2007 @ 9:32 am
Dave W. wrote,
The conclusion I draw is that the investigator, Jayna Davis, is a nutjob who was given support from right-wing nutjobs eager to find a connection between OK City and Saddam.
Comment by solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short —
July 6, 2007 @ 9:38 am
“In a politically healthy nation, the news from Britain would have a galvanizing effect. Politicians and the public would pull together and take appropriate steps to prepare for future terrorist attacks on America.”
Ah, yes, a galvanizing effect. When they make a garbage can, the final step of the process is to make the can shut the hell up about civil liberties and just let us install security cameras with directional mics already, you tofu-eating 39-gallon blame-America-firster you.
Comment by onceler —
July 6, 2007 @ 9:40 am
i find it really, really annoying that our country simply can’t have rational conversations anymore. botched attacks in the UK carried out by some silly amateurs should not affect policy in the US at all, nor should it register as any more of a news story than it should have on 9/10/01. what the fuck is ignatius talking about, everyone getting together because they’re scared by watching CNN’s bullshit coverage so as to enact more drastic legislation which curtails our basic rights? can he just propose exactly what he thinks needs to be fixed? no. what needs to be “fixed” in this guy’s tiny mind is the simple fact that people may want to debate about an actually appropriate response to an actual attack from the people we’re actually in this conflict with. can’t be seen as a nation that doesn’t collectively share a neanderthal brain together, no!!! that would ‘embolden’ terrorists! terrorists need to know that, as stephen colbert said, our nation will respond to any major crisis with “the most powerfully staged photo-ops in the world”!!!
Comment by Dave W. —
July 6, 2007 @ 9:55 am
The conclusion I draw is that the investigator, Jayna Davis, is a nutjob who was given support from right-wing nutjobs eager to find a connection between OK City and Saddam.
Are you saying that you know she is lying, or drawing faulty conclusions, because those faulty conclusions benefit her and her political positions?
Or are you saying that you somehow detected symptoms of mental illness in her writing?
Comment by Hobson —
July 6, 2007 @ 10:10 am
You have to remember that people were in shock right after Sept 11th. Some of the questions that have still not been answered just didn’t occur to us at the time. Some did to me. I wanted to know immediately what was in that dust from the buildings. I would still like to know how various deseases compare pre and post Sept 11th in NYC.
I still don’t understand why NY’s emergency center was put in a building that had been attacked once and was 50 floors up where it was rather vulnerable.
And all that good will. Yes, I felt compelled to do something to help but was foiled at every turn. There was too much blood donated. There was too much food for the rescue workers. There were too many socks etc so I couldn’t do anything. And then Rudi announced that anyone who didn’t belong downtown would be arrested while at the same time escorting all kinds of famous people on tours of “ground zero.”
I think it was something like 3 weeks before New Yorkers could see what had happened to their city without the intervention of TV.
I would hope there would be a lot of questions if there is another attack. Not all this feel good pulling together, let’s not make waves attitude.
Comment by Argonaut —
July 6, 2007 @ 10:31 am
What we will do next time is what we do every time. We will combine our lifetime of experience with the view of someone we trust. Fortunately for the open-minded, the blogosphere has clarified who is and who is not trustworthy. For instance, five years ago I thought David Brooks’ head was not filled with helium and cocktail weenies. Live and learn. All hail the internets tubes.
Comment by Dave W. —
July 6, 2007 @ 10:47 am
Flight 93 was shot down.
Comment by Carl Nyberg —
July 6, 2007 @ 11:56 am
It’s a weird hypothetical.
It assumes a terrorist attack and assumes there is one correct response to an attack.
It also contains the assumption that people who are skeptical of war and jingoism should set aside their ideology for the sake of unity while not imposing the same expectation on the Right.
Comment by roger —
July 6, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
It is an odd idea that the fuehrerprinzip, which is useful in limited, battlefield situations, can be blithely extrapolated to political situations that are completely different. The “appropriate steps” should be taken now, not after a terrorist attack – and we should know about them, so that the appropriate steps can get appropriate feedback. If all of America had had the CIA briefing about Al Qaeda that Bush got in August, 2001, and that he brushed off, 9/11 would not have happened. Secrecy, which might aid a paramilitary group, doesn’t aid in the taking down of paramilitary groups. It does aid, however, in the seizure of power by a small elite, and that is what the Ignatiuses are really all about. Since terrorist attacks can really happen any time, well, then, we’ll just have to live – according to the sick view of the Wapo op ed types – in a state where we give up our freedom. That way we can cower and shop – pretty much the definition of citizenship for Ignatius and friends. Otherwise, as Broder pointed out yesterday, we’ll get mob rule – actual feedback by the governed populace. A terrible thing.
Comment by Jillian —
July 6, 2007 @ 1:32 pm
Ignatius doesn’t know how to read numbers. Republicans have never understood how the ‘fighting terrorism’ polling numbers work- and they don’t want to. So we get these stupid columns by numerical illiterates about how terrorism is all polling magic for Republicans, beyond any explanation.
Here’s an outline on Bush/Republican ‘handling terrorism’ polling:
before Sept 2001: 0/0, just partisan mythology splitting opinion softly ~’62′/’32′
On 9/11/01: spike to 99.9/0.1
Shortly after NYC/DC attack, mid-September, 2001: 92/8
After Tora Bora failure, December 2001: 68/32
After Madrid attack, April 2004: 62/38
After London attack, July 2005: 49/51 (shifts 1% per year)
Notice what’s absent: No effect of non-Al Qaeda terrorism. No effect of Al Qaeda attacks in Third World countries (Casablanca, Bali, Sharm-el-Sheikh, Iraq, Riyadh, etc.). No effect of legislation or failed attacks or ‘warning levels’ except to bring drooping Republican numbers back up to the existing split.
Basically, after each bloody and successful attack there’s a spike up to the previously set ceiling and then drop off. Those who know the political bloc percentages of the American electorate will recognize the numbers: first the 8% classical Left left Bush and Republicans, blaming them for failing to prevent ‘9/11′. Then the 24% liberals left, seeing the incompetence and waste of a war effort at Tora Bora. After them, the 6% moderate Democrats gave up their faith in Bush/Republicans- Madrid demonstrated in their eyes the failure of the Administration’s dirty ‘global war’ effort. The ~13% practical centrists gave up after the London attacks- they are now convinced the GWoT breeds terrorism.
The next quite bloody Al Qaeda attack in the West (probably in UK, Israel, or US; Australia is also a possibility) will predictably kill Bush/Republicans on ‘handling terrorism’ with the ~10-12% pragmatic centrists. IOW, the polling numbers will fall to 38/62. Since ‘handling terrorism’ is the only significant policy category in which Republicans clear 40% public approval now, such an attack would drop their election ceiling below 40%.
Let Republicans wish for a big Al Qaeda attack. The resulting election outcome will be one they deserve for so doing.
Comment by Neel Krishnaswami —
July 6, 2007 @ 1:57 pm
Jillian, that was a really interesting post. Thanks for writing it.
Comment by Mooser —
July 6, 2007 @ 2:15 pm
If there is another terrorist attack I am going to scream.
Comment by liberal —
July 6, 2007 @ 2:50 pm
Dave W. wrote,
Because (among other things), as a reader review at Amazon pointed out, if there were something to it, Bush et al. would’ve moved heaven and earth to present the evidence to the public.
Duh.
Comment by liberal —
July 6, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
onceler wrote,
I’m sympathetic to this sentiment, but as The Preacher said, there’s nothing new under the sun. Especially in this department.
Perhaps because, as a German poet opined, “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain.”
Comment by Dave W. —
July 6, 2007 @ 3:05 pm
Because (among other things), as a reader review at Amazon pointed out, if there were something to it, Bush et al. would’ve moved heaven and earth to present the evidence to the public.
That really depends upon how much the Republican party was in on any deception that went on. If key Republicans were complicit in hiding funny business, then, no, the Bush administrated would not be expected to blow the whistle.
Maybe Bush told the Democrats that he wouldn’t blow the whistle if they went along with the Patriot Act, the Iraq War and agreed to nominate a doofus for president in 2004.
We really have no evidence either way for Eric Martin to analyze, nor would we be expected to.
Comment by Bill in Portland Maine —
July 6, 2007 @ 4:40 pm
Tomorrow is the second anniversary of the bombings in London that left over 50 people dead.
Take a loook at what George Galloway said (link here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/7/7/1247/56592):
And y’know what? People in Britain, including his opponents, didn’t bat an eye. Criticism is expected, and to think otherwise is pretty damn dangerous.
-
Comment by Bill in Chicago —
July 6, 2007 @ 7:52 pm
Maybe we’ll actually blame the people who attack us next time, as opposed to randomly invading Middle Eastern countries which had nothing to do with it. My guess is it’ll be the same folks who attacked us every other time:
http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
And yes, three of those doctors in London have already been identified as being Saudi-born, including the ringleader. The beat goes on . . .
Comment by halfhorsealligatorhalfman —
July 7, 2007 @ 9:13 pm
Liebermann is ballsy… with other people’s balls. The gentleman from Connecticut is a career elected official, AG in CT, Sen in DC, & has not a lick of military service to his credit (& unlike his ‘00 running-mate, whom I sure is no longer on the rolodex in the Lieberman estate). In the past five years, though, this RIABN has used his collected defense experience to beseech us to take out a secular bulwark in the Near East, & now, he wants to take out the only non-
ArabSemite, & one of only two marginally Western-styled nation-states in the Near East. Way to wage awarpolice action against a transnational Arab Muslim street-gang. Real military mind at work, there.I say, if Liebs is so gung-ho about this Iran action, he should follow in the footsteps of his GOP forebear Teddy Roosevelt, relinquish his civilian position, & lead a brigade charge into downtown Tehran. Do it, Joe. Use your balls that you so enjoy grabbing like one of those hip-hoppers that you reward with yours & Bennett’s “Silver Sewer” trophies. Use your balls, not those of some twenty-years-old kid just trying to get to college.
Comment by Gary Farber —
July 7, 2007 @ 10:30 pm
“You guys aren’t the only ones reading this.”
But if we’re not the only ones reading it, than some other bunch of guys must be reading it, and taking it to refer to some other bunch of guys who must be reading it, who must be taking it to refer to some other bunch of guys who must be reading it, who must be taking it to refer to….
Comment by Dave W. —
July 8, 2007 @ 5:50 am
And yes, three of those doctors in London have already been identified as being Saudi-born, including the ringleader. The beat goes on . . .
Let’s be clear that it has not really yet been established that anyone else was knowingly involved beyond the two who crashed the jeep.