There’s a question that’s been bothering me for the last 12 years. Did we overreact or underreact to 9/11? My standards for such things are so skewed that at this point I have no idea.
If, for example, we had nuked the 20 largest Arab capitals plus Mecca and Medina, I would have considered that an overreaction. If we had just nuked Kabul and Tora Bora, there would have been some tut-tutting but it probably wouldn’t have been considered an overreaction.
What we actually did was in reality an enormous underreaction.
Please keep in mind that I opposed not only the invasion of Iraq but the invasion of Afghanistan, too. That’s to head off the charge that I’m some sort of warmonger.
It wasn’t an over or under-reaction but a misdirection. We were attacked by Saudis and in response attacked Afghanis and Iraqis. That wasn’t by accident.
I strongly supported the invasion of Afghanistan, and think the invasion of Iraq distracted us from what needed to be done there.
So, I would say we overreacted.
And we repeated the mistakes of the Poppy Bush administration’s invasion of Somalia — we aren’t good at nation building, and we are too optimistic about the whole thing. Forgivable in the case of Poppy Bush, less forgivable when there is a clear counter-example.
Initial Afghanistan was good, but trying to build a modern 21st century country was beyond foolish. The Iraq invasion was only worth establishing permanent bases, but apparently, that was not an item on the Bush agenda.
In the anti/counter-terrorism arena, the Bush Administration built a robust and extremely effective set of programs which together created a web, and when anything crossed that web, it set off an alert that was investigated. The lines of the web included the physical and electronic US borders, and traffic crossing it included communication, banking, packages, internet, and human.
Through the tension level. they could increase or decrease the number of alerts. Increasing the number of alerts is not necessarily good because you get more false positives which need to be investigated. With a broad web, you do not necessarily need to catch every instance because you will have multiple chances. The terrorists need to be right 100% of the time.
When the NYT began exposing various aspects of the programs, the web was weakened, but with a good human intel aspect, it would not have been weakened. Even without assets inserted into the networks and/or members flipped, manually doing what was previously being done electronically is dangerous to the organization.
Communication that originates outside the US does not require any paperwork whether the endpoint is in the US or not, and this is what you need to monitor. Mostly, Johnny Jihad will be calling Pakistan, and he will be calling Irene the Islamist in Peoria, less so. If he wires $23,765.00 to her, it will set off the web. If anything does not check out, he gets on the domestic watch list, and then, you monitor all his communication.
I would have also added Saudi Arabia and the other “frenemies” to a special terrorist list, at least secretly, and they would have been treated to additional scrutiny. Anything associated with them would be assumed to be terrorist related until proved otherwise. There could be a program to allow less scrutiny for people and companies thoroughly vetted, but they would still be audited periodically.
This web has been dismantled, or the alert tension has been decreased. When you believe that terrorism springs from joblessness, you do not need to monitor money transactions, and when the terrorists do not act according to your model, you adjust reality to your model (lack of “safe spaces” for terrorists and, drum-roll, gun control).
A lot of what was done was not public. It was not necessarily covert, but it was not advertized. I have just picked up what was going on through open sources and some first hand police knowledge. They may have been doing more. There was the rendition program which transported suspects to a country where there were charges pending. When the US personnel were able to interrogate people, they would get much better intel, but that means getting involved with them.
If you think that Johnny Jihad is just an unemployed plumber, you probably will take a different approach. Instead of rigorous interrogation, you will offer job training services.
“This web has been dismantled, or the alert tension has been decreased. ”
Citation please. The rest is stuff you believe based upon no facts, but even if true, we still don’t have terrorists crossing our borders to attack us. Of the 45 Islamic terror killings since 2001, 27 were from Fort Hood and the recent California killings. The Fort Hood killer was home grown as was Syed Farook. His wife was on no watch list. While the investigation is not complete, they are saying there is no evidence she was being directed from overseas. Add in the Chattanooga killer (came to US at age 6) and you have 3/4 of the killings covered, and not something any web would capture.
We don’t have the means to recognize or stop self-radicalized killers.
Steve
@steve
I meant to say, “parts of the web have been dismantled”. One part would be capturing terrorists and interrogating them. Intelligence from Gaddafi is over, and I doubt the Egyptians are cooperating.
As for citations, the NYT is about the best you are going to get, and even then, you are going to need to understand how what they are revealing works.
Your idea of how an interrogation works is something out of a cartoon. The people you get your info from have never dealt with hardened street criminals who do not give a shit about their lovely criminal justice theories. I am not going to teach you how to do it, and I doubt you would care to learn.
Money laundering techniques are the same as trying to hide the transfer of large amounts of money. Monitoring communications is again nothing special.
If you want to know what is actually happening, you need to read a lot, and disregard a lot of what you read. Since I know about a few things and I have learned about many more, I can usually quickly disregard the garbage, and when something is questionable, I disregard it.
You can believe what you want. After 9/11, al-Qaeda was at its prime, and the US was at its worst. If the terrorists were going to do anything, it would have been in the following five years, and yet, there was nothing. Maybe, they forgot they hated the US, or maybe, they are racists and waited for the black president.
Arkansas Recruiting Station – shooter spent time in a Yemen jail
Ft. Hood – emailing terrorists
Boston Bombers – notified by Russia, and traveled to terrorist area
Chattanooga Shooter – traveled to the ME, but does not seem to have made any contacts
San Bernardino Shooters – she was from Pakistan, and he travelled to Saudi Arabia
You can continue to live in the same silly childish fantasy world as President Obama. People who communicate with, send money to, vacation around terrorists are likely to be terrorists. Ma and Pa Kettle generally do not cavort with terrorists.