I certainly hope that David Broder isn’t right and that President Obama hasn’t experience some sort of epiphany on dealing with terrorism:
For Obama to establish a new priority would obviously be much more difficult than it appeared to be for Bush. And this new priority would be a much less comfortable fit for Obama than leading a war on terrorism was for Bush.
Nonetheless, events have their own logic. The Christmas plot appears to have shaken Obama like nothing else that happened in his first year. When he allowed the White House to quote his warning to his Cabinet colleagues that another “screw-up” like that could not be tolerated, he seemed to signal that his benign leadership style had reached its limits.
President Obama has shown absolutely no predisposition towards dealing with terrorism in a serious way. Quite to the contrary the evidence so far is that he believes that concentrating more power in the hands of regulators and other government agencies is an effective course. This ties directly to my earlier post this morning on banking.
None of us, not you, not me, not President Obama, not the federal government corporately is omniscient or omnipotent. The best we can do is make sure there are backups on top of backups and incentives are aligned properly.
I do believe that we need to take air security seriously. However, what I mean by the word is that the responsibility for security must be shared by passengers, airlines, the federal government, and the governments of other countries. When you tell the public that there’s nothing they have to worry about, that someone else will take care of everything, when you indemnify the airlines against the consequences of their own folly, and when you won’t hold federal bureaucrats accountable for their actions or omissions, you aren’t being serious and that’s exactly what we’ve done so far. Doubling down on that isn’t taking air security seriously.
Update
The editors of the Washington Post and I are on a similar page:
Mr. Obama’s solutions have the air of the small bore: a “training course” for the National Security Agency; a “dedicated capability responsible for enhancing record information on possible terrorists . . . for watchlisting purposes.” Perhaps a series of individual tweaks will do the job. But the administration report suggests that the problem is less tractable than Mr. Obama has acknowledged. His depiction Thursday of the shortcomings was admirably honest and more frightening than previously portrayed. His proposed fixes did not entirely reassure.
and I found this op-ed from the director of the TSA under the Bush Administration, Kip Hawley, such a dedicated instance of ass-hattery that I barely know where to start in criticizing it. Leave it to the experts! All we need is the will!
Here’s one very small example:
The FBI sets a good example on this score. It is not immune to systemic failure, and Director Bob Mueller has used every minute of his tenure to drive needed culture and technological change. He probably needs 10 more years. So, we must fight the instinct to seize upon a scapegoat.
The only solution, repeat only, solution to a systemic failure is systemic change. That is axiomatic. Doubling down on the system without changing it will accomplish nothing.
Dave, I’ve not read the report and frankly wonder whether such a report at this stage would be useful, but ultimately there might be two kinds of system failures:
1. The system as designed failed to perform, internal systems checks failed to correct. This is the kind of failure that practice runs are supposed to check. Those who failed to perform should be reprimended or fired, and modifications to the internal systems checks may need to be modified.
2. The system performed as designed, but wasn’t calibrated to address the present threat/risk. You could run the system from now until doomsday, it won’t address non-subject threats.
It sounds to me that this is the first situation. Specifically, this system was designed for intelligency sharing. That’s why you fire the private employees and replace them with government employees: you want to use intelligence without private dissimination. (Plus, the government wants to use limited liability to kick people off of flights that private airlines will be reluctant to do)
Personally, I wouldn’t design the sytem this way: I would like national id cards with citizens going onto planes with metal detectors and perhaps even airline employees doing the work. Non-citizens would go through another line with more scrutiny and government involvement.
“President Obama has shown absolutely no predisposition towards dealing with terrorism in a serious way.”
Care to substantiate this, or at least clarify? I would say that trying to close Gitmo and saying no to torture probably help as much as anything else. Toning down rhetoric, not interfering with Iran, initially asking for a settlement freeze, calling the Pakistani leadership out on not finding Bin Laden, developing better relations with Rusia should all count as basic, effective CT efforts. Undercutting recruiting efforts is big IMHO.
Now, if you meant he is not going about airplane security correctly, I will agree. He has devised a political solution to a political problem. No one wants to spend the money to do what the Israelis do. Our low budget efforts means someone will get through. That means that Obama needs to put in place a big show and he needed to do some profiling of Muslim states, which is what he did. Profiling Nigeria makes it easier for AQ in its attempts to radicalize there. He has taken a system put together by a Republican president and modified it, the safest political course.
Steve