IP: Cool It!

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Cool It!

May 22, 2002
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN




 

Ah, excuse me, but could we all just calm down here?

What started as a story about how the Bush team handled
unspecific warnings about possible terrorist attacks in the
U.S. before 9/11 has now prompted the Bushies not only to
defend themselves from charges of irresponsibility - which
they are entitled to do - but to go on a Chicken Little
warnings binge that another attack is imminent, inevitable
and around the corner, but we can't tell you when, where or
how. 

Look, in the wake of 9/11, I would never rule out any kind
of attack. That would be foolhardy. But I'm no more
interested in indicting the Bush team for failing to
respond to an unspecific warning about a possible terrorist
attack before 9/11 than I'm interested in having the vice
president and F.B.I. director warn us about the certainty
of an unspecified attack sometime in the future.

What are we supposed to do with this information? Never go
into another apartment building, because reports suggest an
Al Qaeda cell may rent an apartment just to blow up the
whole structure? Don't go outside? Don't go near national
monuments? Pat the belly of every pregnant woman to check
if she's a suicide bomber?

Who wants to live that way? Let's make a deal: We won't
criticize the administration for not anticipating 9/11 if
it won't terrorize the country by now predicting every
possible nightmare scenario, but no specific ones,
post-9/11. Not only are these "warnings" just unnerving the
public when people were finally starting to calm down, but
they are also obscuring something very important: We are
winning this war. 

No, it's not over. And yes, I too will say for the record
that sometime, somewhere, there will be another attack. But
in the meantime we've actually accomplished a lot. If Osama
bin Laden is alive, a big if, his ability to direct acts of
terrorism against U.S. targets has been disrupted. It is
doubtful that he would dare even use a telephone.

That is important, because bin Laden and his top deputies
were a unique and very smart, creative and daring group of
terrorists, who do not come along every day. And whether
they are all dead or deep in hiding, there is no indication
they are in business right now. Yes, probably less
professional cells still exist and can still wreak havoc.
But when you decapitate an organization like Al Qaeda, and
disrupt its money flow, you've done a lot. And when you
oust the Taliban in Afghanistan and take away the one true
safe harbor for bin Laden - for training and operations -
you've also done a lot.

We have put in place reasonable precautions at airports; we
have instituted better coordination between the F.B.I.,
C.I.A. and I.N.S.; we are tracking foreign students more
closely; and we and our allies have detained thousands of
suspects. The fact that there has been no other major
incident since 9/11 is surely not because the terrorists
have abandoned their intentions. It is because we have
hampered their capabilities. That is a good thing.

But the very nature of this war against small groups and
individuals bent on terrorism is that you can never win it
definitively. It will be with us forever. But we can limit
the number of attacks - and keep terrorist cells on the run
and disrupted enough to reduce their capabilities - if our
public officials responsible for this war are not spending
all day looking in their rear-view mirrors or mindlessly
terrorizing the public with unspecified, cover-your-behind
warnings about future terrorism.

This is absolutely not an argument for a free pass for the
Bush team. Given the stories about intelligence failures
that have come out already, we clearly need a special
commission, led by professionals, not politicians, that
looks into the decadelong history of our handling of Al
Qaeda and explores why we did not have better intelligence,
why the dots were not connected and how to improve in the
future. 

But the other thing we need to do is grow up. If we're
going to maintain an open society, all we can do is take
all reasonable precautions and then suck it up and learn to
live with a higher level of risk. That is our fate, so
let's not drive ourselves crazy.

I don't know about you, but my Memorial Day weekend plans
are set: golf Saturday, bike trip Sunday, barbecue Monday.
If the F.B.I. director wants to interrupt my weekend with a
specific warning, I'll be all ears; otherwise, pipe down
and chill out. Remember it's supposed to be Al Qaeda that's
running scared, not us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/22/opinion/22FRIE.html?ex=1023053383&ei=1&en=
e82ca3876d496ffd


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