On September 20, 2001 07:10 pm, Dave Kuhlman wrote:
> That is why some of us suggest that we not call it a "war".
<snip>
>
> This is and should be a police action. Perhaps it is a very large
> police action. But, wars are between nations. Wars are fought
> over territory. There is no other nation here, unless you want to
> bomb a few helpless Afganies (sp?), and make them even more
> miserable than they already are. And there is no territory. God
> help us if we want Afganistan.
>
Wars have most often been fought between nations because that is the scale of
the resources usually needed to participate. Websters offers two
definitions: the first describes it as a conflict between nations, or parties
within a nation; the second defines it as any conflict, struggle, or strife
such as the 'war on poverty.'
> Our political leaders are calling it a war for the same reason you
> are calling it a war. They believe that they can stir up more
> emotions and support by doing so.
>
Support, yes. It would be hard to suggest that emotions haven't already been
stirred up by the terrorist acts themselves. In fact, it is a strong
arguement that as the senior elected representative of the American public,
GWB is just reflecting the outrage and demand for justice that the American
citizens feel and expect their President to act upon accordingly.
> If I was George W or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or
> the head of the FBI, I would, too. Trying to promote a war
> would certainly be more pleasant than admitting that I had failed
> miserably to protect the security of our nation at the cost of
> thousands of lives and billions of dollars.
>
That's an unfair statement. Nothing is 100 percent, that includes even the
best intelligence support, especially in a free and democratic western
society. It's one of life's little dichotomies... if you impose the absolute
measures to provide as perfect an intelligence and security system as
possible in order to protect your democratic state, then by definition, you
have just destroyed or at least violated the principles you are, in fact,
trying to protect. However, all of this have to be balanced against society's
perceived need to mitigate risk. That perception of risk has just undergone a
very large adjustment over the last 2 weeks.
Over recent years the intelligence community in the US and elsewhere (except
perhaps Israel) has been forced to deal with increased fiscal, legal and
ideological restrictions, due in no small measure to the perception by the
lay public and politicians that 'the Cold War is over, we won, we can reduce
our effort.'
That notwithstanding, there are some intelligence problems that do not lend
themselves to easy armchair solutions. Terrorism, be definition, is a very
difficult activity to target. Indicators are usually small, indistinct, and
difficult to discern against a constant threshold of background noise.
Most of all, this type of activity is difficult to predict, although
it's amazing the number of armchair experts who come out of the woodwork,
after the fact, to proclaim their expertise in hindsight.
Intelligence, especially at the strategic or national level, most often
relies upon trend analysis to develop profiles of targets, including
indicators of how they operate and what they need to do in order to conduct a
specified activity. These indicators are the "alarm bells" that point to an
impending event. The more indicators you have, the more confidence and
accuracy you can provide in a warning. For this reason, these indicators are
targetted by the intelligence community's collection and reporting efforts,
as much as the groups themselves.
However, this attack was unprecedented in both method and scale. How do you
predict something that has never occured before? Moreover, the 'signature' or
'footprint' of these groups is much more subtle than that of a large
conventional military force - they are much smaller, more mobile, more able
to blend into the background, less structured and thus less predictable. From
what I have seen reported in the media, these groups usually don't use
devices or operate in a way that is unique or are easily detected against the
normal background threshold of civilian activity... and they do that on
purpose. This isn't a problem that can be solved by throwing up a couple of
satellites, while the public goes back to shopping at Walmart. It is a
difficult challenge that will require extraordinary measures on a prolonged
basis... that is why it is a 'war' and that is why it is both unfair and
uninformed to imply that this event was caused by a simple case of negligence
or oversight.
Sorry for the length of this post. I didn't want to break the thread, but if
this is going to continue, perhaps we should do so in General?
--
burns
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