Institutional Myopia

Well, that answers one question.

I asked what the Strib believed about the London bombing. As this morning's institutional editorial shows, the paper's view is not as caustically morally depraved as what Nick Coleman allegedly said, but it's not a lot less dumb.

This bit comes toward the end:

Just days ago, Bush said again that Iraq is the central front in the war on terror. He asserted that the United States fights terrorists there so it won't have to fight them at home. The London bombings illustrate the fallacy at the heart of that argument: Terrorists aren't a finite army that you can defeat on a battlefield and achieve victory. Ivo Daalder, international security expert at the Brookings Institution, said it well: "Today's terrorists are independent operators, beyond the control of any state. They roam relatively freely around an interconnected world -- striking when they are ready and we least expect it."

Which is true, as long as you only work at a superficial level of detail.

But as Vladis Krebs showed, it's a lot easier to conduct a campaign in that interconnected world if you, the terrorist, have a nation-state that's willing to give you a place to train, plan, get your mail, rest, stage and regroup, maybe even treat you and your partners like a covert arm of national policy, maybe paying part of your freight. A place where law enforcement isn't dogging your every move, and where the national law enforcement and military are helping keep enemy investigators and commandos off your ass. A place like Afghanistan was, like Syria and parts of Lebanon were, a place like Iraq was (yes, was. It's where Zarquawi went for treatment after getting wounded in Afghanistan. There's a reason for that).

Having such a state - a place where you can break cover and meet and go to mosque without having to check your back constantly - makes the life of the terrorist incalculably easier.

They had that in the Middle East for decades. But today, Afghanistan is free, Iraq (which sheltered terrorists of all stripes, and is a mecca as it were for them today) is working on it, Lebanon is making progress, and reports say even the Syrians are making moves to deal with some of their Ba'athist refugees (although the jury's still out).

Does the Strib's pet "national security expert" account for that?

Let's keep reading:

No matter what happens in Iraq, the threat that terror poses will remain.

And when has any rational person said any different?

Just look at London, where, long before Iraq, authorities judged that an attack on the underground was inevitable; the only question was when. That's why they were extraordinarily well prepared for it.

The Brits did a lot of things to prepare for this sort of thing; one wonders if the Strib would approve of them if applied over here?

As Daalder also said, invading countries isn't the answer...

"...isn't the answer?"

It depends on the question. If it's "how do we stop terror completely before our next news cycle?", which seems to be the Strib's question, then obviously it's not "the" answer.

If it's "How do make the ground in the Middle East less favorable to terror?", then it's part of the answer. As we've seen.

... and often makes matters worse.

Huh?

"Often?"

Based on what? It's not like Western Civilization has ever been in an analogous situation before!

What's needed is increased cooperation between nations in law enforcement, intelligence, security, financial tracking and other forms of aggressive counterterrorism.

Does the editorialist believe that counterterrorism is a zero sum game where all of this isn't already taking place?

Fighting terrorism is going to be a long, hard slog, more like fighting crime than anything else. Sometimes it will indeed involve military action. But more often than not, it will involve quiet, determined law enforcement and intelligence work -- to discover the nooks and crannies where terrorists hide as they plot their next outrage -- and then destroy them before they act.

Unmentioned by the Strib - either because it doesn't suit them or because they're not as smart as George W. Bush - is that the military campaign has cut down on the number of "nooks and crannies" that need to be investigated.

The Strib is not a credible source of information on these issues.

Posted by Mitch at July 8, 2005 07:30 AM | TrackBack