It’s something Americans don’t have much of.<\/p>\n
Years ago, I read The Tunnels of Cu Chi<\/em>, which told the story of the Viet Cong\/North Vietnamese who built the immense labyrinth of tunnels in South Vietnam during their 35 years of war.\u00a0 The line that’s stuck with me was from one of the officers who fought against the Americans in the tunnels; “to Americans, a year is ancient history; to us, 25 years is like yesterday”.<\/p>\n America’s enemies can count on the fact that America’s attention span is short, and getting worse.<\/p>\n And that’s got Michael Chertoff worried<\/a>:<\/p>\n Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff<\/a>‘s eyes narrow and his voice develops a stern, urgent tone as he reveals America’s biggest vulnerability to terrorism.<\/p>\n “The great weapon they have is persistence and patience, and the one weakness that we have is the tendency to lose patience and become complacent,” Chertoff tells WTOP.<\/p>\n “It strikes me as hard to accept that anybody would believe the threat is over. There is nothing these terrorists are doing or saying that could lead a reasonable person to believe that they have somehow lost interest. Our biggest challenge is making sure we do not drop our guard because time passes.”<\/p>\n Chertoff recognizes it has been more than six years since al Qaida<\/a> launched the Sept. 11 attacks, but some experts say that’s how long it took to plan them, suggesting the U.S. may close in on another spectacular attempt by Osama bin Laden<\/a> to topple the U.S. economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It’s like needing the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor every couple of years to keep people on track.<\/p>\n I’ve been convinced – chagrinned, but convinced – for years that the only thing that’s going to cause Americans to take this seriously is another <\/em>9\/11.\u00a0 And then another, five years after that.\u00a0 Lather, rinse and repeat.<\/p>\n We’ll see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s something Americans don’t have much of. Years ago, I read The Tunnels of Cu Chi, which told the story of the Viet Cong\/North Vietnamese who built the immense labyrinth of tunnels in South Vietnam during their 35 years of war.\u00a0 The line that’s stuck with me was from one of the officers who fought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2105\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}