Saturday, September 17, 2005
And the Terrorists Score a Hit . . .
No, not the World Trade Center or the Pentagon. Those hits were from 2001, and they weren't the real point anyway, if you listened to what Osama Bin Ladin said at the time. He said that the intent was to disrupt the Great Satan (I sort of feel flattered by that designation -- at least we're the 'Great' Satan, and not some run-of-the-mill pipsqueak demon.) He intended, so he said, to get us working against ourselves until our society fails from internal strife. Things haven't gone exactly how he intended, but overall I think the bearded wonderboy of terror must be fairly pleased with how his scheme has been working.
I just read another article critical of FEMA and the ongoing response to Katrina along the Gulf Coast. Well, yes, it could be a lot better, couldn't it? But, as an official said, since 9-11 the public focus has been on terrorism, so response to plain vanilla disasters hasn't gotten the attention or funding that it deserves. That Bin Ladin fellow must be so pleased that he's redoubled his prayers of gratitude to Allah for delivering the Great Satan to righteous retribution, or whatever in heck he calls it in his warped mind. I don't know what Allah thinks of all that, but I've got an opinion or two. First, maybe we should consider what terrorism really means.
Terrorism is a tactic that uses fear to try to bring the target population under control, or to eliminate the target population if possible. It's not doing any particular thing other than to try to keep people scared. When people are scared they often act against their own best interest, so by using terrorism you can get your enemy to do the fighting for you, in a manner of speaking. Maybe Osama believes that god sent the hurricane deliberately, but most people think that hurricanes are just one of those awful things that happen from time to time. Or maybe Osama just feels lucky and also doesn't credit Allah, but either way he wins. By getting us to be so afraid that we concentrated all of our efforts on combating terrorism he also got us to ignore basic domestic safety issues, such as ensuring that FEMA was ready to respond to any emergency. That was FEMA's charter, and they've done a tremendous job in the past. It wasn't racism that condemned those poor people, it was terrorism. They're sin wasn't being black, it was being poor. Poor people are invisible, or else why do we now hear that "nobody knew" about the level of poverty in New Orleans? Anyone who bothered to look saw that it was there; it's just that there's no real reason for most of us to look until something like a disaster hits. (I'll leave it to your conscience to decide about the moral and ethical issues that fact might raise.)
But, what else could the terrorists do, in terms of actual acts of war and destruction? We've been assuming the worst all the time, from the series 24 and a nuclear bomb that almost destroyed Los Angeles (and then where would we have gotten our TV shows?) to the nonsense once spouted about plastic and duct tape for your windows. I suppose that somebody could detonate a stolen, or jerry-rigged nuclear device in a city. Somebody could set off a homemade dirty bomb in the Super Bowl Stadium, too. Somebody could probably close down Interstate 80 across Nebraska (don't think that wouldn't be a disaster.) But, as a practical matter, could somebody do worse than what Hurricane Katrina just did? In truth, probably not. What we've done, by acting out of fear, is forget the basic fact that an emergency is an emergency. The firemen in New York never had specific training in response to terrorism prior to 9-11, but they knew how to act in an acute crisis. That's what we need, not blather about "terror alert levels." The real "alert level" is red all the time, if you think about it. Personally I'll feel safer when FEMA is back to full strength and doing what it used to do well: managing disaster scenes effectively.
This will seem like a digression, but it isn't. Bear with me for a paragraph. I've read about the D-Day landings in France. The Germans were well entrenched and had the high ground. They had every opportunity to wipe out the invading armies, but they could not. One big reason, according to what I've read, is that the American troops were each one thinking independently enough to respond appropriately to whatever was happening in his immediate vicinity. If they'd gone up the beach in some centralized lock-step sort of manner, the Germans may have prevailed. Instead, those thousands of individual battle plans, each one with the overall goal of the day in mind, allowed most of the invaders to survive and prevail.
So, back in 2005, I think it's not such a wonderful idea to centralize our response to terrorism in one agency, even if it does have the attractive name of "Homeland Security." I've never really liked that term 'homeland' anyway. It sort of reminds me of the German 'fatherland' concept. Creepy. But, my bias about words aside, the folks along the gulf would have been a lot better off if FEMA had stayed independent. Their mission has been to respond to domestic emergencies all along. 9-11 was a domestic emergency, Katrina is a domestic emergency, the Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic emergency. Two out of three were handled well by FEMA. The latest, after FEMA lost it's autonomy, continues to be criticised for ineffectiveness. I think there may be a lesson here, if we're up for it.
Let's relax our paranoia, look at the real situation, and deny the terrorists another victory. Whattya say?
I just read another article critical of FEMA and the ongoing response to Katrina along the Gulf Coast. Well, yes, it could be a lot better, couldn't it? But, as an official said, since 9-11 the public focus has been on terrorism, so response to plain vanilla disasters hasn't gotten the attention or funding that it deserves. That Bin Ladin fellow must be so pleased that he's redoubled his prayers of gratitude to Allah for delivering the Great Satan to righteous retribution, or whatever in heck he calls it in his warped mind. I don't know what Allah thinks of all that, but I've got an opinion or two. First, maybe we should consider what terrorism really means.
Terrorism is a tactic that uses fear to try to bring the target population under control, or to eliminate the target population if possible. It's not doing any particular thing other than to try to keep people scared. When people are scared they often act against their own best interest, so by using terrorism you can get your enemy to do the fighting for you, in a manner of speaking. Maybe Osama believes that god sent the hurricane deliberately, but most people think that hurricanes are just one of those awful things that happen from time to time. Or maybe Osama just feels lucky and also doesn't credit Allah, but either way he wins. By getting us to be so afraid that we concentrated all of our efforts on combating terrorism he also got us to ignore basic domestic safety issues, such as ensuring that FEMA was ready to respond to any emergency. That was FEMA's charter, and they've done a tremendous job in the past. It wasn't racism that condemned those poor people, it was terrorism. They're sin wasn't being black, it was being poor. Poor people are invisible, or else why do we now hear that "nobody knew" about the level of poverty in New Orleans? Anyone who bothered to look saw that it was there; it's just that there's no real reason for most of us to look until something like a disaster hits. (I'll leave it to your conscience to decide about the moral and ethical issues that fact might raise.)
But, what else could the terrorists do, in terms of actual acts of war and destruction? We've been assuming the worst all the time, from the series 24 and a nuclear bomb that almost destroyed Los Angeles (and then where would we have gotten our TV shows?) to the nonsense once spouted about plastic and duct tape for your windows. I suppose that somebody could detonate a stolen, or jerry-rigged nuclear device in a city. Somebody could set off a homemade dirty bomb in the Super Bowl Stadium, too. Somebody could probably close down Interstate 80 across Nebraska (don't think that wouldn't be a disaster.) But, as a practical matter, could somebody do worse than what Hurricane Katrina just did? In truth, probably not. What we've done, by acting out of fear, is forget the basic fact that an emergency is an emergency. The firemen in New York never had specific training in response to terrorism prior to 9-11, but they knew how to act in an acute crisis. That's what we need, not blather about "terror alert levels." The real "alert level" is red all the time, if you think about it. Personally I'll feel safer when FEMA is back to full strength and doing what it used to do well: managing disaster scenes effectively.
This will seem like a digression, but it isn't. Bear with me for a paragraph. I've read about the D-Day landings in France. The Germans were well entrenched and had the high ground. They had every opportunity to wipe out the invading armies, but they could not. One big reason, according to what I've read, is that the American troops were each one thinking independently enough to respond appropriately to whatever was happening in his immediate vicinity. If they'd gone up the beach in some centralized lock-step sort of manner, the Germans may have prevailed. Instead, those thousands of individual battle plans, each one with the overall goal of the day in mind, allowed most of the invaders to survive and prevail.
So, back in 2005, I think it's not such a wonderful idea to centralize our response to terrorism in one agency, even if it does have the attractive name of "Homeland Security." I've never really liked that term 'homeland' anyway. It sort of reminds me of the German 'fatherland' concept. Creepy. But, my bias about words aside, the folks along the gulf would have been a lot better off if FEMA had stayed independent. Their mission has been to respond to domestic emergencies all along. 9-11 was a domestic emergency, Katrina is a domestic emergency, the Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic emergency. Two out of three were handled well by FEMA. The latest, after FEMA lost it's autonomy, continues to be criticised for ineffectiveness. I think there may be a lesson here, if we're up for it.
Let's relax our paranoia, look at the real situation, and deny the terrorists another victory. Whattya say?
