[ The Antiwar.com website is well worth a visit for those that do not knowof it. John.]
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THE INCOMPETENCE OF EMPIRE
Behind the Headlines
by Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com <http://www.antiwar.com/>
October 3, 2001
THE INCOMPETENCE OF EMPIRE
Behind the 'intelligence failure' that led to 9/11
Leon Hadar, a foreign policy analyst whose books and articles for the
libertarian Cato Institute have long argued for a foreign policy of
restraint, worries
<http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/specialfocus/story/0,2276,23220,00.h
tml> aloud in the Business Times that George W. Bush may lose support if
he doesn't invade somebody, somehow, and soon. While support for the
President is at an all-time high, Hadar confides that this may not be
the case for long:
"In private, insiders are expressing concern that unless the
administration 'does something' (that is, some sort of military action
that Americans could watch on CNN) and soon, not only would the White
House start losing some of its public support, but the post-Sept 11
sense of patriotism would turn into public confusion and anger and
damage the sense of national unity that is now dominating Washington and
the country."
FIREWORKS, AT LAST?
It may be, however, that the fireworks are about to begin. Tony Blair
gave a speech on Tuesday that announced an imminent strike targeted at
military installations and designed to avoid civilian casualties: but,
don't worry, Tony opined, some good will come of all this, because,
according
<http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_413036.html?menu=news.latestheadli
nes> to Ananova, the "world community" is "drawing together." There now
- feel better?
THE ORCHESTRA OF WAR
The
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=97176>
Independent concurs that weeks of seeming inaction are about to come to
an end, telling us that "massive" air strikes on Afghanistan are "just
days away," and that the operation will consist of two phases: an
initial foray of missile strikes, bombs, and "limited" special forces
attacks, and a much larger-scale "orchestration" of land, air, and sea
power. The big news, however, is in the very last paragraph, where we
are told that the "big problem" with this strategy is - what happens
next? "It still remains unclear whether the target will remain
Afghanistan, as Secretary of State Colin Powell wants, or a broader
offensive against Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Colonel Gaddafi in Libya,
as advocated by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz," writes Kim
Sengupta. Libya? Gee, that wasn't on Bill
<http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document092101b.shtml> Kristol's
list! Sengupta continues: "If the hawks have their way, Operation
Enduring Freedom could well sink into a very messy and enduring war."
Let's hope Operation Enduring Quagmire never comes to pass.
INDIAN AGENDA
As I put it in my last <http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j100101.html>
column, "everybody has their little agenda" which they want to attach to
the American war effort, and moving quickly to take full advantage is
India, Pakistan's major adversary in the region. The Times
<http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1252214636> of India
asserts that, if we follow Osama bin Laden's money trail, it leads
directly to Islamabad: to hear them tell it, our ally Pakistan is just
as guilty as the Taliban, and Al-Qaeda - if not more so. How do they
know this? Because California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher
(R-Off-the-Wall) said so. Hmmmm....
TICKING TIME BOMB
Signs that the whole region
<http://www.thescotsman.co.uk/world.cfm?id=112728> is about to blow are
everywhere: a car bomb went off outside the state assembly building in
Kashmir, and the subsequent 7-hour gun battle between Islamic militants
and state security ended with 31 dead and 75 wounded. India blames the
Pakistanis, and New Delhi sent a
<http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1145663514> stern
warning to Washington, the Times of India tells us, which was delivered
personally to President George W. Bush - although it wasn't clear
exactly what the Indians threatened to do if their demands were not met.
Cut off the US from its vital supply of curry?
DOWN AT THE CORNER STORE
Frustrated by the lack of military action, and possessed by the idea
that it is necessary to do something, anything, US government agencies
(and all too many Americans) are taking it out on anyone who happens to
be within range. The other day I visited my favorite corner store, which
is run by people of a Middle Eastern hue. I knew, I just knew that they
had been hassled, and as I walked into their little shop, I could tell
by their downcast eyes and restrained manner that there had been
trouble. What I didn't know was how much trouble...
WHAT COULD BE WRONG?
Now, I am normally on very good terms with these guys - they give me
credit when I'm broke, and they're friends as well as neighbors. But
there was a certain, uh, distance in their greetings as I made my first
appearance in weeks, after coming back from a trip, and I really
expected more of an enthusiastic welcome. Oh, they tried to be effusive,
but beneath the outwardly cheery air I could sense a certain ... strain.
"So, is anything wrong?" I asked. Wrong? What could be wrong? "Well, I
mean, what with the World Trade Center attack, and all - has anyone been
hassling you?" Oh, no, no, not at all! But I could see in the guy's face
that he was lying: unlike some others, my friendly corner store grocer
is not eager to establish his credentials as a victim. Indeed, he seemed
deeply ashamed by even the implication of it - which is how I knew that
something was up. "Are you sure about that...?"
"Well," said the grocer, "there was this one guy who came in and said
something about us being Arabs. But when I told him I'm from Greece he
seemed to calm down, and said: 'Oh, I guess that's okay, then, since
Greece is a member of NATO - right?' Then there was the guy who just
came in and yelled at us," said my friend, "although I couldn't really
say what he was angry about. I don't think he knew himself."
"Hmmm," I grunted disapprovingly, "is that it?"
"Oh yeah, yeah, really it's nothing."
"Oh - really?" I looked at him skeptically.
"Well, there were those two guys from the FBI...."
Say what?
As it turns out, my friendly corner grocer - and his helper, whom he
says is "half Palestinian" (yeah, right!) - had a visit from two G-men,
who flashed their badges and asked a whole lot of questions. It seems
someone had reported the two of them for uttering "anti-American"
sentiments. The agents were very polite, and apologized even while they
probed: "We're just doing our job," they explained. "We have to
investigate every lead."
SAN FRANCISCO INVADED!
The wartime atmosphere of fear and suspicion has invaded the tree-lined
streets and elegant Victorians of "enlightened" oh-so-liberal San
Francisco - Pacific Heights, no less! No one is safe, not even the guys
who run the corner store half a block from my door. But those guys are
no more terrorists than the British guy who lives upstairs and plays
disco full blast at 3 in the morning, or the elegant old woman who,
decked out in matching chemise, hat, and shoes, walks her fox terrier by
my doorstep at precisely 4 in the afternoon each and every day.
CRANK HEAVEN
Is this how the FBI is busily "protecting" us from the terrorist threat
- by following up "tips" phoned in by cranks whose lives have been given
new meaning by the crisis? Don't they have anything better to do?
Apparently not, if news of their recent activities is any indication.
That very night I was
<http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/metropolitan/1069555> astonished
to read in the Houston Chronicle that the feds had seriously
"investigated" the random remark of a fifth grade kid in Garland, Texas,
who reportedly told a teacher, on September 10, that World War III was
going to start the next day. Perhaps the teacher recalled, after the
twin towers went down, how the kid had said, according to the Chronicle,
that the war would start "and the US would lose." Was this a miniature
fifth columnist in her class? She reported it to school officials, who
passed the "tip" to the FBI. As it turned out, the whole incident seems
to have been a case of mass hysteria, with the teacher later claiming
she couldn't be quite sure of just what the kid had meant. So, let's get
this straight: the FBI spent how many hours, and tax dollars,
"investigating" the ramblings of a mere child and a hysterical female?
LOOK, MOM - IT'S THE FBI!
We are living in a nightmarish world where the FBI can knock on anyone's
door, come barging in and administer an on-the-spot loyalty test, asking
about certain "anti-American" sentiments supposedly expressed. Chicago
Sun-Times columnist Mark Brown relates the story of
<http://www.suntimes.com/output/brown/cst-nws-brown02.html> what
happened to Itedal Shalabi and her family, one day, when her 11-year-old
son burst into her room with the news: "Mom, mom, it's the FBI!"
BEYOND HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
"As you can imagine, Shalabi awoke in a hurry," remarks Brown. Yeah,
I'll just bet. The two female agents informed Shalabi that some unnamed
woman had accused her of "raising a terrorist." Shalabi says that her
accuser had characterized her son as "a possible Hamas who wanted to die
as a fighter." The agents went on to say that the whole basis of this
was a newspaper article - not that they had seen or read the article
themselves, you understand. Someone had merely reported this
information, and they were just following up. No doubt they apologized,
and gave out the same line their buddies gave to my corner grocer:
sorry, we're just doing our job. But are they? Then why didn't they
follow up this worthless "tip" in the public library, where back issues
of most newspapers are archived? (The answer to this question is beyond
human understanding.) Instead, they barged into Itedal Shalabi's home
and asked her if she was raising a little terrorist.
THE 'EVIDENCE'
The alleged "evidence" that Shalabi was bring up a little Osama bin
Laden was based on a newspaper article, published last December in the
Chicago Tribune, on the rise of Arab-American political activism, and
here, in toto, is what it said about the "suspects":
''Itedal Shalabi's son Suhiab, 8, has asked if he could fight with other
young Palestinians against the Israelis."
"'I tell him, 'No. You can fight instead with an education. You can
educate millions,' said Shalabi, a social worker who specialized in
working with Arab families.''
By seeking to educate her son, she was nurturing a little terrorist -
this was the accusation John Ashcroft's "Anti-Terrorism Task Force" was
confronting her with. Suhiab Shalabi, by the way, is all of 9 years old.
IT IS HAPPENING HERE
That this is happening in America is the hallmark of the "new era"
everyone insists is upon us. It is an era of sheer madness, in which the
constitutional <http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0139/hentoff.php>
protections afforded to ordinary citizens are being discarded, willy
nilly, like so much
<http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0139/koerner.php> excess baggage
from a sinking ship. The war hysteria affords a window of opportunity
for the spiteful, the ambitious, the cretins among us to come out of the
closet in all their hideous glory, not only unafraid of rebuke but
positively basking in the wartime atmosphere of fear and unreason. So
far, the FBI has received a grand total of 225,000 "leads" on the twin
towers terrorist attack: over 100,000 from an Internet site where anyone
can settle a score, in total anonymity. Another 18,000 were hissed in
over the phone, and 106,000 have been generated by the efforts of FBI
investigators. Brown reports that "tips are screened and
prioritized."rest
KEYSTONE KOPS
One can only wonder what sort of standard is being applied here that
would lead the FBI to the doorstep of Itedal Shalabi, some schoolboy in
Texas - or my friendly corner grocery. You have only to read Seymour
Hersh's devastating review of " What Went
<http://www.newyorker.com/FACT/> Wrong," in the New Yorker, to see all
too clearly that we are dealing with a bunch of Keystone Kops - who are
pitted against some of the cleverest, most fanatical, and certainly the
most ruthlessly efficient enemies the US has ever had to confront.
AL-QAEDA - A PICKUP BASKETBALL TEAM?
Hersh details the bureaucratic rivalries between various departments,
the warring fiefdoms that make interagency cooperation completely
untenable. We are told that the FBI, which is so concerned about what
the two Arab guys on my corner are up to, is convinced that the 9/11
terror plotters were just a bunch of amateurs. "The investigators,"
Hersh writes, "are now split into at least two factions":
"One, centered in the F.B.I., believes that the terrorists may not have
been 'a cohesive group,' as one involved official put it, before they
started training and working together on this operation. 'These guys
look like a pickup basketball team,' he said. 'A bunch of guys who got
together.'"
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT
Can you believe this jerk? An underground cell pulls off the most
spectacularly destructive act of terrorism in US history, in which
6,000-plus were killed, and we are supposed to believe that this was
nothing more than a bunch of guys who got together? Yeah, I can see it
now: they were all sitting around the kitchen table on a Saturday night,
wondering whether to go to the Bodacious Strip Lounge or stay home and
read the Koran, when someone said: "Hey, I know: let's hijack four
commercial airliners, run one into the Pentagon, ram two into the World
Trade Center, and aim one at the White House. Whaddaya say?"
HAPLESS G-MEN
According to the FBI upper echelons, the terrorists got "lucky." Hersh
cites an unnamed official, who elaborates on this exculpatory theme:
"In your wildest dreams, do you think they thought they'd be able to
pull off four hijackings? Just taking out one jet and getting it into
the ground would have been a success. These are not supermen."
The same might be said of America's G-men, who didn't have a clue about
a plot that had been generating right under their noses for years. Hersh
writes that the FBI "is still trying to sort out the identities and
backgrounds of the hijackers. The fact is, the official acknowledged,
'we don't know much about them.'" The fact is, the FBI doesn't seem to
know much about anything - except how to harass law-abiding loyal
Americans and make excuses.
DUMB LUCK
The terrorists "were simply lucky" - that, in a nutshell, is the thesis
of the highest law enforcement agency in the land, and it isn't very
comforting, now is it? Nor is such a transparent excuse very convincing:
entirely aside from how incredibly self serving it is. To anyone who
actually saw the twin towers go down, and saw what they did to the
Pentagon, either on the scene or on television, such an explanation -
sheer luck! - is incredible on its face. Incredible, and scary, because
it raises a question: So these are the people charged with protecting
us? As Ayn Rand once asked, in a not-so-different context: "Who will
protect us from our protectors?"
HOMELAND INSECURITY
Hersh details the various bungles, and simple bureaucratic inertia, that
set the context for the 9/11 catastrophe, but draws no conclusions
himself, aside from speculating that there are going to be a few
personnel changes, starting with CIA director George Tenet. His analysis
is that the various federal agencies charged with defending the nation
were far more interested in defending their own bureaucratic turf.
George W. Bush thinks this can be solved by creating yet another federal
agency, one with the ominous moniker of "Homeland Security." Endless
duplication is how government reproduces itself and grows bigger by the
year, the month, the hour. Like some sprawling amoebae out of a grade-B
science fiction movie, the Blob that is Eating America separates, and
fuses, splits and re-fuses, its various tentacles ceaselessly waving,
probing, grasping for power.
THE 9/11 MYTHOS
This story of Keystone Kops paralyzed by bureaucratism and motivated by
the spirit of petty self-aggrandizement and perpetual infighting is
truly frightening. For what it tells us is that there is something very
wrong with our institutions, and the elites that run them, and therefore
we are all of us in mortal danger. In my the-day-after
<http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j091201.html> column, I wrote:
"With one well-coordinated blow, the entire free world has been
paralyzed. It is as if a rock-wielding David has hit a glass Goliath
straight between the eyes, shattering the imperial colossus and bringing
down the whole top-heavy apparatus with an earthshaking roar."
I meant this in the sense of the stark inequality of the two
adversaries, and certainly not to valorize the terrorists in any way,
although the more Biblically-inclined among my readers might have noted
that David was, after all, the good guy in the fable. In any case, the
terrorists are more like the Myrmidons
<http://www.wsu.edu/~delahoyd/myrmidons.html> , if you want to get
mythological about it, those merciless soldiers who sprang up out of
soil sown with dragon's teeth, special pets of Ares, the Greek god of
war.
IMPERIAL PARALYSIS
In any case, the title of that earlier column, "Imperial Paralysis,"
illustrates the theme that underlies the haplessness of our government
officials, and their pathetic attempts to "protect" us - now that the
horse is out of the barn. Who can doubt that the intelligence failures
exposed by Hersh are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg? Let's cut
the "unity" crap and start blaming someone - someone, that is, other
than my corner grocer.
EMPIRES WITHIN THE EMPIRE
Let's have a thorough and deep investigation of the all-pervasive
incompetence that has paralyzed the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the whole
alphabet soup of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies.
These bureaucratic fiefdoms are answerable to no one, not the congress
and not even the President, but are, in effect, entities unto
themselves. They are empires within the Empire, and they are too large,
too top-heavy, and too bloated with tax dollars to be able to move
quickly or efficiently - except in the cause of preserving and expanding
their budgets, their perks, and their power.
A STRUCTURAL DEFECT
This is a structural defect of Empire. It is prone to decadence - that
is, it is bound to lose sight of its original purpose and meaning, and
begin to break down. The scope of our various law enforcement agencies
is international, and their combined budgets total untold billions,
deploying armies of agents. If John Ashcroft has his way, they will be
armed with virtually unlimited power to lock up anyone for an indefinite
period and close down anything - websites
<http://www.geocities.com/freedomofpress/websites2.htm> , foundations,
organizations of any sort - on the grounds that they could be shown to
be sympathetic to alleged terrorists, or possibly "harboring"
terroristic ideas themselves. Yet it is precisely this awesome array,
this overwhelming apparatus, that will prove, in the end, to be its own
undoing.
EMPIRE AND THE FATE OF TYRANNASAURUS REX
For it is too big to make rational decisions. Like the dinosaur, it is
huge but has a tiny little brain, one big enough to let it lumber about,
and cause a lot of spectacular damage, but also vulnerable in other
ways. The vulnerability of empires, everywhere and at all times, is too
well-known to go into here. From Gibbon
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679423087/antiwarbookstore> to
Chalmers
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805062386/antiwarbookstore>
Johnson, the chroniclers of imperial decline have all delivered the same
funeral oration, with certain stylistic differences but all emphasizing
the same set of themes. While Johnson analyzes the economic and
geopolitical dynamics of an American Imperium in decline, Gibbon shows
how empire corrupts the moral character of a people, so that in the end
they deserve a Nero
<http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/MS/8th/romanhis/nero.htm> ,
or a Caligula <http://www.antiwar.com/justin/pf/a%20Caligula> .
THE WAGES OF SIN
Yeah, but we don't deserve this - the bungling, the excuses, the sheer
incompetence of fat-cat bureaucrats who, after all, hold our lives in
their hands. Not yet, at any rate. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are
flat out wrong about how the terrorist attack was payment for our sins.
Right now, we're paying for the US government's sins: not only those of
the federal nomenklatura, who failed to detect a wide-ranging and
sophisticated operation more than 5 years in the making, despite several
warnings - but also those of our foreign policy makers, who delight in
playing with entire peoples like pieces on a chessboard. Blinded by
arrogance, and hobbled by incompetence, the imperial armies ride off
into battle, headed for certain defeat.
THE "DEFEATIST" FALLACY
Aha! Defeatism! This was a favorite epithet of the World War II New
Dealers, who labeled any criticism of or opposition to their Great
Leader "defeatist" if not downright treasonous. It was self-serving
sanctimonious bullhockey then, just as it is now. I have news for the
FBI, the CIA, and the rest of our "intelligence community": if they are
looking for the secret of how and why Osama bin Laden succeeded in
blowing up the two biggest symbols of a once great nation, they won't
find it at the dinky little Arab grocery store down on the corner. For
that, they need to look elsewhere - and fast.
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