David Horowitz on why America's security failed

radarrider found this article by David Horowitz (find radarrider's original post here).  It's long and rather one-sided -- it blames the Democrats entirely for the failure of US intelligence to prevent 9/11, and totally ignores the Republican responsibility for many of the same failings, not to mention the manner in which the current Republican administration is quite unashamedly using terrorism as a rationale for a blatant grab of unprecedented police powers within the US -- but nevertheless, Horowitz makes many good points.  In particular, he's right on the mark about the manner in which, during the Clinton administration, Islamic radicals repeatedly kicked the US in the face and the US flinched, backed down, and apologized.

Things the US needs to keep in mind:  It's not about Iraq, it's not about Saddam Hussein, and the radical Islamists who issued a fatwa condemning every non-Muslim in America to death are not going to just pack up and go away.  (In particular, America will remain on the marked-for-death list as long as Israel exists and America continues to support Israel politically, financially or militarily.)  Nor is the US going to be able to defeat them via conventional military force.  A regular army cannot effectively fight a well-organized guerilla force in the field.  It's like trying to punch smoke.

Nor is policing every inch and second of every American's life the answer.  One of the goals of the Islamists is to destroy America's freedom.  If the US government does that itself, they have still won.  But in the eyes of government, that's OK, because if American freedom is broken under the foot of massive, all-pervading police power, the government has won too.

No, I'm not offering any pat answers to Islamic terrorism.  I don't have any, short of turning the entire Middle East into a plain of radioactive green glass, which obviously isn't a very viable option.  There's this problem with fanatics -- if they hit you, and you do nothing, it spurs them on to hit you harder; and if they hit you, and you hit them back where it hurts, it spurs them on to hit you harder.  It's a lose-lose situation.  Ultimately, there's only one way to deal with fanatic terrorists:  you kill them all, without mercy or hesitation.  However, half a dozen armored divisions trundling around in the desert looking for lone terrorists isn't a very effective way to accomplish that, and even a certainty of death is little discouragement to an Islamic terrorist who believes with every fiber of his being that death in the course of an attempt to murder infidels is an instant first-class ticket directly to paradise.

But I digress.

Ultimately, the single most important reason why 9/11 succeeded -- and many of the details Horowitz points out are mere symptoms and side-effects of this -- comes down to one thing:  We, as a nation, believed that it couldn't happen here, it couldn't happen to us.  We as a nation -- or, as a government -- believed implicitly that no major terrorist attack on American soil could succeed, because America was invulnerable, because America was the world's great shining bastion of freedom.  More stupidly, we -- or, again, our government -- continued to believe that a major terrorist attack against a target on American soil couldn't happen even after it did.  And because, even after it had happened, we refused to believe that it could happen, we allowed it to happen again.  It took 9/11 to shake America out of its complacency, and then our response was to launch a grandiose global war against terrorism as though it was a tangible, discrete entity that we could meet in the field and defeat in detail.  Oh, sure, it's a wonderful ideal, and I understand there's been some very positive effects, but if this is a war that we're going to keep fighting until it's won, then it's a war that we're going to keep fighting forever, because it is a war in which we will not and cannot ever achieve a complete, final victory.  The kind of worldwide security measures necessary to totally obliterate terrorism would be a first-class practical example of Nietzche's diktat, "Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster."

That's the damnedest thing about terrorism.  You can't defeat it without destroying your own freedoms.  You can't win without losing.

Updates on stuff

Dr. Ciccinelli says the slow-to-heal remnant of my toe abscess is doing well, and should be fine on its own from here on.  On the other hand, the reason my toe's been bleeding around the edge of the nail for the past two weeks is because I have an ingrown toenail, probably brought on by my toe having been so swollen since the abscess developed.  Snip snip, no more ingrown toenail.  He shot my toe up with lignocaine before doing the toenail, but quite honestly, at this point I don't know why he bothered -- I doubt it was needed.

In other news, I just had a phone screen for a contract-to-permanent engineering position with Tekelec, a company in RTP that makes Linux-based phone switches, and while I had several agonizing "Oh shit, I'm so RUSTY on this stuff" moments, the engineer who did the screen says he thinks I'm a good candidate and I have the background they're looking for, so maybe it didn't go off as badly as I felt it did.  We'll see what happens.

Contract-to-perm, of course, probably means no benefits until and unless it goes permanent, which could leave us in a hole on that score.  And while RTP isn't that far from here, under 100 miles, it's still too far to commute to, and there's certainly not going to be any relocation help for a contractor.  I don't know yet quite how we'll handle that.  But I suppose we'll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.

OK, OK ... the "Because" meme.

You can blame bbwoof and dakiwiboid.

My journal is called _____ because _____.
My subtitle is _____ because _____.
My friends page is called _____ because _____.
My username is ____ because _____.

( Clicky )

"Oh, fuck."

The Ukraine, which has been charged with selling nuclear weapons or component materials thereof to Al-Qaeda representatives in 1988, has mislaid "several hundred missiles".  According to the Register, the BBC report 'studiously avoids using the word "nuclear" in relation to "missile", although it seems pretty certain that these are ICBMs we're talking about here.'

Meanwhile, Prince Hassan of Jordan has said he fears a third world war is erupting in the Middle East.