An interesting read copied from another thread: I don't agree with everything but it is well reasoned: By Mark Anderson of the Strategic News Service -
CRIMINAL KAMIKAZES
The Attack
I arrived in Washington, D.C., a week ago Monday night. I was scheduled to present my Modest Proposal on jump-starting the world/telecom economy the following morning, so I spent the rest of the evening on my talk, and woke up early the next day to finish that work.
At about 8.50 a.m. I returned a call to Steve Waite, Managing Director of Trilogy Advisors, whose NYC investment office looked straight down the Avenue of the Americas toward the World Trade Center Twin Towers. In the middle of a sentence, he stopped, and told me he was looking at a hole in one of the towers, the size of an airplane.
"Has to be terrorists," I told him. We hung up. I caught three minutes of a now-burning tower on CNN in my room, and headed off to a meeting with about 30 Senators and an impressive group of technology executives in a hotel, perhaps a block from the Capitol building.
That meeting, of course, never happened.
Instead, we all gathered in the bar (many TVs) to watch the next terror strikes on the Towers and the Pentagon. As we assembled, late, in the meeting room, Washington Senator Patty Murray gave a short, strong speech: This is not America, and America will not stand for this, she said. Many of you may remember Patty as the candidate who ran as a kind of Soccer Mom in Tennis Shoes, but I'll tell you, her comments Tuesday morning were tough, short, and military. She sounded a bit like Dick Cheney. Terrorists now have to worry, seriously, about Soccer Moms, or, more accurately, mainstream Americans. I'd put Patty against Osama any day.
I was sitting with two other SNSers: Jim Moore, of Geopartners, who had been key in organizing the whole affair, and Steve Smith, Managing Director of GE Equity. Patty announced that she had received a call asking us all to disperse, which made great sense to me, since waiting with a third of the Senate for Guys With Ski Masks to show up seemed just plain bad planning.
Even so, a few of us returned to the TV screens, by now talking of a car bombing in front of the State Department and bombs in the Mall (neither of which happened). We watched both towers collapse, and the Pentagon burn.
For an hour, the streets of DC were in chaos, as all federal buildings were closed and people emptied out of the city. Then, the streets were empty. It took me almost half an hour to find a cab back to my hotel. That night, a good friend drove into town to take me back to his place in Maryland (I was avoiding the subway), and for the first time in eight hours, I didn't feel like a target.
About a year earlier, I had been sitting with Guy Tozzoli, head of the World Trade Centers Association, who had been instrumental in building the Towers, and with Herbert Ouida, his Exec. VP, in their offices, at the very top of the Towers.
Quite a view.
And no, don't ask, because I don't know. I hope they made it.
There were a few things about the attack that struck me as worth pointing out. I thought we'd spend today's discussion going through the various aspects of this week from a strategic perspective, since the week's events promise to have economic and personal effects upon us all for years to come.
Let's look at the attack, and see what we can say about it.
First, it was brilliant, insofar as it turned airplanes into missiles, made past anti-terror tactics almost obsolete, and immediately opened up targets no one had dreamed were vulnerable. Ever try to get into the Pentagon with a car bomb? Have you tried visiting the Trade Center since the 1993 bombing? Better bring your Mom's ID.
There is a certain irony in the U.S. talking about funding missile defenses, while stray individual Arabs are sending Boeing missiles down upon our cities.
Second, it probably achieved, in the short term, almost everything the terrorists wanted: worldwide non-stop re-broadcasting of the terror and explosions, and, best of all, dancing in the streets in many Muslim states, including Pakistan and Palestine.
Third, it was remarkably simple. Although many in and outside of the government have described the difficulty of launching this operation, its tremendous cost, and other reasons why this required a cabal of thousands, I disagree. I do not mean that there may not be a large-scale effort behind the 19 or so terrorists who made their way onto planes last Tuesday; only that it wasn't necessary.
In fact, one of the most amazing aspects of the attacks was their "bang for the buck."
If you can find and train, say, four to eight people to fly a plane (not take off or land it), plus 2-3 stupid thugs per plane, you are set. It is easy to get on board the plane, it is easy to bring knives on board. (Recently, FAA agents passed through security gates at Logan Airport, where two of the four flights originated, carrying pipe bombs and guns.) So, for, say, $50- 100k, you can find and train your villains, send them into the U.S. a month or so (or ten hours) ahead of time, and get them onto the planes. The terror rained upon the U.S. last week needn't cost more than an independent producer's first self-financed film.
For me, this truth is much more chilling than the idea of bin Laden's millions, and what they can achieve. We just witnessed what 12 brainwashed assholes can do with our current systems.
But there was a downside, which they did not count on: the rapid unification of Americans, and perhaps of the world, behind a worldwide campaign to eradicate them, "root and branch," in Secretary of State Colin Powell's words. Instead of chaos, terror and dismay, they have found, in the American response to date, pride, dignity, and resolution to respond, far beyond anything they must have imagined.
Americans are so economically fortunate, and so easy to criticize for our zany ways, that it must be easy for terrorists, rich or poor, to think we are incapable of a serious, coherent response. As we have shown throughout our short history, such low estimation is always a mistake. Ask Hitler.
The Cause / The Strategy
What caused these attacks? And why did they happen just now? To answer these questions, of course, we must first know who committed the attacks.
The first thing I said to Jim Moore, once we had settled down in a different hotel, was: "This is the end of bin Laden." I didn't mean by this that, no matter how obvious, he had done it: indeed, we had no idea who had done it. I meant: the administration will now have no choice but to eliminate the only publicly-known terrorist on their hit list. Even if somebody else stepped forward to take credit, they would still, in their new anti-terror fervor, have to get rid of bin Laden.
While George Bush has yet to take bin Laden beyond the scope of "prime suspect" (as suspected, this has zero effect on Bush's intent on getting him), a report supposedly out of Israeli military intelligence (Aman) lays the deeds at the feet of two other terrorists, "the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden."
Confirmation by the FBI today that the ringleader Atta is supposed to have met with the head of Iraqi intelligence would tend to reinforce this interpretation.
The inclusion of Iraq in the equation begins to confuse the equation of which Bush president is being punished for which deeds.
One suggestion regarding timing, perhaps wrong, is that Israel's new military aggression against Palestine appears, to the Muslim world, to be part of Bush Administration policy - if for no other reason than by neglect. Add to this over a decade of our bombing Iraq, and you have the appearance of being anti-Muslim. If you were wondering why the Palestinians (and other Muslims) were dancing in the streets, these are a few of the reasons.
(I will insert at this point the fact that the criminal kamikazes were mostly sleeper agents in the U.S., and that these attacks would have come at some other time, if not at this moment.)
Palestine is deeply linked to Muslims throughout the world, on many continents, and how its people are treated (which has been horribly, at the hands of Ariel Sharon), is taken to heart by Muslims everywhere. (This is why they re-commenced the Intifada.) It is true that the Palestinians began this latest round of violence with stone-throwing and occasional shootings; it is also true that the Israelis have used deadly force, with deadly results far out of proportion, almost from the beginning.
There is room here for another comment: Ariel Sharon became PM of Israel by intentionally provoking Palestinians by a visit to contested lands, knowing what the Palestinians thought of his record in their own camps (they believe he murdered their people in cold blood). This action prompted the new Intifada (though it was probably in planning anyway, since both sides felt the onset of bad faith), polarizing and terrorizing the Israeli people. For this performance, he got to be prime minister. As the violence his visit seeded got much worse, he became much more popular, as Israelis turned to militarism in the face of Palestinian attacks. This is how you build black holes of hatred.
Because the U.S. arms and pays huge sums to maintain Israel, the wrath of the Muslim world in watching Israel kill Palestinians, assassinate their leaders, etc., is a wrath visited in common on the U.S.
I don't mean to second-guess here, but it is probably worth commenting that our treatment of Iraq to date has not done us much good in the eyes of other Arab states. By this, I mean: if the U.S. had gotten rid of Saddam when it had the chance, and then treated Iraq with dignity afterward, the Muslim world would have been happy, and would see us in an entirely different light than they do today. (This is perhaps one of the two great failures of George Sr.'s time in office, and one wonders whether there will be pressure from him now to finish Saddam once and for all. Note: After writing this, ABC News announced Monday night that the U.S. may intend to increase attacks on Iraq.)
If bin Laden turns out to have been the perpetrator of these attacks, one may take him at his word: that his anger with us derives from our putting U.S. soldiers onto sacred Saudi soil, during and after George Bush Senior's Operations Desert Shield and Storm, even if we were protecting his country from further aggression. Father Bush incurred the wrath, and now Son Bush gets to take the hit.
I don't buy this explanation. Bin Laden's experience with the U.S. has, I believe, almost nothing to do with Saudi soil (except that he is now himself an exile, and rages against "corrupt dictators" such as those in Saudi), and everything to do with the U.S. spending about $3B to train and equip rebel forces (including him) in Pakistan and Afghanistan, fighting Russia. It may be that the U.S. decision to pull way back, and then pull out, as Russia departed, left many feeling that the U.S. had deserted them in time of need, and/or was responsible for large death tolls afterward.
Finally, this week has seen many Muslims, in the U.S. and elsewhere, worrying openly about becoming victimized, and professing that their religion is only about peace, and has nothing to do with these terrorist criminals.
I'm not buying that one either.
Although this claim is generally true, there is a bit more to the story. If we go back to the Crusades, it is clear that Christians found great sport in traveling to the East and massacring the "infidels" they found there, so I must start by saying that, historically, none of us are innocent when it comes to the power of religions to cause massive murder.
Even so, today, Christians have given up on this approach, sending missionaries and medicines instead. This is not true for the Muslim faith, which today allows for divine rewards for those involved in Jihads, or religious wars. Further, unlike Christianity or most other religions (not Shinto), Islam wants to take over governments, and to force all those living within a country to live by Islamic precepts. As the Taliban is threatening to do with some charity workers this week, those found violating their beliefs will be killed. Yes, killed. On some critical level, Fundamental Islam is different.
You may have noticed the Taliban asking all Hindus to stitch a yellow strip into their clothing last week, the better to identify them, much as Hitler did with the Jews. Many mainstream Muslims also find the Taliban intolerable, for what it is worth. This does not detract from the Taliban representing, to many Muslims worldwide, the purest form of their religious expression.
Finally, Islam allows the issuing of Fatwas (divinely-inspired legal orders), such as that which called for the death (there is that killing thing again) of Salman Rushdie after he wrote a book the clerics did not like, or that which bin Laden issued a few years back calling for the death of all Americans, at home and abroad, which led to the deaths of all of those wonderful people in New York this week.
It is hard to imagine the Pope, say, or a Japanese monk, issuing death threats for a nation, in the name of a pan-national religion. (If I were a Muslim, I would do my best to eradicate bin Laden and his army, say, yesterday.)
For these reasons, while I understand that almost all Muslims are great people with peace in their hearts, yet we are increasingly seeing a side of the religion which allows, and sometime promotes, institutionalized violence and hatred. Some will object to this statement, but many more are rejoicing this week in public streets, and calling bin Laden a hero.
The Mistake Of Striking The U.S.
Many countries have been the target of terrorist attacks in the past decade, including the U.S. Why should attacking the U.S. be any more dangerous, say, than attacking Israel, or Germany?
This is the kind of miscalculation that one might forgive a non-U.S. citizen: after all, we look like lazy, arrogant tourists from abroad. Add in America's problems in Viet Nam, and what is there to worry about?
What these sloppy student terrorists failed to see in U.S. history is that we come together when attacked - which did not apply in Viet Nam, nor in Korea.
We may not do so well fighting others' wars, but we do a first-rate job of fighting our own. In that arena, we have a perfect score. And the reason is that, as we saw on the East Coast this week, everyone jumps in, the entire nation becomes committed, and no one quits until the job is done.
Now, let me also be the first to agree that language such as that I have used above may seem obsolete, condemned to "real wars," and not to rooting out terrorists before they can strike again. To some degree, this is true, and we'll discuss these issues next.
But it is also true that Congress voted $40B to support this fight within 48 hours of the attacks, that both parties united immediately behind the need for a new War On Terrorism, that every country contacted to date (except Afghanistan) has expressed some measure of support for this new international effort, and that there is every reason to believe that nothing will be spared by the U.S. in its new role of hunting down terrorists worldwide, starting with those involved in these attacks.
I sure as hell would not want to be on the receiving end of what Uncle Sam is dreaming up this week. Indeed, I am in many ways more concerned about what we will do, than about what some terrorist may do. We are much, much more dangerous.
The Response
The Executive Branch
One of the most amazing miscalculations by the terrorists was in their timing. In my personal opinion, our executive branch is being run by six people. In order of importance, they are: George Bush, Sr. (who was in the White House at the time of the attack, while his son was in Florida visiting a middle school); Dick Cheney; Colin Powell; Donald Rumsfeld; Condolezza Rice; and George W. Bush.
The balance of the cabinet has been filled by people who will take orders and not argue.
This team has not been strong, to date, in domestic or foreign policy. Indeed, before this week, having abrogated or stepped away from seven major international treaties in just a few months, the U.S. was rapidly on its way to becoming isolated from the rest of the world community, at a time when (and such a time always comes) we were about to need their help and consensus.
However, if you would like an "A Team" to represent the U.S. in war, there could not be a better group at the top. These guys eat war for breakfast. It's what they do. It's what they are really, really good at.
Moreover, they know this.
You'd have to be a perfect fool to engage this team militarily, on any level. And to do it by handing them a politically-united citizenry is even dumber. (Students of bin Laden know that he devoutly wants a war between the West and the Muslim nations. In this regard, challenging the U.S. is not so stupid, since we are apt to respond with war.)
Cheney and Powell have acquitted themselves extremely well during this week, acting fast, talking to the public, providing a thoughtful and tough image upon which Americans could rely, and generally settling things down, in terms of dates, actions, details, and what comes next.
Even more interesting, this has been George W. Bush's finest hour. Still limited in his speechmaking abilities, he has come through on a personal level, both in his emotional comments in the White House during his "I will do my job" speech, and in his personal visits to those working on the crash sites. George has come across as being tough, sincere, religious, and committed to ending these atrocities.
I would go so far as to say that these attacks have provided him with an opportunity to dig deeper into himself for something of value to share with the public, and that he's found it. Instead of someone pandering to family energy cronies, we have someone personally committed to rid the world of terrorism. It won't happen that way (it is an impossible mission), but this is a role that fits George, and I think he has done a marvelous job in it so far.
Colin Powell has come forward even more strongly, as a thinker and a communicator. While Cheney comes across as being tough and efficient, Powell comes across as a next chief executive, and there have to be a lot of people thinking tonight that we just found (on a higher level) another great American leader.
There has been one aspect to this response which has been predictable, but unfortunate: characterizing the terrorists as cowards. Certainly, anyone who attacks civilians is a villain, but anyone willing to die for his or her cause can hardly be called a coward. Rather, we should be examining what it is about our own foreign policy which has enabled the recruitment of people willing to die in the killing of Americans.
The Congress
You can say it all in about one phrase: $40B, when ten dollars was too much the day before. All differences have been put aside on this issue.
The People
Americans are optimistic and forward-thinking: they live in the future, and not in the past. While others may see this as a failing, it is the way we are. Although none of us will ever forget the events of this week, most of us are already working on making future improvements, in our own lives, and for those around us.
We tend to turn our anger into action, instead of letting it eat away. These events make us stronger as a people, and give us a new sense of who we are, at time when we were needful of it. Literally millions of American flags were sold last week, and they flew from nearly every house and institution.
Anyone who would think that these acts would have cowed the American people was simply, and rather stupidly, uninformed about who we are.
The Next World
For Americans, the Old World is already gone. That was yesterday. Now we're trying to figure out what Tomorrow should look like.
Here are a few things you can expect within days or weeks:
A Reduction In Rights.
Americans will show a begrudging willingness to surrender additional rights, to ensure safety. This will include allowing roving wiretaps, searches when necessary, increased requirements for identification, and various technical changes in the environment (more sensors and cameras), all for citizens of the U.S.
For Non-U.S. citizens:
There is going to be a much-increased level of surveillance and check-in. I would expect stringent new laws and penalties for illegal aliens, and for those here legally who are not citizens. Who does this harm? No one, on some scale. But certainly the attempt by Vicente Fox and his government to push for amnesty for illegals is completely dead. Also unlikely will be any move for illegals which allows them to stay without a complete review and vetting process.
Non-citizens in the U.S. just went down fifteen notches on the U.S. ladder of life.
Technology:
It is likely we will soon see some form of national ID, after many years of fighting off such a prospect. Unlike passports, green cards and visa papers, these will be extremely difficult to forge, and will probably come in the form of smartcards.
Baggage handling will have to be revolutionized again. For the moment, Skycaps are completely out of business. In the airport of the future, we will probably see baggage checking out in front again, but combined with security measures.
Face-matching. Cameras will be everywhere, and technology such as that deployed in Tampa recently (courtesy of Visionics), which matches faces in a crowd with a database of known criminals (or Persons of Interest) will become a way of life. Big Brother just arrived in force, if you weren't watching.
Building Security. Whatever was optional yesterday, just became required. No longer is management responsible only for not losing trade secrets. Today management is responsible for providing a safe and secure workplace. This revolutionizes management's legal and ethical responsibilities, worldwide. Get ready, lawyers.
Chemical Sensing. We can assume that airports, and other locations, will finally shell out the big bucks and include chemical sniffer sensors. One of the hijackers on the Pittsburgh flight supposedly was outfitted with a bomb, and, as far as I can tell, there is nothing today to keep you from covering your body with Semtex (plastique) and walking through those metal detectors at any airport tomorrow morning.
Profiling. We are going to come back at this concept in a different way. All profiling is OK, and how do we protect the rights of those profiled, once stopped? The argument against profiling was always flawed, but always represented real concerns about degradation of individual rights. If you belong to a group which creates more than its share of crimes (such as terrorist acts), you will be questioned or checked, perhaps without your even knowing it, but you will be checked.
The technical problem then becomes not over-relying on profiling, since it represents a weakness in the system: as soon as one profile is developed, it is easy for serious terrorists to move to a different profile, as happened this week in moving from younger to older terrorists this week.
Communications. The cellphone was the star of the week, as those trapped held last poignant conversations with loved ones from buildings and planes, and as those survivors were able (sometimes, but not in lower Manhattan, which was overwhelmed) to communicate with each other.
We learned a few lessons, with answers we already knew, about our communications systems. For me, near ground zero in DC, it went like this: cellphone systems failed first, then landline systems failed, and suddenly the only working communications device was Steve Smith's Blackberry, which we used to email in and out.
The Internet, for those who had access to it, remained up and robust, which is what it was designed to do during attack. If you had had a Net Phone, instead of a Verizon phone, you would have been just fine, presuming you could get onto the Net. The same is true for a satellite phone, at least to date.
All of which suggests that, as I was hoping to describe to 30 Senators last week, we need to get government out of industry's way in building out the wireless Net, and help, not hinder, this project.
Physical Security. There is no replacement for armed marshals and locked, secure cockpit doors, since there will never be a time when we will be able to prevent incidents caused by passengers. The sooner this is implemented, the safer air travel will be.
Summary
The world has changed for all of us, worldwide, whether we lost friends and family, or only know those who did. While terrorism has been around for ages, our approach to it, and to finding and punishing those who practice it, has just changed dramatically. While searching out terrorists is completely different from making war against a nation, no single nation has ever been willing to spend the time and energy in this pursuit that the U.S., and perhaps other nations, are suddenly willing to spend.
Citizens of the U.S. now need to keep in mind that this latest series of attacks is part of a long, complex effort by a few people, to bring down the World Trade Center Towers, and many other mostly-New York monuments. Included in past, often-thwarted, planned attacks, are the intention in the first Twin Towers bombing to have the first tower, bombed at the base, bring down the other; the bombing of the Lincoln and other tunnels; bombing the Empire State Building; bombing Times Square; and other landmarks and cities, including the Millennium effort to bomb the LA Airport, and/or the Seattle Space Needle.
In other words, the success with the Twin Towers comes after many failures, and a concerted, ongoing campaign, which is no doubt far from over, to attack sources of "commerce and government" (in the words of a bin Laden terrorist's guide) in the U.S.
Because this is true, we must consider our selves fortunate that we have not had even greater tragedies until now, and realize that Donald Rumsfeld is right, when he says that the best way to avoid future acts of terror is to first eliminate the person or persons orchestrating the acts. If these attacks were more politically "rational," i.e., aimed at an obvious political negotiation, this would not necessarily be true; but they are not, and he is right.
Once the persons responsible have been dealt with, it is crucially important that we deal with the relation between the U.S. and radical Muslim Fundamentalists as a political, and not just a military, problem. The ultimate path out of violence is always political discussion, and, at least to date, never through killing, which invariably breeds more terrorist acts.
The administration's move to place responsibility on nations which harbor or assist terrorists is a crucial, and irreplaceable, first step in moving beyond our current victim positioning. There is no way to move to peace without making nations responsible. Indeed, who ever suggested that nations were not? It is an interesting point of law, used in Africa and elsewhere, which is about to become an historical curiosity.
The result of the U.S. attacks will be the formation, informally or formally, of the successor to Interpol and Europol, a new world policing body, probably led at first by U.S. agencies, with massive new funding levels, and an almost-unlimited charter. In the early days, this will take the form of various task groups under existing national and international policing and espionage agencies, but I expect a proposal rather quickly to coalesce these groups into a working group with its own anti-terror charter.
People have talked of the missed opportunity that the world had for peace, when President Clinton came so close at Camp David, only to be rebuffed, finally, by Arafat. I have another view: I don't think there was a chance for peace, not because Arafat didn't want it, but because he was unable to agree to it. I suspect that his own backers in the pan-Muslim world, those who are keeping Palestine alive, would not stand for an agreement with Israel.
If this is true, then it is his weakness, combined with the religious ardor of his backers, that have prevented the world from finding peace, and perhaps led to these and other killings. It is worth mentioning here that Osama bin Laden is rumored to disdain Arafat and Palestine, for not being true to Fundamentalist Islam.
Terrorism will probably never end, but the cost of considering it, and of condoning it, may become so high that it becomes less common, if not less effective.
Four criminal kamikaze groups left our control last week. They were pathetically few but viciously effective, and now their handlers are needing of quick capture or eradication. That much will be doing the world an obvious service.
How we act after that is what matters.
Your comments are always welcome.
Sincerely,
Mark R. Anderson
President
Strategic News Service LLC Tel. 360-378-3431
P.O. Box 1969 Fax. 360-378-7041
Friday Harbor, WA 98250 USA Email: sns@tapsns.com
now back to lurking
Regards,
TRIO |
