Lookit - try this for an exercise. Erase all the news stories about the 9/11 commission from your mind, and go back to the days when we were not omnisicent -- you and I remember them well, we were here.
Remember how painful it was to decide what needed to be done? Remember how painful it was to look at documents like the National Security Strategy and say "yes, I guess it needs to be done"?
We've stepped off the beaten path onto paths heretofore unknown, un-dreamed-of.
One of the reasons I supported Bush in 1999 was that he promised that under his administration the US would no longer be the "policeman of the world," intervening willy-nilly in places like Kosovo. Nobody of any importance in the US, whether in the Clinton administration nor the Bush administration, said one word, not one single word, about the massacres in Rwanda. We had no clue. No official clue, but of course we knew. And we looked the other way, because we were safe.
The honest-to-God truth is, and has always been, that Al Qaeda cannot do us much harm unless they get lucky. There are not enough of them, they don't have enough of the right kind of weapons -- unless they have nukes, or something similar, like chemical weapons or biological weapons. The threat is called "asymmetrical" because there are so few of them, so weak, and so many of us, so strong. Without luck and ingenuity, they're unable to hurt us. So our biggest threat is imagination. If their imagination to cause harm is superior to our imagination to anticipate harm, they win, we lose.
They only have to win once, we can't afford to lose, ever.
Those are really crappy odds. Anybody who tells you he can beat those odds is a liar, and in fact, nobody does tell you he can beat those odds. |
