I had really hoped we'd be farther along in the War On Terror by now. Last
September I was a warhawk. In October I was told to be patient. In November
I was told that this would take a long time and required the backing of
a broad international coalition. That's when I got skeptical. I'd heard that
one before, as I wrote that month.
Here we are in April with little progress to report. The situation is worse.
I travel frequently and can tell you firsthand that life has become no
more difficult for terrorists in our nation's airports. For you and me
it has become more of a hassle, but not for the terrorists.
While white grandmothers from Omaha take their
shoes off for bomb inspections, black-bearded men from the Middle East walk
directly onto airplanes. I've seen it. I ended up standing next to a bearded
Middle Easterner while waiting for my luggage. He grew up in San Francisco, graduated
from Stanford, and now works in Silicon Valley. He's as American as I am
but he looks Middle Eastern. I asked if he's had any trouble with the crackdown on terror.
He said not at all. In fact, if anything, he's been treated better
than ever as people go out of their way to prove that he isn't
being targeted. In his words, mind you: "Political correctness will
be the undoing of this country."
I think he's right. In our fervor to treat everybody kindly, we
must be giving the enemy a laugh at this impossible good fortune.
"Imagine," they chuckle in their caves, "a foe that doesn't want to
hurt our feelings. What luck!"
[UPDATE: On Dec. 4th, 2004, The Wall Street Journal ran an
excellent piece on this subject called
Straighten Up and Fly Right.]
My experience is anecdotal, but USA Today last week reported
facts that confirm it. In a federal test of new
airport security systems, investigators managed to smuggle guns past
screeners 30% of the time. Our new and improved airport security
missed 60% of simulated explosives and 70% of knives. Overall, the
screeners failed to detect one of every two weapons.
That's the main problem on the homefront, but there are others:
- We never found who sent the anthrax.
- After his first six months in office, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge
has come up with a color-coded "Chance of Terrorism" scale, similar to what
you see on the evening weather report as "Chance of Precipitation". This scale
has so far been false every time. At this rate, Mr. Ridge
will soon be the Director of Crying Wolf and his warnings will receive about
as much attention as car alarms in a parking lot.
- Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) said last week that the nation's nuclear
reactors are riddled with "black hole after black hole," and are therefore
easy prey for terrorists. He wrote in a House committee report that "Terrorists
may now be employed at nuclear reactors in the United States, just as
terrorists enrolled in flight schools in the U.S."
Overseas it's not much better.
Operation Anaconda, the U.S. mission to destroy Taliban holdouts in
Afghanistan, was a flop. We didn't kill key Taliban leaders and the Pentagon's
reported successes are turning out to be false.
Supposedly, there were 1000 Taliban hidden in the cave maze. We bombed
the smithereens out of the caves and announced victory while the dust
blew away. When it had cleared, only 20 bodies were found. The explanation
is that the other 980 had been vaporized by the bombing campaign.
We might accept that explanation, except that there are an eery number
of terrorist sightings in the news. Just this past week, The
Christian Science Monitor reported that Osama bin Laden and his top
al Qaida sidekick, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were seen near the eastern Afghanistan
town of Khost. What were they doing? Bin Laden was traveling with a
group of Arabs and al-Zawahiri was supervising the construction of
new caves.
That seems hard to believe, but then again nobody can show us their bodies
to prove otherwise. Not the CIA, not the special forces, not
the Afghan warlords. The warlord quoted in The
Christian Science Monitor, Kamal Khan Zadran, said:
"Unfortunately, all of the most famous al Qaida from all over Afghanistan
have gathered in my area. There will be a big operation against the
Americans soon. Al Qaida is here, and they're not going away."
Not if we have anything to do with it, anyway.
Lastly, the Bush Doctrine has already crumbled at the first sign of
political pressure over Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority. On March 27, Bush
said in a speech broadcast live from Georgia:
"I laid out a doctrine and it's really important for when the United
States speaks it means what they say. And I said that if you harbor
a terrorist, you're just as guilty as the terrorist; if you feed or
hide one, you're just as guilty as those who came and murdered
thousands of innocent Americans. It's an important part of any
foreign policy to do what you say you're going to do, and we did.
Thanks to the mighty United States military, the Taliban no
longer is in power."
That last point is debatable, as you read above. True, they are
not running the show in Afghanistan so Bush is technically
correct. However, they haven't gone anywhere, the terrorists appear
to be regrouping, and we haven't figured out how to defend ourselves
at home yet.
Worst of all, Bush is not sticking to his word. Israel is moving
against the PA in what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has termed
an "uncomprimising war" against terrorism. Israel is responding to
a recent spate of suicide bombings during Passover. If those don't
qualify as terrorism, what does?
Having bottled Arafat in his headquarters, the Israeli forces
set about proving to the world what they already knew to be true: that Arafat
is a terrorist. UPI reported on April 4:
Intelligence Col. Miri Eisin told reporters they have removed two truckloads of documents from Arafat's compound. Eisin produced two, which, she said, bear Arafat's signature authorizing payments of hundreds of dollars to people involved in terror attacks.
Minister Dan Meridor told reporters the documents show Arafat's "direct link to the terror attacks, to financing them, a direct link that cannot allow for any deniability. Mr. Arafat is running a terror organization. He is the head of a terror organization. He is quite deeply involved in paying checks and money to terrorists." Meridor offered to show the U.S. intelligence "any document they want" to examine.
Yet, the Bush Doctrine does not apply here. Bush has turned coat on our ally, Israel.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, part of the group that failed to oust Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War under
the first President Bush, is on his way to the Middle East to broker a peace settlement.
Powell's goal is to get Israel to agree to a Saudi peace plan in which Israel
retreats to its 1967 borders in exchange for being recognized by its Arab neighbors.
Let's get this straight. Israel is expected to give up tangible, real property that
can only be recovered by launching
another war, in trade for a spoken promise from people who have broken past promises?
Come on.
Why won't the world accept that terrorists cannot be reasoned with? Why must we continue
to play nice with these people? How can Powell expect to build a peaceful coexistence
between the state of Israel and a group that has as its goal the elimination of the
state of Israel?
While we continue to inspect white grandmothers for bombs before they board planes
to visit their families, al Qaida is regrouping in Afghanistan, terrorists might be running
our nuclear power plants, and Bush has dispatched Colin Powell to pull Israel off the
most notorious terrorist group on the planet.
So much for the Bush Doctrine. If this keeps up, so much for America.
Return to Articles
5–9 reader votes 
10–19 reader votes 
20+ reader votes