Bryan Strawser

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Terrorism

Only Four Years

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Over at his new digs, Lex has a post up about the 4th Anniversary of 9/11:

It’s hard to believe it’s only been four years.

Four years ago we stared at the television screens in shock and anger, teary-eyed, uncomprehending, lacking the vocabulary. We watched the endless loops of those buildings coming down, the Pentagon on fire, a field in rural Pennsylvania. Four years ago our children looked to us with questioning eyes, asking us wordessly how this could happen. Four years ago we did not quite know how to answer them.

Four years ago we wondered who had done this to us, and why it was done. We wondered how anyone could hate so incandescently that they would kill not only themselves, but nearly three thousand anonymous strangers. Four years ago we were still unaware that there were those who hated us and offered us only two choices: Submit, or die.

Four years ago most of us hadn’t heard of al Qaeda, or bin Laden, or al Zawahiri or al Zarqawi, strange combinations of sounds on our tongues, exotic names that led to exotic places like Kabul and Kanduhar, Najaf and Falluja, none of which we’d heard of either, for the most part.

Four years and one day ago we were sour and divided. One day later, we were just Americans, and all the old divisions were meaningless. Since the disaster fallen upon all of us collectively, the wealthy and the poor, without regard to color or ethnicity or gender no one could possibly gain any political advantage by trying to divide us into smaller groups with competing interests. No one even tried. That was four years ago.

Use of Force

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There’s been alot of yelling and screaming in the media about the Metropolitan Police in the UK shooting and killing a man recently because they believed that he may be a suicide bomber.

And while I regret that they were wrong, they did exactly the right thing.

Smash and others have posted of this as well. There’s no option other than to shoot them in the head.

We can live in a fantasy world if we want – we can bury our heads in the sand like an Ostrich, or we can get serious about thinking about some of the issues we are going to face in the coming years.

Suicide bombers will be one of them.

At the time I took a DHS workshop earlier this year on suicide bombers, only one US police department had a use of force policy that allowed them to shoot a suspected suicide bomber. The United States Capitol Police.

Like it or not, it’s only a matter of time before we see someone participate in a suicide bombing here in the United States.. and we’d better be prepared for it – and the rapid paradigm changes that it will bring about in terms of law enforcement and private security.

Lileks on the Rove / Plame Story

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Eventually, I suspect that I’ll get around to writing about this, but it’s interesting to watch reactions as more and more facts trickle out. In any event, Lileks, as usual, says things far better than I ever can:

Anyway. The arguments over the Rove / Plame affair are best hashed out elsewhere. was nearly swayed by an interview with noted thinker and finger-painter Ted Rall today, until he said he wouldn’t believe the administration if they said the sky was blue. People say this as if it proves their bonafides as a critic, but really, that’s a rather easy thing to verify. If the sky is indeed blue and Scott McClellan makes that point, you could assume that they have painted the windows, I guess. In any case I’m amused how this Scandal seems disconnected from the issue of yellowcake in light of the post 9/11 atmosphere. Given all the tales in the 90s about the threat Saddam faced – a threat everyone accepted when Clinton was launching strikes and pulling serious faces – the idea that the whole Niger-yellowcake nexus should have gotten a big shrug in 2002, when the WTC rubble still smoked, seems to be another act of willful amnesia. If anyone in 02 could have thought we’d be parsing who said what about which agent re a politically motivated rewrite of the intel, they’d have heaved a sigh of relief: so we didn’t get hit again.

It’s all a luxury that seems vapid only after something bad happens again. You’ll note that when Blair gives a press conference nowadays the press doesn’t bring up the Downing Street Memo. Give them time, though; in due course the press will shake off that ill-fitting caot of national solidarity and start asking why the bombers weren’t detected by orbital satellites the day they were born. The role of the press is to reset the clock to yesterday morn, ferret out the slightest hint of imperfection, and splash the front page with the words that give them that priapic prang: Ongoing Investigation. Questions remain. But sources say.

[…]

Well: what of the families of the charter airline pilots?

You may recall the story. The xx ran big piece on a charter airline the CIA was using to transport suspects. This isn’t just outing a covert operative; it was outing a covert operation. In the case of Wilson / Plame, we had an attempt to point out how two opponents of the adminstration were trying to thwart the foreign policy of the US government via the pages of the NYT and Vanity Fair; in the case of the airline, we had an attempt to peel back the Tupperware lid of secrecy of an anti-terrorist organization in order to ruin – I’m sorry, let the people know what they needed to know about the operation. Did anyone wonder whether the families of the people in that charter airline might be harmed in anyway? Did anyone wonder whether this information might compromise attempts to interrogate suspects? Did anyone ask what the devil was served by running this story?

Imagine the war was prosecuted by a Democratic administration; imagine a GOP operative blowing the charter airline’s cover to make a point about billing irregularies. Imagine the GOP operative slipping photos of the planes on the tarmac, tailfin numbers visible, to the press.

Imagine the press running with the covert-ops story, outraged that the Democratic administration had covered up this crucial story. Can you see that happening? You can?

The air on Bizzaro World – what does it smell like, exactly? As fresh and sweet as one can only dream?

Take That

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Yesterday’s New York Times covers the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling that military commission trials are fair under the Constitution:

Judge Robertson had held that the commissions could not go on because they did not provide minimally fair procedures and violated international law. His conclusion threw into doubt the legal proceedings devised by the administration to deal with hundreds of suspected terrorists captured by the United States in Afghanistan during the military campaign that toppled the Taliban following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

President Bush has declared all Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters to be unlawful enemy combatants, and as such not entitled to be treated as legitimate prisoners of war.

Critics of the administration have argued that the military commission trials do not afford all the legal protections that courts-martial do. But in the appeal upheld today, the administration argued that the commission trials were fair – and not incidentally a vital part of its war on terrorism – and that since the stateless Qaeda terror network had never signed the Geneva Convention, its members were not entitled to the protections afforded prisoners of war, which include the right not to be put on trial for hostilities.

Administration lawyers had argued that Judge Robertson, in conferring Geneva Convention protections on Mr. Hamdan and by extension others like him, had “put terrorism on the same legal footing as legitimate methods of waging war.”

Those “legitimate methods,” as described in the Convention, include wearing uniforms to distinguish fighters from civilians and prohibitions against making civilians targets. The administration argued that Al Qaeda fighters had openly defied the Convention.

The court also ruled that Al Qaeda fighters were not prisoners of war – they were illegal combatants.

Take that.

Can we win? Can we lose?

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A couple serious thinkers, such as Lex, have asked lately the two burning questions all of us should be faced with right now:

Can we win?

Or.. Can we lose?

And the answer to both of these questions is yes.

I’m the son of a Vietnam veteran, the grandson of two World War II veterans. Both of these experiences weigh heavily in my own thoughts and feelings about the conflict that we find ourselves in today.

World War II was undeniably the good fight – where right triumphed, with great sacrifice, over wrong. Millions died, not a few of them Americans and our allies. Great sacrifices were made on many fronts. All that we had as a nation was poured into that war.

Vietnam was another story. Our nation was sorely divided over our role in the conflict between North and South Vietnam – and the aftermath on our nation and on our military took years to recover.

The shadow of Vietnam looks over everything that we do today.

I firmly believe that regardless of the current situation that we have done the right things as a nation since 9/11. Going after the first sanctuary of terrorism in Afghanistan was the right thing to do – and confronting Iraq and taking military action such as we have done was also the right thing to do.

I believe this because I believe that our nation’s outlook on what it would take to defend our people, our territory, and our interests changed significantly – we could no longer take the risk that a nation like Iraq could possess weapons of mass destruction – so we took that government out.

But even more importantly, these actions combined, over the long term, will change the long term outlook of this region – the power structure of what makes up the Middle East will change and change in huge ways in years to come… if we are successful in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In these areas, I believe we are on the path to victory.. we can win.. but it is not going to be easy.

And this is where I think we can lose.

I think that since Vietnam, we’ve lacked a certain sense of will and determination overall. It was obvious during World War II that it was there.. Korea a bit less so, Vietnam clearly not so overtime. Even during Operation Desert Storm you saw the warnings about massive casualties and major defeat for our forces…

I fear that we’re in for a long multi-year struggle that will take place on many fronts – economically, politically, and militarily – it will happen on distant battlefields, on the high seas, on airplanes and airports, in shopping malls and subway trains, but most importantly around our own dinner tables. As we saw in London, the terrorists are going to bring this battle into our backyards – it’s only a matter of time before we see suicide bombings here in the United States.. and that’s a day as a professional that I dread…

But the most important conversations are those that will happen around our dinner tables, around the grill in the backyard with the neighbors, and in our own living rooms – it’s about being prepared for the battle ahead – and the long road it will take to be safe and secure in our nation and around the world.

It’s not going to happen overnight – it’s not going to be easy – but we have no choice but to engage the world and those trouble spots in this conflict. That’s where the left is dead wrong – and where I fear if we listen to their arguments – and travel down their path – that we’ll lose.

And that cost will be too high for us to bear.

Quote of the Day

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President Bush, as quoted by the New York Times earlier this week:

Mr. Bush said that there was “total transparency” at the Guantánamo Bay detention center in Cuba and that the International Red Cross was free to inspect the center at any time. To those Europeans skeptical of his claims, Mr. Bush said he would “suggest buying an airplane ticket” and going to “take a look for yourself.”

You will fail.. echoes of Churchill

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It’s important, however, that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world.

Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world.

– Tony Blair, Prime Minister, The United Kingdom

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others – that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfill their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don’t want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

– London Mayor Ken Livingstone