[lit-ideas] Re: Alternatives to genocide or waiting meekly for terrorists to strike
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2006 15:58:29 -0700 (PDT)
Somewhat in the lines of John's posting. O.K.
http://www.slate.com/id/2147499/
Looking for Intel in All the Wrong Places
What Washington can learn from Britain's foiled terror
plot.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, Aug. 10, 2006, at 6:07 PM ET
Little is yet known about the plot to blow up at least
a half-dozen airplanes as they carried hundreds of
passengers over the Atlantic Ocean from England to
America. But one thing seems clear: The plot was
foiled because of intelligence information, much of it
provided by a nasty source that has itself been linked
to terrorist organizations.
According to the Times of London, Pakistan's
intelligence service worked "closely with MI5 and
Scotland Yard" and, at the request of British
authorities, supplied information that proved "crucial
in thwarting the attacks" and in arresting the alleged
conspirators, most of them apparently of Pakistani
descent.
If police hadn't nabbed them in their homes during a
sweeping raid, the plotters would likely have sailed
through airport security. Metal detectors are blind to
liquid explosives. Short of an amazing stroke of luck
(along the lines of the flight attendant who sniffed
out Richard Reid's attempt to ignite his shoe bomb on
an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami in
December 2001), not even the most astute guard would
have looked twice at a soft-drink container or at the
flash camera that was reportedly to trigger the blast.
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By the same token, drones and radar-warning planes
can't spot every potential terrorist scrambling across
the border. X-ray machines cannot cope with the vast
boatloads of cargo unloaded every day at America's
ports (the standard estimate is that just 2 percent of
containers are inspected). Nor can the radiation
detectors deployed along New York City's bridges and
tunnels pick up every gamma ray emitted by every truck
that zooms by.
Border patrols and detection devices are necessary
tools. Like locks on the front door, they make it
harder for terrorists to make plans and wreak havoc.
But there's always a back door or window that can be
pried open. Preventing that from happening requires
good intelligence, and good intelligence requires
contacts with the sort of people who hang around the
dark alleys of the world.
There's a broader lesson here, and it speaks to the
Bush administration's present jam throughout the
Middle East and in other danger zones. If the British
had adopted the same policy toward dealing with
Pakistan that Bush has adopted toward dealing with,
say, Syria or Iran (namely, it's an evil regime, and
we don't speak with evil regimes), then a lot of
passenger planes would have shattered and spilled into
the ocean, hundreds or thousands of people would have
died, and the world would have suddenly been plunged
into very scary territory.
It is time to ask: Which is the more "moral" course?to
shun odious regimes as a matter of principle or to
take unpleasant steps that might prevent mass terror?
The two courses aren't always mutually exclusive.
There are degrees of odiousness, some of them
intolerable; and there are degrees of terror, some of
them unavoidable.
In this light, it's worth looking back at an article
by Seymour Hersh in the July 28, 2003, issue of The
New Yorker. Hersh reported that, in the months
following the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade
Center, Syria emerged as "one of the CIA's most
effective intelligence allies in the fight against
al-Qaeda." Syria had hundreds of files on al-Qaida,
including dossiers on those who had participated?or
wanted to participate?in the 9/11 attacks. Syrian
spies had penetrated al-Qaida cells throughout the
Middle East, and Syrian President Bashar Assad was
passing on loads of data to the CIA and the FBI. Some
of these tips apparently foiled al-Qaida plots,
including a plan to fly an explosives-laden glider
into the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet headquarters.
Assad's interests in this exchange were
straightforward. As he explained to Hersh, al-Qaida
had links to Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, which posed a
threat to Assad's own government. "The need to
cooperate [with the United States] was self-evident,"
he said. Hersh noted a more opportunistic motive:
Assad wanted to get off the official U.S. list of
states that sponsor terrorism; doing so would have
allowed Syria to receive aid and investment.
In a passage that's even more intriguing now than it
was three years ago, Hersh reported that, in the fall
of 2002, Gen. Hassan Khalil, head of Syrian military
intelligence, told Washington that, in exchange for
reopened relationships, Syria would impose
restrictions on the political and military actions of
Hezbollah.
A huge interagency feud broke out over what to do
about the Syrian offer. The State Department and the
CIA, which particularly valued Syria's intelligence
pipeline, favored pursuing the talks. The civilian
leaders in the Pentagon opposed the move; they were in
the midst of planning the invasion of Iraq, and
"regime change" in Syria was next on their to-do list.
The debate was soon moot. Once the war in Iraq began,
Assad stopped the flow. Yet there he was, a few months
later, telling Hersh that he was willing to turn the
spigot back on again?to no response from the Bush
administration.
It's unclear?Hersh noted as much in his article?where
resumed talks might have led. Would Assad really have
lowered the hammer on Hezbollah? If he had refused to
do so, how far could the United States have pursued
the relationship?
Still, the episode clearly shows?as does Pakistan's
recent cooperation with MI5 and Scotland Yard?that the
concept of morality in international relations is more
complex than President Bush sometimes seems to
recognize. Consider this: Had the CIA won the internal
debate on whether to deal with Syria, is it possible
that the current war between Israel and Hezbollah
might never have taken place? How many compromises of
"principle" would that have been worth?
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