Decius wrote:
] noteworthy wrote:
] ] Timothy Naftali, author of Blind Spot: The Secret History of
] ] American Counterterrorism will be interviewed on the Fox &
] ] Friends morning program, Wednesday, June 1st, 7AM.
]
] Have you read this book? Yes, I have read the book. I originally posted a review of the book on May 5. I also recently mentioned it in a thread about the detained Cuban bomber. ] "Naftali concludes that open, liberal democracies like the U.S.
] are incapable of effectively stopping terrorism." What does he suggest? The book is first and finally a history book, so it is primarily an analysis of the past rather than a prescription for the future. He concludes that Americans are basically unwilling to do what it takes to decisively defeat terrorism in "peacetime", both at the level of the public and also at the senior levels of the military and government. He cites the inherent structure of American government as partly responsible for extreme political sensitivity to public pressure when it comes to imposing restrictions on the public and authorizing invasive security measures. In the last chapter, he criticizes Clinton for the way he allowed the public to drive his external policies. He calls Clinton's efforts "serious, but in retrospect ... half-hearted." Those who've read the two stories last year in the Washington Post (and memed here, to characteristic American indifference), which detailed the various abortive attempts throughout the 1990s to capture bin Laden in Afghanistan, will understand Naftali's criticisms in this regard. Anyone who followed the news during the Clinton years will recall the way in which his administration extensively employed opinion polls in order to devise and refine public policy positions. In this book, and in the 9/11 report more broadly, the public-private contrast of Clinton becomes quite clear. Although he declared (privately and secretly) to the government, the military, and the entire intelligence community that stopping bin Laden and al Qaeda was The Supreme Job One, Above All Else, No Expenses To Be Spared, he never explained this intense focus to the public. In the midst of all the personal scandals of his second term, Clinton devoted enormous amounts of time to counterterrorism, but in the end he failed to act, at least in part because he was concerned about a lack of public support. This was largely a problem of his own making, because he kept the risks hidden from the public. It wasn't until Decemb... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ] | 
