With all the hullabaloo over Deep Throat, Tim Naftali got bumped from the Wednesday show.

Here's what is on tap for Thursday, June 2, 2005:

"FOX & Friends First"

Can the US effectively stop terrorism? We'll get a read from Tim Naftali, author of "Blind Spot."

I'm not a regular viewer of this program, but based on scanning through Wednesday's show, I don't expect the interview to last more than a few minutes.

FOX & Friends - Guests and Topics for Thursday, June 2, 2005

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) ]

RE: Timothy Naftali to appear on Fox News

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.

Timothy Naftali to appear on Fox News

I guess the name of this MemeStreams topic needs to be changed ...

"What we really want now is a strategic approach to defeat violent extremism. GWOT is catchy, but there may be a better way to describe it, and those are things that ought to be incumbent on us to look at."

A key aspect is likely to be the addition of public diplomacy efforts aimed at winning over Arab public sentiment, and State Department official Paul Simons said at a congressional hearing earlier this month that the "internal deliberative process" was broadly conceived to encompass everything from further crackdowns on terrorist financing networks to policies aimed at curbing the teaching of holy war against the West and other "tools with respect to the global war on terrorism."

MemeStreams, you tool! Use MemeStreams!

"They recognize there's been a vacuum of leadership. There has been a dearth of senior leadership directing this day to day. No one knows who's running this on a day-to-day basis."

Is he talking about Us or Them? Too close to call?

Does this help to clarify?

"No doubt they been destroyed. No doubt they are no longer capable to launch the kind of attacks that they did on all of us a few years ago."

Probably not ...

Review May Shift Terror Policies

Somehow, in the three-and-a-half years that the United States has been here, it has not figured out how to avoid this trap. This incapacity for institutional learning is perhaps the most surprising failing on the part of the Army that I have witnessed.

With a Little Help From Our Friends

The CIA is conducting a secretive war game, dubbed "Silent Horizon," this week to practice defending against an electronic assault on the same scale as the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks.

There's really nothing to this article, but it's a data point. Perhaps more detailed reports will emerge in the near future.

Dorothing Denning Declines Invitation to CIA Cyberwargame

Their claims suggest a close collaboration of American and Pakistani intelligence officials in vetting terror suspects, and they raise questions about the responsibilities that the United States has for its own citizens abroad.

FBI Is Accused of Ignoring Abuse of 2 Americans in Pakistan

"We thought, why should we continue to cooperate?"

Syria Stops Cooperating With US Forces and CIA

The greatest respect we can show to Arabs and Muslims -- and the best way to help Muslim progressives win the war of ideas -- is to take them seriously and stop gazing at our own navels.

The Best P.R.: Straight Talk

The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq -- as well as the only workable strategy going forward.

There is no monopoly on hypocrisy.

However, on further inspection, it is often revealed to be an incomplete or inaccurate (or both) understanding by the observer of the alleged hypocrite's motives and priorities.

Just because someone's behavior seems irrational doesn't make it so. Often it just means you don't know what they know.

Outrage and Silence