All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Richard Clarke at the 9/11 Commission hearings:
To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11 … To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television: your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask — once all the facts are out — for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
Thank you, Mr. Clarke.
Which is why it’s heartening to read Senator John McCain’s prescription for dealing with the Holy Terrors of 9/11:
Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It’s still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave. Suck it up, for crying out loud. You’re almost certainly going to be okay. And in the unlikely event you’re not, do you really want to spend your last days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape? That’s not a life worth living, is it?
Once again, the Senator’s got it right. For all the talk of the world having turned upside down on 9/11, and for all the future danger we face, it’s worth remembering that in that same year, over 8,000 Americans died in workplace accidents, and over 50,000 from gun wounds, and yet somehow we manage to keep going to work every day, even in armed-to-the-teeth states like Texas and Idaho.
And the Europeans have understood this too. Spain suffered a terrible blow on March 11, but they’ve been through so much worse, and so has the rest of Europe. The threat that Al Qaeda poses to our civilization is paltry compared to the threat of total nuclear annihilation that hung over our heads for the latter half of the 20th century, or the plague of fascist domination, destruction and mass murder that swept the continent at midcentury. All of the casualties inflicted by Al Qaeda to date amount to something like an afternoon’s work at the Battle of the Marne. If anything, we should be grateful that the major powers on the planet have learned, for the moment, to play well with each other, so that our major conflicts (excluding the chaos of sub-Saharan Africa) are asymmetrical, low-casualty compared to state-on-state warfare, and heavily symbolic instead of just as bludgeoningly destructive as possible. In fact, if you exclude the Iraq war, which we started without needing to, we’ve managed to reduce conflict to the levels of the Pax Romana and the Pax Britannica.
Now all we need are leaders who can see the current situation for what it is. In much darker times, President Roosevelt reassured us that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” His words remain a warning to us in these paranoid but peaceful times.
The Traveler, which just a week ago or so was Between the Lines, is changing names again. But this time It’ll actually have its very own shiny URL. Are you ready, kids?
The new name is …
The Palaverist
Whew! That was exciting. The new URL will be http://www.palaverist.com, or just http://palaverist.com. I’m just waiting for the link to go active, and then I’ll pull the ol’ switcheroo.
Hopefully this exciting development (I can hear the vast collective heart-thumping already) will be followed in the next few weeks by a behind-the-scenes move to a new web server that will give me a lot more flexibility. Oh, the joys! If you’re too ecstatic now, go read the news; that’ll bring you back down.
Oh, and I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that anyone who bankrolls me through the Columbia School of Journalism will get a personalized haiku by yours truly.
Working is too hard
I prefer sugardaddies
Oops! I mean patrons
See? (Offer not valid if your name has more than seven syllables. That means you, Mr. Ramakrishnavannamalai.)
The geographic center of New York City is about 200 feet east of the intersection of Greene Avenue and Malcom X Boulevard in Brooklyn.
Which leads me to wonder: exactly how is this a politically savvy move for career civil servant who was originally appointed by President Reagan? The assumption is that he has some kind of motive of personal gain, but I think the truth may be simply that he is concerned with American security and has an important story to tell. As Clarke put it, “I’m not doing this because I’m disgruntled, I’m doing this because I think the American people need to know the truth.” Is all disappointment or disagreement with the White House “playing politics”? This White House would have us believe so.
A second line of attack has been to say that Clarke was out of the loop, that major antiterror policies were formulated without his involvement:
Clarke’s successor as the top counter-terrorism official at the White House, Wayne Downing, told NBC’s “Today” show that “there may be some ego issues here because I know the operating style of the White House changed a lot when the Bush administration came in and a lot of Dick’s direct access to the president just didn’t occur any more.”
Which raises the question: why not?
Clarke served as antiterrorism expert for the National Security Council, and his brief was coordinating antiterrorist efforts across all executive-branch departments. If Clarke wasn’t given access to the president, the conclusion I draw is that the president didn’t think antiterror efforts were a priority. But if Bush and his top advisors were formulating antiterror plans, then Clarke’s exclusion suggests a certain degree of disarray within the administration. It’s as if Bush had decided to develop a national healthcare plan without mentioning any of it to the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Either that, or it’s just another example of this White House’s lack of interest in any information that doesn’t advance their own story.
As such, I want to invite any readers out there from beyond the borders of New York to send me a short piece on what’s going on where you are. Even the simple details of an ordinary day are worthwhile. Did you buy groceries in Indiana? Work late in Lahore? Go out to a bar with your friends in Singapore? Whatever and wherever, and I’ll post them up. Or get us up to date on the politics of the moment in Oregon or Scotland or Lahore. Whatever, from wherever, send it in and I’ll try to post it.
As I have pointed out before (1, 2, 3), the problem with reelecting Bush on his record of fighting terrorism is that his record on fighting terrorism is terrible.
Well, today it’s all over the news because Richard Clarke, the former “terrorism czar” who served under Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, said so on 60 Minutes yesterday and in a new book. He provides a detailed account of the ways that the Bush administration downplayed the threat from Al Qaeda before 9/11, actually reversing Clinton Administration efforts to tackle the problem of Osama Bin Laden.
The White House, of course, has begun a vigorous campaign to discredit Clarke, just as they have attempted to discredit former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and former Ambassador Joseph Wilson (the latter by feloniously revealing that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative). It’s more of the same pattern of blaming someone else and pretending that problems aren’t really there. This isn’t leadership, it’s fantasy.
The Democratic Party has a petition up to demand the truth. Sign it if you’re interested.
Well, that or a long nap.