In recent years, the US body politic performed a laborious stocktaking of the multiple failures that led up to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with intelligence failure being bandied about as a prime contributing factor.
The 9/11 commission of inquiry concluded that fragmentation and shoddy coordination among the panoply of American intelligence agencies caused a preventable disaster. But here too, the longer-term view was that the problem went much deeper than incompetent turf battle among spy organizations and that it was actually a come-uppance for misguided American foreign policies in the Middle East.
Post mortems of events that generate a crisis for American overseas interests essentially go along two opposing lines. The first one is technical, which involves dissecting the minutiae of why the nation’s assortment of spies did not provide accurate advance information so that the dreaded outcome could have been occluded or at least hedged against.
The second one is political, which asks why American interests were poorly defined and executed by the highest office holders in power when the realities on the ground were clearly headed towards a shocking denouement that would set back US influence in a country or region for decades.
[…]
If the attacks of 9/11 unearthed the “why do they hate us?” refrain, the largely peaceful deposing of decades-old pro-American tyrants today has uncorked the “why do we always back the bad guys?” soul-searching.
Read the entire article. Terrorists aren’t terrorists because it seems like a good career choice. If we hadn’t treated the Middle East as ours to do with as we please to get the oil, would we have the wars, etc we’re having now?
0
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
The politicians will never blame themselves, as that would be a admittance to oppressing others for their resources and past public complicity and/or willful apathy and ignorance.
It would help if the UN kicked everyone out of jeruselem and made it a Disney World like place.
They would have been late reporting this story if it was published September 13, 2001.
If those damn environmentalists would just let us take the oil we have here in the states out of the ground, we wouldn’t have had to encroach on the middle east in the first place. Its all the damn granolas’ fault.
Hey, what’s an intellgence?
Question for the masses. How much oil does the US actually import from the middle east? The answers to much and to damn much are insufficient. Please provide an actual percentage and your source(s).
Don’t know the exact numbers but most of America’s oil imports come from Canada and Venezuela. Mexico used to be a bigger player but their production is dropping.
Most Mid-East product goes to Europe and Asia. But it is a world market and prices respond to events and demand throughout the world.
Where the oil comes from and goes are based mostly on geography, you try to ship product the shortest distance possible.
The US is not an oil rich country. Most of our quite extensive energy reserves are coal and natural gas. There has been a huge increase in recoverable supplies of natural gas in the last ten years mostly due to new drilling technology, we have known reserves that should last about 100 years. We have about a 300 year supply of coal.
I don’t understand why folks think the US gov is not allowing energy development. There has been a huge increase in the availability of natural gas in the last decade, a lot of it from Federal lands.
The US is going to have to do more with coal. I know the environmentalists will howl (I am one!). But we don’t have much in the way of other options.
The whole thing with oil is it’s inate superiority in transportation systems. Lightweight, powerful internal combustion engines using a fuel with very high energy content and ease of handling like gasoline or diesel still rule the roost when it comes to moving things and people. I don’t see anybody trying to build a battery powered airliner!
Speaking of natural gas. At current prices a BTU purchased as natural gas is about one/fouth the cost of a BTU purchased as oil. This price differential is completely attributable to oil’s inherent advantages as a transportaion fuel. I am very glad today that my house is heated with gas.
The question for the US is “What will we do for transportation fuels in the future when oil supplies are lost”? And we will lose these supplies either through eventual depletion or political/military events in the Midlle East.
I think we will have to make synthetic gasoline and oil from coal. Again I hear the howl of my fellow environmentalists, but can anybody provide much of an alternative?
But I also think we should be building nuke plants. Anyway, this post ought to get some folks stirred up to point out all my faults logical and otherwise. Have fun!
Did we do everything right? No
However many of the terrorist think they are continuing the same jihad begun by Mohammad the prophet. Other than converting to Islam it is rather hard to see how we could please them and after watching a video of Muslims killing Muslims they didn’t consider to be orthodox I have my doubts if even that would work. A quick check of local news events suggests that most of the killing is Muslims killing Muslims.
Last and by no means least many state that they intend to reestablish the Khilāfa. That’s pretty much in the same league as rebuilding the Roman Empire, the Japanese Empire of WW II fame, or creating the Third Reich. A peaceful resolution of everybody’s ambitions seems unlikely on the face of it even among Muslims.
If the Korean says anything about the lives of none Muslims being of any importance I missed it. The best I can come up with is selected non Muslims can be allowed to live as long as they pay the tax and lick the feet of their betters.
Intelligence failures are used as the scapegoat by politicians for their political failures.
Intelligence workers cannot go to the public and tell their story. They depend on political workers to tell the truth.
Guess what.
When we switch 30 percent of our cars over to natural gas the price of oil will drop by 50 percent.Lets get started.
Most of the policy decisions that got us in to this mess were driven by the cold war of the 1950-1990. As LBJ said is so well. “He may be a son-of-a-bitch. But he is OUR son-of-a-bitch”.
People, and especially leftist, forget that the alternative reality for those nations run by US backed dictators was not going to be peace, freedom, and prosperity. It would have been a Soviet backed dictatorship. For the citizens of these nations, same shit, different sponsor.
And, as Doewll said so well in #8, the third alternative is primitive Islamic fundamentalist bent on reverting their nations back to the 12th century.
Frankly, the prospect of these people enjoying free, open, democratic and prosperous nations was pretty low on the list of probability. Yea, we didn’t help much. We could have stuck to our principals, and then watched the world around us fall under the Soviet empire.
And unfortunately, that is the ugly truth.
#11,
WOW..
you understand most of the PROBLEM..
the USA in the last 150 years had decided to NOT have other countries ADVANCE. AND we condemned the Brits for doing it during WWII. WE took over governments and HELD them in Stasis, for YEARS…we did NOT want them to be FULLY democratic. WE did not WANT those people Advancing THEIR societies..
We did CUBA, we did Micronesia(the s. pacific islands).. MOST of those Dictatorships you hear/heard about…WERE ALL created and BACKED by the USA government. THAT is a nasty truth.
WHY would we do that(you would ask). Hmm, I wonder how many 1 world governments you could describe..
There are 2.
#1 is a world of ALL EQUAL..(never happen in a corp controlled world)
#2 is a Tired structure. Super rich/Rich/ Almost rich/Middle class/comfortable/Under privileged/POOR/ REALLY POOR(you might as well DIE poor)..
How do you sort them?
Border is first, then you SLOWLY Take from the main groups and then the next and next..
#11 There were also non-aligned nations during the Cold War. Maybe that is just a way of saying they didn’t have anything the US or USSR wanted to take.
As the article suggests, the effectiveness of the Soviet system was dramatically overstated. Most of that, on our side, was to help sell candidates and weapons.
When facing an a strong competitor the US seems out of its depth. The Chinese resource grab in Africa or the Iranian move to dominate energy transport from Central Asia to the Mediterranean passed with little notice or action from the US. Hell, even post-Soviet Russian gangsters got about as much attention as the our erstwhile allies from the Soviet-Afghan fight: none.
If a Republican can’t scare the domestic audience an external threat it doesn’t even register with the foreign policy establishment.