homeland security

I found out about the 9/11 on the phone in Heathrow Airport waiting to board a plane home.  I was trying to call my wife (and having difficulty getting through) to let her know that my flight had been mysteriously delayed.  Then she told me what happened. 

My first thought once I recovered from the shock?  It could have been worse. 

It really could have been.  For the next few weeks, I kept imagining follow-up scenarios to ratchet up the mayhem and panic.  Thankfully, none of them have come to pass.  But I wasn't the only one to envision ever-worsening scenarios. 

Eight years on, it's good to see that the scar of 9/11, though always present, has faded.  In the New York Times, N.R. Kleinfield interviews various New Yorkers about their post-9/11 expectations -- and their pleasant surprise that the city's vitality has exceeded those expectations:

So much has been said and written about what happened on 9/11. The following day is forgotten, just another dulled interlude in the aftermath of an incoherent morning.

But New Yorkers were introduced that day to irreducible presumptions about their wounded city that many believed would harden and become chiseled into the event’s enduring legacy.

New York would become a fortress city, choked by apprehension and resignation, forever patrolled by soldiers and submarines. Another attack was coming. And soon.

Tourists? Well, who would ever come again? Work in one of the city’s skyscrapers? Not likely. The Fire Department, gutted by 343 deaths, could never recuperate.

If a crippled downtown Manhattan were to have any chance of regeneration, ground zero had to be rebuilt quickly, a bricks and mortar nose-thumbing to terror.

Eight years later, those presumptions are cobwebbed memories that never came to pass. Indeed, glimpses into a few aspects of the city help measure the gap between what was predicted and what actually came to be.

If the best revenge is living well, then the city of New York has exacted its revenge many times over. 

Ooooh, William Broad has a story in the New York Times that is the secret fantasy dream article for anyone wanting to criticize the Obama administration on national security grounds.  The first few paragraphs consist of gift after gift: 

The federal government mistakenly made public a 266-page report, its pages marked “highly confidential,” that gives detailed information about hundreds of the nation’s civilian nuclear sites and programs, including maps showing the precise locations of stockpiles of fuel for nuclear weapons.

The publication of the document was revealed Monday in an on-line newsletter devoted to issues of federal secrecy. That publicity set off a debate among nuclear experts about what dangers, if any, the disclosures posed. It also prompted a flurry of investigations in Washington into why the document was made public.

On Tuesday evening, after inquiries from The New York Times, the document was withdrawn from a Government Printing Office Web site.

Several nuclear experts argued that any dangers from the disclosure were minimal, given that the general outlines of the most sensitive information were already known publicly.

“These screw-ups happen,” said John M. Deutch, a former Director of Central Intelligence and Deputy Secretary of Defense who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It’s going further than I would have gone but doesn’t look like a serious breach.”

But David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said information that shows where nuclear fuels are stored “can provide thieves or terrorists inside information that can help them seize the material, which is why that kind of data is not given out. It can become a physical security threat.”

The information, considered sensitive but not classified, was assembled for transmission later this year to the International Atomic Energy Agency as part of a process by which the United States is opening itself up to more stringent inspections in hopes that foreign countries will do likewise, especially Iran and other states believed to be clandestinely developing nuclear arms.

President Obama sent the document to Congress on May 5 for Congressional review and possible revision, and the Government Printing Office subsequently posted the draft declaration on its web site.

[Um, isn't this really the fault of the Government Printing Office, and not Obama per se?--ed.]  Well, the GPO is the proximate source of the blame, sure.  Stepping back, however, we have the following:

1. A pretty significant national security lapse;
2. A lapse that occurred because the U.S. was trying to comply with an international organization;
3. A reassurance that this isn't a big deal from John Deutch.  This is like having Eliot Spitzer comment on the gravity of an ethics scandal. 

Have at it, conservatives!

I've been playing catch-up this evening by reading Obama's speech on homeland security and then Cheney's speech on homeland security in succession.  Some quick thoughts: 

• My hypocrisy detector went off with both speeches.  For all of Obama's eloquence, there's simply no way to square his position on releasing torture photos with the other aspects of his speech.  Cheney, on the other hand, kept blasting Democratics for using "euphemisms" -- and yet, when describing what happened to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Cheney fell back on "enhanced interrogations." 
• I agree with Christian Brose that it's odd to read these two speeches in light of Jack Goldsmith's TNR essay comparing the Obama and Bush approaches.  Well, actually, it was mostly odd to read Cheney's speech.  The guts of Obama's critique of the prior administration's approach to these issues was nearly identical to Goldsmith's -- a failure to construct a proper legal edifice, a failure to respect checks and balances, etc.  Given that Jack is a rock-ribbed conservative, this is a point for Obama.  I'm pretty sure, however, that Goldsmith agrees with Cheney on the negative effects of the NYT revealing the Terrorist Surveillance Program. 
• I also agree with Joshua Keating that Obama's speech by and large anticipated many of Cheney's arguments.  Obama's rebuttal on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States was particularly effective.
• Politically, Obama has inherited George W. Bush's greatest political gift -- having adversaries more boneheaded than himself.  While Will Inboden, Philip Zelikow, and Peter Feaver all had some good responses to my lament last week about the state of the GOP on foreign policy and national security, Dick "18% approval rating" Cheney has now cemented his grip on being the party spokesman on this issue in the eyes of the media and the American public.  That's great for Obama and not so good for the GOP.  Beyond the 18% who like Cheney, does anyone think that his speech will persuade others to change their minds? 

What did you think?

A reader tipped me off to this Glenn Greenwald post reacting to my bloggingheads diavlog with Joshua Cohen: 

Here are Tufts University Political Science Professor Dan Drezner and Stanford Philosophy Professor Joshua Cohen demonstrating how good-hearted, profoundly reasonable, oh-so-intellectually sophisticated Americans diligently struggle with -- torture themselves over -- what they have convinced themselves is the vexing question of whether our leaders should be considered "war criminals" by virtue of . . . . having committed unambiguous war crimes.... This is now the conventional wisdom, the settled consensus, of our political and media elites with regard to America's torture program.  It's perfectly appropriate that Drezner cites and heaps praise on the self-consciously open-minded meditation on the torture question from The Atlantic's Ross Douthat because -- as I wrote in response to Douthat -- our political elites have now, virtually in unison, convinced themselves that ambiguity and understanding with regard to American war crimes are the hallmarks of both intellectual and moral superiority.... This is the justifying argument the political class has latched onto -- one that was spawned, revealingly enough, by Bush DOJ official Jack Goldsmith:  sure, some of this might have been excessive and arguably wrong, but it was all done for the right reasons, by people who are good at heart.  So common is this self-justifying American rationalization that it has now even infected the mentality of long-time Bush critics, such as The Los Angeles Times Editorial Page, which today argued that prosecutions for Bush officials are inappropriate, even though they clearly broke multiple laws, because "they did so as part of a post- 9/11 response to terrorism."  As this excellent reply from Diane at Cab Drollery puts it:  "civility and understanding is far more important to them than simple justice."

Yes, because we all know that the exact administration of justice is best when it lacks understanding.  This is certainly true of Greenwald, who appears not to have actually listened to what Cohen and I actually said to each other.  I was pretty explicit about the following:

1. Torture is wrong.
2. Douthat's post gets at the mindset of a majority of Americans in the immediate wake of 9/11
3. Political leaders are supposed to remember the Constitution and ignore the seductive allures of mob psychology -- and therefore should be held accountable fo these actions
4. The Bush administration responded to their pre-9/11 neglect of the terrorist threat by wildly overreacting to possible threats in the post-9/11 era.
5. If you're going to go after Bush administration officials for violating the law, Condi Rice should be pretty far down on the list, since she a) was not in the chain of command on this; and b) despite her formal role, was cut out of the loop on a lot of the decision-making. 

I suspect Greenwald didn't comprehend these points in the diavlog because I failed to say "torture is wrong" fifty more times.  Based on my prior experiences with him, he's the kind of guy who needs a lot of repetition in order to comprehend what he's reading.  [Um, does Greenwald actually waterboard puppies?--ed.  In all dealings with Greenwald from here on in, I shall rely on the Greenwald Standard of Blog Proof -- which is to say, if he disagrees with me even one iota, he is hereby evil and can be accused of anything.] 

My latest bloggingheads diavlog is up, with Heather Hurlburt.  Topics discussed include the Mumbai attacks, Al Qaeda's networked structure, the politics of fear, my plan to bulk up the State Department -- now with the catchphrase "Bloat, baby bloat!!" -- and a request from readers to name the Drezner-Hurlburt bloggingheads duo.  Go check it out.   

Thank you, John Oliver:

Bloomberg's Jeff Bliss has a story about Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff warning that, "Terrorists may see the change to a new U.S. president over the next six months as a prime chance to attack."  That's unsurprising but important news.  I think Bliss buried his lede, however: 

[H]e's concerned about the effect of rhetoric from some hate groups or individuals during the campaign. "There's a general level of intemperateness in the discussion as we approach the election,'' he said. ``Do I worry that it could trigger in a disturbed individual a desire to do something? Absolutely, I worry about it.'' (emphasis added). 

Gee, whichever campaign could Chertoff be talking about?  [UPDATE:  Ross Douthat points out that Chertoff should also be concerned about campaign artwork.] And before all the Obama supporters get all giddy about this, let me add that I have some decidedly mixed feelings about this statement comming from the head of DHS.  Here's my question:  in what way is Chertoff's statement here different from the much-lambasted Ari Fleischer statement that, "Americans... need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is."?  (on the disputed meaning of Fleischer's remarks, click here and here.)  To be fair to Chertoff, this is a quote from a reporter -- I'd like to know everything he said on this question.  I guess my point is, that Chertoff might want to follow Fleischer's advice.  UPDATE:  Via Andrew Sullivan, this video suggests how the McCain campaign should be handling this sort of problem. 

From today's New York Times story on the Minneapolis bridge collapse:

[O]fficials said the bridge?s design had been considered outmoded for decades because a single failure of a structural part could bring down the whole bridge. About 11 percent of the nation?s steel bridges, mostly from the 1950s and 1960s, lack the redundant protection to reduce these failures, federal officials said. Over all, the bridge was rated 4 on a scale of zero to 9, with 9 being perfect and zero requiring a shutdown. An inspection report last year said the supporting structure was in ?poor condition,? far from the lowest category. Hundreds of other working bridges are in similar shape, but the report did indicate that the bridge had possible issues that needed to be regularly inspected. The bridge has been inspected annually since 1993, but independent engineers acknowledged yesterday that there are well-known limits to how useful an inspection can be. Bridges, they said, are prone to a variety of problems, and some are hard to spot. At the Minnesota Department of Transportation, shaken engineers made it clear that they knew something crucial had somehow been overlooked. ?We thought we had done all we could,? said Daniel L. Dorgan, bridge engineer at the department?s bridges division. ?Obviously something went terribly wrong.? (emphasis added)

What on God's green earth would be lower than a "poor" rating? A "Jeebus, we're lucky we got off the bridge in time to file this report" rating?