BY TAYLOR MARSH
“Our margin of safety has been diminishing.” – Former Senator Bob
Graham
“Intention does not equal capability,” added Rep. Jane Harman in an interview later on MSNBC. Playing the contrarian, her point is that after Bush-Cheney saber rattling, let’s be careful of inciting fear. That’s where I stand as well.
ABC
News reported on this late last night. The bottom line? “Focus on Pakistan,”
because it is the “epicenter” of the terrorism challenge we face.
We’ve been talking about that fact long before it became fashionable.
The United States still wields enormous power of the traditional kind, but
traditional power is less effective than it used to be. In today’s world,
individuals anywhere on the planet connect instantly with one another and
with information. Money is moved, transactions are made, information is shared,
instructions are issued, and attacks are unleashed with a keystroke. Weapons
of tremendous destructive capability can be developed or acquired by those
without access to an industrial base or even an economic base of any kind,
and those weapons can be used to kill thousands of people and disrupt vital
financial, communications, and transportation systems, which are easy to attack
and hard to defend. All these factors have made nation-states less powerful
and more vulnerable relative to the terrorists, who have no national base
to defend and who therefore cannot be deterred through traditional means.
[...]Executive Summary – The Commission believes that unless the world community
acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a
weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in
the world by the end of 2013. The Commission further believes that terrorists
are more likely to be able to obtain and use a biological weapon than a nuclear
weapon. The Commission believes that the U.S. government needs to move more
aggressively to limit the proliferation of biological weapons and reduce the
prospect of a bioterror attack. [...] read
more
Pakistan’s recent role goes back to A.Q. Khan, with Pakistan being the nexus between
nuclear proliferation and terrorism. Musharraf has been at the center of this
problem, someone Bush has supported regardless of reality. That reality is that
the Pakistani military controls the weaponry. There is no civilian input on
the arsenal.
Now that Pakistan’s political arm is all over the airwaves claiming horror
and innocence on Mumbai, the propaganda reveals that being democratically elected
doesn’t necessarily mean you have the power.
Meanwhile, India’s fury over the Mumbai bombings, which originated through
L-e-T, is not going to magically vanish. But at least Indian
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee has ruled out military confrontation
over the bombings.
The real dangers of LET/L-e-T go beyond
what al Qaeda is today, in my opinion. Compared often to Hezbollah, if they
indeed have a domestic support angle that aids citizens like Hezbollah, the
loyalties they invite will be stronger than al Qaeda, who rarely works for the
people on the ground. The sophistication of this type of civilian connection cannot be underestimated, especially in rugged terrain where the populace is at the mercy of whoever is available to help. Just look what Hezbollah has done in Lebanon. The terrorists are learning, so when the U.S. offers aid it would be best if it went beyond military, to include an educational and economic focus.
But getting back to the new report, for years experts have been warning over and over again to beware of the coming catastrophe. Americans know that we can be hit. That’s been our reality since 2001. Anything beyond that, including dates, is counterproductive. Once terrorism came to our shores all bets were off. Worrying about it or prognosticating when it will happen next doesn’t serve anyone, except to give the extremists publicity.
However, no one can doubt Janet Napolitano is inheriting a dysfunctional division of our domestic security apparatus (“homeland security” is a ridiculous name). The dire straights of our economy makes it doubly so.
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