A War on Something

I was at an anti-terrorism briefing the other day, something we have to do annually, and i got to thinking, what is the war on terror? George Bush says it’s Iraq, John Edwards says it’s a bumper sticker. I say, it’s neither and a little bit of both.
Merriam Webster defines terrorism as the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. The department of defense defines it as the unlawful use of — or threatened use of — force or violence against individuals or property to coerce or intimidate governments or societies, often to achieve political, religious, or ideological objectives. And if you consult Wikipedia, you’ll find that it is now, and has been for some time, a very contested and controversial term.
It’s basically Person A using strategically random violence to scare Person B into thinking A’ll do it again so that B will give A what he wants. Contrary to what it seems our government would have us believe, neither Al Qaeda or Saddam Hussien created terrorism. It’s been around since the beginning of time, give or take a couple days. Disillusioned despots and conspiracy theory crackpots will always exist, and they will find ways to inflict damage on society, resulting in fear.
Even if we could somehow eliminate all terrorists from the earth, new ones would arise someday. Not necessarily for the same cause, but as long as we live in a global society in which there are conflicting religions and unhappy people, terrorism will always find a way to rear it’s ugly head. When someone is so desperate to have his voice heard that he is willing to die for his cause and take out innocent people with him, terrorism will exist. Terrorism is not a country in the middle east, it’s a tactic.
In the American government, we have made a vague definition that allows us to randomly pick the countries, people or organizations that are, or support said ‘terrorism.’ Essentially, we can freely attack anyone we wish as a ‘preemptive measure.’
So what am I getting at? Should we just pretend the terrorists don’t exist and let them run amuck and ‘spread the hatred of Islam across the globe?’ Should we leave Iraq and ‘let the terrorists win?’ Should we ‘give aid and support to the enemy’ by continually questioning our leadership?
No. What I’m getting at is that there is a huge threat to Americans and western civilization as a whole out there, but ‘terrorism’ and ‘the war on terror’ are merely buzz words meant to elicit some emotion: fear, anxiety and patriotism. In saying that, I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of terrorist acts, or condone it, I’m merely saying that the terms are used pretty much for the sole purpose of making us scared, usually so that we’ll let the government become a little bigger and a little more secret.

I’ve heard that George Bush’s domestic spying initiatives are keeping America safer and as proof: ‘we haven’t had any more successful terrorist attacks on America since september 11.’ By that logic of course, we can also thank George Bush that no aliens have taken over earth and that zombies have not climbed out of their graves to eat our brains and our young.
And so now, almost 600 words in, I’m going to get to my main thesis: the war on terrorism should not be an offensive, reactionary war fought with guns and soldiers, but rather, it should be a defensive, preemptive war fought with a lot of intelligence gathering, analyzing and sharing.
I realize I used a buzzword in there: preemptive. But I’m not talking about attacking another nation because in five to 10 years it may have the capability (although probably not the inclination) to attack us. I’m talking about using intelligence more… well, intelligently to stop terrorism before it starts.

Here’s some stuff I read recently that made me go hmmmm…
In 2002 the Merkle Foundation released a report called: Protecting America’s Freedom in the Information Age. The report is about restructuring America’s intelligence community to work together better. Here’s part of a possible 9/11 scenario based on information that existed days before the attacks:
In late 2001 Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar bought tickets to fly on American Airlines Flight 77 (which flew into the Pentagon). They bought the tickets using their real names. Both names were then on a State Department/INS watch list called TIPOFF. Both men were sought by the FBI and CIA as suspected terrorists. Now if, hypothetically, all airline purchases were run through a watch list database, these names would have thrown up red flags. Had those names and purchases been checked against each other, it would have shown that both used the same address. Further digging would have shown that two more tickets for flights that day (the AA 11 which went into the North Tower, and United 175, which went into the South Tower) had also been purchased from that address. Putting agents on the ground to investigate further would probably have had a snowball effect and 9/11 could have potentially been averted. But this is just a hypothetical.
That’s a brief synopsis of the one hypothetical situation. To read the whole situation, check out the report. Page 32-33 of the PDF, or page 28 and 29 of the actual document.
My purpose in relaying that is not to try to assign blame, I don’t think anyone intentionally ignored any information and I realize hindsight is 20/20. But that’s pretty much what I’m getting at. Hindsight. We can see now that had the dots been more visible, they could have been connected. If names of everyone doing everything were cross-checked against these watch list databases at all levels, the dots would become more clear, and thus able to be connected.
We know that if the names of everyone purchasing airline tickets were checked against a watch list databases, 9/11 could possibly have been avoided. So why not take that, and apply it everywhere? Instead of allowing warrantless search and seizure and domestic wiretapping, how about we filter the names of everyone doing everything into the watch list databases and see if there are any suspicious connections. Cross reference everyone applying for jobs, loans, schools, licenses, library cards, credit cards, leases, Sam’s Club memberships… everything.
I realize this still seems invasive, but the big difference is that I’m not suggesting these things put you under suspicion, only that if you’re already under suspicion for a legitimate reason, that the intelligence agencies can track what you’re doing and where you’re at. The difference may seem slight, but I think it’s a very important difference.
Something else apparent by hindsight is that information that could have stopped 9/11 from happening was out there, it just wasn’t connected properly. So with that in mind, why is it necessary to start all of the domestic spying? I’ve heard, and even said myself on occasion: ‘If you don’t have anything to hide, why is it a problem?’ But in the end, it’s just the beginning down a slippery slope, and it’s unnecessary. What 9/11 shows us is that we need to find a better way to filter and analyze information, not that we need more information to sift through.
The lesson from 9/11 isn’t that we need more avenues to collect information, the lesson is that we need to be smarter about processing and analyzing the information we already have access to. Maybe that means consolidating all of our current acronyms into one intelligence agency. I would suggest creating a new agency that they all answer to, but that’s just adding more bureaucracy, which is the last thing we need.
What should have been done to fight the war on terrorism is a big push toward intelligence sharing and cross referencing at all levels: local, state, regional, and federal. Furthermore steps should have been taken to streamline gaps between different agencies like the FBI, CIA and NSA. They need to spend less time with their inter-agency wars and more time keeping America safe.
This would have cost a lot of money, but probably not as much as Iraq. Additionally, it would have created jobs, while Iraq is losing lives. But instead of building on lessons learned from the mother of all terrorist attacks, we invaded Iraq… because it was somehow part of the war on terrorism that was waged by Al Qeada on 9/11… hmmmm, i guess it’s just another one of those finding the dots to connect things.