On the Absence of Terrorist Attacks

It seems to me in the wake of two failed wars, wholesale legislative failure, Nixon-level approval ratings, an economy in cyclical recession, unprecedented depreciation of prestige and influence in the world community, and the loss of control of both Houses of Congress, that the only “success” the current administration can point to is the simple fact that there have been no terrorist attacks on United States soil since September 11. And, considering the facts, I have to wonder how this is possible.

It seems to me that a single attack by a single individual on a single target on United States soil—even something along the lines of one man with a gun shooting a handful of people at a shopping mall—would strike a powerful blow for an Islamist terrorist organization, far more so than the destruction of any number of tanks or helicopters or oil refineries in Iraq. It would be an invaluable recruiting tool, to show that even after the increased security measures, even with America “at war” and on her guard, terrorists can strike anywhere and any time at will. It seems to me that this would be the first priority of any terrorist group, and the time, attention, and material devoted to it would far outstrip those dedicated to fighting American troops abroad or stirring up sectarian civil wars, as simple geography dictates that those two operations could be conducted with a lower-intensity, longer-term approach.

And clearly the leaders of al-Qaeda at least are aware of this. Clearly they learned that attacks on embassies or military units matter very little to America as a whole, and that only attacks against civilians and economic infrastructure can really make an impact. The Madrid and London bombings indicate that this is still part of their overall strategy, that they still possess to some degree the capacity, and that they are capable of conducting such operations concurrent with their activities elsewhere.

So why haven’t there been other attacks on the United States? There are several possible explanations.

The first is that the administration has simply just been perfectly successful in detecting and preventing terrorist attacks. Perhaps the increased security measures have genuinely helped. Perhaps the new Department of Homeland Security has created a formidable anti-terrorist network. Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dead, either of kidney failure in Pakistan, or in a cave in Tora Bora or of any of the innumerable ways a globally hunted terrorist leader can die. Perhaps al-Qaeda’s structure and operations are greatly disrupted, their leadership killed or in hiding, and America is simply “winning the war on terror.”

This seems spectacularly unlikely, though. The Department of Homeland Security is astonishingly ineffective and corrupt—the Government Accountability Office has estimated that the DHS had wasted some $2 billion within the first year of its existence, mostly due to the unsupervised use of government issued credit cards. By August 2006, after British authorities discovered the liquid explosive plot, it was discovered that the DHS has used none of its funding for research and development on new airport screening methods. To this day, some 90-odd percent of the seven million cargo containers coming through American ports annually go unscreened. We have thousands of miles of borders which simply cannot be guarded, and due to budget shortfalls, local law enforcement has been cut back all over the country. The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission have not been implemented. We all saw how effectively the DHS responded to Hurricane Katrina.

There is simply no way America’s borders are any more secure today than they were on September 10, 2001.

Moreover, the Department of Defense has estimated that that in 2001, al-Qaeda numbered some 198 members. Today it’s estimated at over 18,000. And that’s just al-Qaeda, not any of the other several dozen Islamist terrorist organizations in the world. It is inconceivable that a ninety-fold increase in the number of one’s enemies correlates to one becoming in any way safer.

Likewise, there is little evidence that al-Qaeda’s global operations have been disrupted. The Madrid and London bombings indicate that they still possess a wide reach and have members who are native of many countries. The $30 million per year that al-Qaeda requires to carry out its activities seems to continue to flow unchecked. Osama bin Laden has not, to anyone’s knowledge, been captured or killed. If the numbers of new recruits are in any way accurate, then it stands to reason that rather than being disrupted, al-Qaeda’s operation capacity has expanded by a factor of almost one hundred times.

Furthermore, I personally find it very difficult to believe that an administration which has proved itself incompetent in literally every other aspect should somehow have achieved a perfect track record in this one. The same administration which has mismanaged two wars, the economy, the government, the education system, and essentially everything down to the fact that only six of the one thousands employees of the Baghdad embassy speak Arabic, or the fact that the name chosen for the new Iraqi army means “fuck” in Arabic. There is simply no way that the same administration which sent the money for reconstruction in bricks of hundred dollar bills loaded by forklifts onto freight aircraft and entrusted it to a 23-year old and his frat brothers could have somehow detected and thwarted absolutely every terrorist attack attempted against the United States in the past six years. This argument is akin to asking us to believe that our government are a massive collection of spectacularly lucky idiot savants.

There is another explanation, once favored by many on the bad-tempered left, which posits that the Bush government was involved in, or at least knew about September 11 and at the very least allowed it to happen. This line of reasoning then suggests that there exists some sort of agreement between al-Qaeda and the Bush administration, since there are numerous ties between the two groups both in terms of business with the bin Laden family and via the Saudi Royal Family, and in regards to the American support for the Afghan jihad against the Soviets. This agreement would recognize that the current state of affairs is advantageous to both parties, since it gives each a convenient enemy and a perpetual raison d'être.

The logical conclusion is that there will therefore be no further terrorist attacks until it is necessary for both sides, namely when it appears the current administration will fall from power.

I will admit there was a time when this made a certain degree of sense. They are very easy dots to connect, and while it appeals to that old Holmes dictum of “when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”, it falls apart under the weight of actual events. The 2004 election would have been an excellent time to produce a terrorist attack, for instance.

Well, (the proponents of this theory argue) perhaps the administration already knew they would win that election. Perhaps it wasn’t necessary. Perhaps it would have been too obvious and would have happened at too divisive a moment.

But if that were the case, why not some time in the intervening two years or before last November’s electoral defeat? If neither of those are good occasions, when exactly is?

Well, (they invariably say) maybe it’ll be before the 2008 election. He’ll blame it on Iran, declare martial law, suspend elections, institute a draft, invade Iran, and usher in an age of police state and Fourth Reich.

At this point, I simply can’t give the administration that much credit. If they genuinely were carrying out a vast, massive, meticulously planned and orchestrated conspiracy, why not put forth the half-inch of effort at any of the things they do which would make their success so much easier? Why not, for instance, put someone capable in charge of rebuilding Iraq in 2003 to get the water running and electricity on and stifle insurgency before it began? Why not send troops with proper training and equipment? Why not do any of a legion of things which would have saved them years of criticism and dissent?

This argument just seems to me like a frantic desire to assign a monolithic, hopeless quality to what is admittedly a dangerous and incompetent government. It seems to feed on the persecution complexes and sense of hopeless ineffectiveness within so many of us. But I just don’t think it holds weight.

The third explanation considers that eight years passed between September 11 and the previous Islamist terrorist attack on the United States, and posits that the leaders of al-Qaeda are simply biding their time, for reasons of their own. This is an alarming prospect, not the least because of the interesting habit of attacks taking place in the first year of a presidential administration. This explanation also lends itself to the alarming idea that the next attack is intended to be far more destructive than any previous attacks and thus takes longer to prepare.

I have no argument against this, aside from the fact that I have no idea what al-Qaeda’s leadership is waiting for, or why they wouldn’t bother sending one or two individuals with fairly low-scale plans simply for the propaganda and morale effects to both sides. Perhaps they genuinely are more focused on stirring up civil war in Iraq. Perhaps they have found attacks on European allies easier to carry off and more effective in the short run. Whatever the case, this idea is dependent on the simple fact that al-Qaeda is calling the shots and that they attack where and when they wish and our six years of quiet on the homefront is just a lucky prelude to a greater storm.

I have no idea of the explanation, but it seems to me it’s something the people of the United States should be demanding to know. Our government is incompetent and corrupt, yes, but the threat of terrorism cannot be denied, and if they have genuinely managed to prevent further attacks, I am willing to give credit for that. If they have not, we should be demanding to know why not and what has therefore prevented further attacks. This is, in my view, perhaps the most worrisome characteristic of what seems to be a national habit of fighting a "War on Terror" which consists of doing virtually everything except actually bothering about terrorism.

Edit: I just watched a History Channel documentary on the Russian mob, and part of it was about a guy who organized a deal where a Columbian drug lord bought a Soviet submarine, and when this guy called his contact at the Russian government to ask about price, he was asked, "Do you want it with missiles or without?"

Another part of it was about a pair of DEA agents who started out buying drugs from a couple Russian mob guys, then moved up to machine guns (like thousands at a time), then fifty shoulder-mounted missiles, then were asked if they'd like to buy a small nuclear weapon. With these kind of things happening, how are there not massive terrorist attacks all the time? With that kind of supply available, and the obvious existence of motivated people, there's got to be an explanation for their failure.

Mitigation of Climate Change

The purpose of this post is not to debate the evidence for climate change, because climate change is a fact, not a debate. There is absolutely no other conclusion to draw from even the most cursory examination of information on the subject, and the fact that it has been characterized as a debate is, in my estimation, damn near criminal. I am not going to address the revolting campaigns of misinformation which the oil, gas, industrial, and automotive lobbies have conducted, nor will I address the shameful conduct of the media in their coverage of the issue and their spreading of this dangerous misinformation. You see, I don’t think it much matters what you are I think about global warming. I don’t think anything you or I or ten million or a hundred million people like us do, even if we manage to reduce our carbon emissions to zero. I have no intention of constructing an argument to win over people unconvinced by the overwhelming scientific evidence. Instead, I want to argue why immediate, decisive action on the parts of government and industry is good not only for our survival as a species, but for their own interests.

Perhaps you’ve seen Al Gore’s movie, which seems to have done an admirably alarmist job of bringing the issue into the cultural consciousness.

The most persuasive piece of data in Al Gore’s film is the chart of vehicle emissions standards by country, which shows the United States at the absolute bottom and indicates that it is therefore impossible to sell American automobiles in most of the rest of the world.

Now let’s think about that for a minute. Here you have 1.3 billion Chinese people and 1.1 billion Indian people who are industrializing and developing enormous middle classes, and American automakers don’t want to be in a position to sell them cars? Why on earth would any capitalist voluntarily deal themselves out of the two largest emerging markets in the world? Why would they not be tripping all over each other to dominate those markets immediately? Why do they not put two and two together and see that while General Motors has been busy losing money at a truly epic rate, Toyota made $185 billion last year.

This is not good capitalism.

Now, much has been made about the onerous costs that would be incurred in arresting climate change right now. The heaviest estimates rate the cost of stopping global warming at 3.5% of global GDP (the lowest estimate is .2%), and decreases each year as changes become systemic. Of course, the global economy grows by between 2.1 and 3% per year, so it’s more a case of having the economy not grow at all for a year, rather than be heavily reduced.

According to the US Energy Information Administration, just reducing emissions gradually (as in accordance with the National Commission on Energy Policy, which stipulates a 5% reduction by 2015 and 7% by 2025) would cost a whopping .15% of GDP. The costs of just meeting the Kyoto Protocol would be .5% of GDP.

What’s interesting is that two reports have indicated that the benefits of following these measures would add roughly 5% to global GDP, and would scale upwards from there as time went on. This is mainly due to more efficient, longer lasting, more renewable products, resources, and production techniques, all of which seem like good ideas to me.

In order to gain a perspective on just what those numbers mean, the United States’ GDP was about $13 trillion last year. Our GDP growth was 3.4%. If indeed the cost was 3.5% of GDP, and there were no gains whatsoever, we’re talking $455 billion. The Iraq War, as of September 2006, has cost $379 billion in US expenditure. At a rate of an extra $2 billion a week, the Congressional Research Service recently estimated the total expenditure has crossed half a trillion. Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner in Economics, has predicted the total cost to the American economy will be at least $1 trillion, possibly more depending on its duration. And to think, instead of killing half a million people, we could have solved the greatest crisis we as a species have faced since the invention of the atomic bomb.

I guess what I don’t understand is why any capitalist anywhere thinks this is a bad idea. When has progress ever proven to be bad capitalism in the past? Explain to me how a loss of 3.5% and a gain of 5% is a bad idea? Why, when the price of halting climate change is only going to increase the longer we wait, would we not want to take action now, when we have less to do and less to pay to get it done? I mean, if I were a capitalist and I saw that there will be a massive captive market emerging in the near future, I would want to position myself to dominate that market and bring it into existence as soon as I possibly could.

Of course, there is some evidence that this is already going on. There have been a few articles in The Economist lately alluding to my prediction that green-friendly technologies are going to be the next big boom industry, and that smart investors are getting in now and trying to produce as many effective, efficient environmentally-friendly ideas as they can come up with. As well they should.

Problems of Democratisation

I forewarn you: I am still puzzling out the things I want to discuss in this post, so this is mostly a train of thought record of my lines of thinking and much less a coherent examination of an idea.

A conversation with my conservative monarchist Bavarian friend the other day led to her giving an impassioned and quite persuasive argument in favor of "enlightened dictatorship." We were talking about my current class, which is based around the problems of democratisation and mass violence in Yugoslavia, and I was telling her about yet another argument I'd recently had in which I had suggested (based on the lectures from my class) that in the case of virtually every transition to democracy in the past fifty years (or more) there has been widespread mass violence, primarily of the ethnic or political variety. I was fairly soundly defeated in that argument, since virtually every case also involves extreme economic distress and the prevalence of economic explanations for mass violence (i.e. that one ethnic group has been exploiting another for an extended period of time) indicates that it is not democratisation which is the problem, but the existence of both political instability and economic distress at the same time.
Nevertheless, I think my (and my professor's) original position bears some explanation. The idea, essentially, is that in instances in which ethnicity or religion trumps class as a means of identification (which would imply that economic motives are secondary, though still present--if they were primary, there would be instances of poor people of all ethnic groups killing rich people of all ethnic groups), then new democracies tend to divide themselves along ethnic lines. You get nationalist ethnic political parties immediately, and when one takes power (even if it is benevolent) it causes distrust, resentment, and tension among the others. It is seen as an exploiter, whether it is or not, and ethnic tensions rise. The nationalist rhetoric, which is by necessity played up in order to mobilize masses, demands ethnically "pure" homelands, and mass violence follows shortly thereafter.
Now, I (and I think my professor would agree) do not deny that there certainly is an economic aspect to this. Present day Iraq is a perfect example. I think the sectarian conflict there genuinely is an ethnic and religious struggle for political dominance and is colored by exploitation of Shiites and Kurds by Sunnis in the past. However, I cannot deny that the uneven distribution of oil plays a powerful part in causing, perpetuating, and determining the conflict, as well as keeping it from a peaceful resolution. The same could be said of Yugoslavia, where the northern and western regions were far more developed and prosperous than the south and east. The same could be said of a number of cases, but I still maintain that the economic motives are hijacked and used for political gain, though I consider my argument to be on shaky ground and intend to develop it further.

Anyhow, this is what I was telling to my German friend when she suggested that part of the reason Europe made (mostly) successful transitions from dictatorship to democracy is because there was usually a transition phase of what she called "enlightened dictatorship" in between, wherein the rule of law was developed, the Enlightenment happened and basic human rights became part of the obligation of government. Her idea was that instead of attempting to export democracy, as seems to always end in disaster, Western countries should develop a plan for a restrained, "enlightened" constitutional dictatorship which is implemented first to calm and pacify the nation in question, develop respect for the rule of law, stifle the initial ethnic nationalism, and then later make a peaceful transition to democracy.

It sounded pretty convincing, and I'm still trying to puzzle out a way to reconcile dictatorship with a restraining constitution which is above even the dictator. I agree with a lot of what she said. I agree that the West seems to have this idea that democracy will solve all of a country's problems, and then we have no idea what to do when it only brews up new ones. I agree that democracy depends on inflammatory emotional appeals to masses of people and can be (and in fact always seems to be) extremely divisive. I agree that (as I tend to argue whenever the Democratic Peace Theory is brought up) that democracy seems to be a luxury of the wealthy. I even agree that under particular circumstances, benevolent dictatorship can be an ideal form of government--the trouble is, it is a terrible system. Yes, Augustus was perhaps the greatest ruler Rome ever had, and yes, if I had to choose a period of Rome to live in, I would probably choose his reign. Unfortunately, we must remember that Augustus was followed by first Tiberius and then Caligula.

Likewise, her suggestion falls apart under a scrutiny. After all, the US has attempted to put a strongman in power in Afghanistan, to little effect (although the epic mismanagement there, as in Iraq, doesn't necessarily mean this is impossible). Africa has seen an unending stream of autocrats come to power promising elections and people's rule, but who have then unleashed some of the most appalling suffering (and spectacularly bad governance) in human history. And suppose, say, an enlightened dictator were put in place in an ethnically divided state. Would this not still lead to resentment and possibilities of exploitation and ethnic violence? Would not then the subordinate ethnic groups manifest their nationalism as militias rather than political parties? The underlying subtext to my friend's suggestion is that the dictator would first have to pacify his country and keep it stable, and there are numerous examples from history indicating just how bloody a process that can be.

Yet it is clear that newly independent states (whether emerging from foreign domination or as a result of secession, nationalist struggle, overthrown dictators, etc) must establish Weber's criteria of a government monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Once militias and rebel armies are eliminated as viable political structures, it stands to reason economic development and political liberalisation is at least possible, though certainly not guaranteed.

Can a system be created to provide for a decisive, autonomous executive (which Machiavelli in his Discourses on Livy points out has proven to be time and again necessary for great political transitions) which is still bound by the rule of law and which will peacefully give up power and the end of its allotted term? How, in other words, can the "enlightened" part be guaranteed? If democracy and self-determination are the ultimate goal, can democracies justify implementing, fostering, and even creating dictatorships in order to one day reach that goal? If "enlightened dictatorship" is the answer and the most effective follower to outright dictatorship, how can the next transition from "enlightened dictatorship" to actual democracy be guaranteed, or will such a transition lead to the same sort of instability and mass violence as already exist?

Like I said, I'm not sure yet. I don't intend to devote huge amounts of reading to this, but I have read virtually nothing on the subject as of yet and intend to remedy that situation, so I will probably follow up on this post as I learn more and my ideas become more coherent and refined. As always, I welcome dissenters, disagreement, arguments, and so forth.