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UPDATE #2 CIA in Politics? Say it isnt so!Jonah Goldberg  Indeed, if Plame did in fact promote her husband for the job and he did subsequently distort the facts in an effort to undermine the White House in willful disregard to the facts as he knew them, it sounds to me like Husband and Wife were in on a partisan conspiracy together.

Update did some minor editing since the original was posted. Editing after tasting wine isnt always such a good idea…hehe.

I happen to believe that Victor Davis Hanson is a national treasure, having said that I would like to register that a few premises in his article bother me. These premises have caused and will continue to cause basic misunderstandings at best and at worst may even cause us to lose this war. Losing is something that needs to be considered more often for two very important reasons. We must realize that it is indeed possible to lose and we must also understand exactly what losing means to our people. (Hanson in bold)

Victor Davis Hanson Another 9/11? The awful response that we dare not speak about.  Is our reluctance to discuss the unmentionable because we think we can do nothing in response  as if there is no culpable nation-state, a toothless CIA can tell us little, we dare not upset fragile gains in Iraq, or that violence only spawns violence?

This first premise might possibly be the most wrongheaded and dangerous and the one that we as a country desperately need to address. The CIA is no toothless funny old man, instead it is an angry almost psychotic bureaucracy whose core is beginning to understand that many very powerful people no longer heed or even deem it necessary to consult with its vast network of gnome like analysts. When people like the President and the Sec of Defense start going outside of your bureaucracy to get the answers you are supposed to have, this is a problem. Losing influence inside of Washington is worse than losing money though one tends to follow the other, money tends to disappear from those we no longer consider essential. The bureaucracy of the CIA is not taking this lying down, it has declared war on those who no longer need it, namely the Administration. Hell hath no fury like a Bureaucracy spurned.

For a good overview of the problem and some of the solutions, sources abound, I can recommend Bush vs the Beltway   as well a Herbert Meyer’s short article in the WSJ  .

Thus the genius of the jihadists is that they provide psychological rewards on the cheap for millions in the Arab Street without costs, and in turn thrive on “credible deniability” of their tacit hosts. They smirk that postmodern Western liberality precludes Shermanesque collective punishment against the pre-modern. After all, a Christiane Amanpour can be at the front in 24 hours before a live 60-million-strong global audience to yell to U.S. troops on patrol “Don’t step on that child!” � even as her husband advises the Kerry campaign back home. But do they also know that another 9/11 would throw such restraint out the window?

That is an excellent question but it should first be posed to the American people. Do we understand what we will do when the next attack occurs? Exactly how would an administration make a credible threat to a Terrorist Sponsor if the public is not included in the plans? Terrorists understand that we are only as strong as our public opinion, defeat that and all the smart bombs in the world wont fly. One must have the will to use arms for a threat to use them to be credible.

To get the American people behind this war the administration must stop addressing us as children and spend some time explaining the complexities. Spend time explaining that decisions in war are often made using guesses when facts are unavailable and all that remains are the opinions of our best minds. This is just one example of what needs to be explained in clear detail by the leaders of our Government.

We are in a war that is characterized by relatively small military strikes coupled with vast propaganda assaults. A war of ideas needs to be constantly fought by our elected officials to combat both the terrorists and those in this country that constitute a virtual 5th column. Truth however hard should be spoken time and time again so that all of us gain a sense of the tasks ahead. That this needs to be done one need only consider the success of Michael Moore’s leftist propaganda and its acceptance by a wide group of democrats.

What to do? The key for the United States � in very quiet and deferential tones, in private, and to the albeit illegitimate leaders of these relevant countries � is to convey the message that if there should be a repeat of 9/11, the United States will hold any countries responsible who are proved to have aided or sheltered any of the guilty. Now what does that overused and near-meaningless phrase “hold responsible” really mean? A repeat of Afghanistan and Iraq in places like Iran or Syria?

Ah the crux of the matter, “any countries which are proved to have aided or sheltered any of the guilty”, given this standard no one need fear us. We are having a hard time proving that Saddam was allied to Al Queda even though every major politician from both parties has claimed as much over the past 12 years and every major news outlet has reported as much over the last ten years. Given that any State using terrorists naturally has a very high priority and many resources going into staying anonymous I’m sure that proof of the sort he talks about will be easy to come by. For starters consider that if we were going to topple Hitler because of the Concentration Camps we might have a hard time proving it according to more than a few people who consider the Holocaust to be nothing other than “Jewish” propaganda, hard evidence is not laying around on the murders of over 11,000,000 people, see this excellent WSJ article  .

Given this absurdly high standard of proof we can expect after some nuclear strike wiping out a few hundred thousand that we might be ready to strike back sometime in the next 20 years. This is of course believing, with absolutely no proof, that the US Public would want to strike back given all the propaganda that has gone unanswered so far in this war. And there are even much darker reasons for believing that we might not strike back. It is entirely possible that we might just surrender and its this that we should be preparing for. What will we do when we lose 200,000 people in a strike against Chicago or New Orleans? Will the American people stand fast and fight as the British did during the Blitz? What if there is a warning of more strikes to come? Why hasn’t this possibility been addressed? Hard truths need to be discussed and debated, the cost of losing needs to be brought up in this conversation because if we back down from these terrible circumstances not only will more follow but defeat will be crowding in from behind those strikes. What is the price of defeat? If we know what defeat brings it may stiffen our backs when temporary setbacks occur and no Im not talking about when we lose 10 soldiers which is indeed tragic but the far more deadly setback of losing a US City. We can only lose if we give up, its trite but true.

Suggesting that we need some sort of proof to strike back gives the Terrorists and most importantly their sponsors the hope that if we don’t have proof we won’t strike. That is an awful lot of rope to give someone. I would rather piss off the French and Michael Moore and be unpredictable than to say that I demand proof before a strike. Either say nothing about the sort of evidence you need or say that evidence alone will be sufficient to strike back using his theory of MAD. Its the unpredictability of our reaction that will stop potential State Sponsors of Terrorism, we don’t want them to believe that if they cover it up sufficiently well that Maureen Dowd cannot see the proof they are home free.

Yes, another 9/11 would be a watershed event where the tragic choices in responding would entail only “bad” and “much worse.” If it were to occur again, then we would have to realize that we had no foolproof ability to stop such mass terror. And if we were to accept that death sentence and do nothing, then we would also accept the sure end of our civilization as we know it. Compared to that scenario, discussing a bleak response right now doesn’t seem so stupid. Keeping silent about it does.

I agree that we should be discussing these scenarios but doing so amongst ourselves does nothing to improve our chances of winning this war. This war will not be solely won by our marvelous Armed Forces or even our intelligence services, this war will be won by you and me and our neighbors. This is an ideological war, where the strikes are only meant to demoralize, to force us to retreat as we have done in the past when others discovered how to beat us. Our government has to unify and start broadcasting a coherent message, the CIA needs to be cleaned out of those who apparently believe it is within their duty to put aside their jobs to snipe at the Politicians elected to run the government. Their job isnt to affect politics within the US but to stop the Bad Men with Bad Intentions from striking at their homeland. Any future Administration must do a better job of educating the US Public on the war. We must start to take this seriously because those we are fighting havent given up.

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