Thursday, September 8, 2011

The Lessons of 9/11 By Richard A. Clarke

FOR THE WORLD AT LARGE, THE ONLY PENDING CHORE FROM THE DECADES LONG 9/11 SAGA IS TO BRING WAR CRIMINALS TO BOOK, ESPECIALLY OVER THE ILLEGAL INVASION OF IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN AND THE DEATH OF MILLIONS AND THE DESTRUCTION AND DEVASTATION OF ENTIRE COUNTRIES.

GHULAM MUHAMMED, MUMBAI

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/07/richard-a-clarke-what-we-ve-learned-from-9-11.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet

The Lessons of 9/11

Sep 7, 2011 6:49 PM EDT

In a scathing essay, a former national-security chief writes that the cost of 9/11 has been billions of dollars spent, an unneeded war, and thousands of lives lost.

Author :  Richard A. Clarke

The events of that day were so jarring that they are recorded in our memories as if they had taken place last week. But it has been a long decade, one in which we have made as many mistakes as we have had successes. Now, and not after we suffer another major terrorist attack, is good time to pause, look back, learn lessons, and begin to chart a path away from the past.

Looking back, we may see things that we do not want to revisit just yet, controversies that we wish to leave behind. For us to learn as a nation, however, for us to hand down to future generations what they need to know, we must be clear about what happened. We were attacked by a handful of people from a relatively small organization of fanatics who had tapped into the frustrations of a sizable minority of those who shared their ethnicity and religion. Our nation was stunned and wanted to unify in response. That desire for unity kept too many voices silent when they should have been contributing to a public debate about how to react. Wretched excesses were proposed and barely opposed. We invaded a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with the attack on us, but had everything to do with the preconceived plans of a cabal in and out of our government. In the process, we killed 100,000, wounded many times more, and threw millions out of their homes. More Americans suffered violent deaths in Iraq than did on 9/11, and multiples more were scarred for life. Americans, including our troops, were lied to about Iraq’s role in 9/11 and some marched to their death motivated by those lies.

Constitutional protections that generations of Americans had struggled to achieve for our own people were eroded in the name of the new cause. Human-rights standards that America had stood for around the world were casually discarded in our treatment of others. The government ran roughshod over sacrosanct civil liberties and disregarded treaty obligations and international law. The CIA established a network of “black” detention centers, and used “enhanced interrogation techniques,” including water-boarding. Politicians used 9/11 and the new wars that resulted as a wedge issue to win elections and discredit opponents. Not since the phrase “wave the bloody shirt” was coined in the elections after the Civil War had office-seekers so blatantly tried to gain from Americans’ deaths.

Learning-fro-911-homeland-security-clarke
President George W. Bush signs the Homeland Security Act of 2002, Stephen Jaffe / Getty Images

Money was thrown at the Pentagon, intelligence agencies, and a new Orwellian sounding “homeland” bureaucracy. Large parts of CIA doubled in size and then spawned private-sector, for-profit replicas. With little real analysis as to need or effectiveness, and with a spending-binge mentality, we bought a homeland-intelligence-industrial complex that hides its overwhelming size behind secret budgets and corporate balance sheets. No one would question money allegedly to be used to fight those who had attacked us, nor have the courage to challenge the profits rolling out to the contractors. The spending came not only without new financial sacrifices, it came with tax cuts. The irony of this is that one of the stated goals of Al Qaeda is to lead the United States to death through a thousand cuts. In this strategy they have not been entirely unsuccessful. While we have severely disrupted their operational capability, the costs of our military engagements over the past decade have contributed immensely to our current financial malaise. Estimates of the total costs of the Iraq War vary. While the Pentagon has directly spent nearly $760 billion on the engagement, indirect costs push some estimates as high as $3 trillion. Researchers at Brown University recently estimated the costs of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and our aid to the Pakistani military total between $3.2 and $4 trillion.

For most of the decade, our reaction to the attack strengthened the attackers. Our unprovoked destruction of an Arab nation, our degradation of prisoners, our torturing of suspects, and perceived xenophobia and religious prejudice drove millions away from our cause and many into the ranks of our attackers. Only slowly did the repeated heinous acts of our enemy, their killing of their coreligionists, begin to undermine their support. Only with a new president did the focus of our effort swing from Iraq to a well-thought-out effort to destroy the organization that had actually attacked America on 9/11. Had we not invaded Iraq, had the last two years of wearing down of Al Qaeda been done instead, we could have reduced that threat to a marginalized nub five years ago. Those are the facts that should not be obscured by our desire to heal.

Learning lessons from those unassailable facts is even harder than looking them square in the eye again. One tough but necessary thing to admit is that for a long time we actually played into the hands of our opponents, doing precisely what they had wanted us to do, responding in the ways they had sought to provoke, damaging our economy and alienating much of the Middle East. Preserving and strengthening our critical thinking as a nation is even more necessary at a time when our emotions and primitive instincts would otherwise dominate. Recognizing that even in times of national crisis, the idea that questioning the wisdom of our government or its leaders is not unpatriotic should be an obvious conclusion from this decade. The corollary of that should be that patriotism does not include seeking to use national-security disasters and large-scale death as a basis for partisan political profit. For that to happen in the future, we need not only learned leaders but those with the courage to risk their own reputations by explaining complications, rather than oversimplifying and needlessly risking the lives of our troops.
For most of the decade our reaction to the attack strengthened the attackers.
Listening through the din to the voices of Cassandras, like the experts who warned about what an invasion of Iraq would bring, is a need that leaps out from recent years. Those who predict disasters will not always be right, but they should be heard and given the consideration that their experience merits and their analyses tested.
Knowing what our core values are and cleaving to them, even in times of testing, must be a lesson when we see the results of situational ethics and temporary, expedient treatment of basic rights. America should not again panic and overreact to terrorist attacks against this country.

Charting a path away from the past requires that we act on the perspective that this passage of time has bequeathed us. Terrorism is a continuing security issue going forward, and another series of attacks could happen, but terrorism is not an existential threat to the United States unless it were to involve nuclear attacks. The current terrorist threat does not justify the immense size of the homeland and intelligence spending. Nor does it justify a huge standing military force. The damage done to our country by our broken primary- and secondary-educational systems, climate change, our crumbling infrastructure, our inadequate research efforts and our lack of protection of intellectual property far exceeds anything that terrorism is likely to do to us in the next decade.

We, as a nation, must cease to be merely reactive and set about the achievement of goals that we dictate. Reversing the destabilizing trend of greater income inequality, improving the skill sets of our workforce, driving research that creates new industries, and elevating the political dialogue in our nation might be a good starting list. What better memorial could there be to the patriots who gave their lives for this country in this last decade than to build in their name an even more perfect union.

Assertions and opinions in this article are solely those of the above-mentioned author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Middle East Institute, which expressly does not take positions on Middle East policy.

Anna Rising: A Reality Check -- By Amaresh Misra

 Anna Rising: A Reality Check                                                      
                                               By Amaresh Misra
Even after the successful resolution of the August crisis, the stand-off between the Government and Anna Hazare continues, with `Team Anna’ crying foul at each and every occasion.  Much has been said about the mishandling of the Jan- Lokpal issue by the Government and Congress trouble-shooters. In fact, the problem on part of not just the Congress but the entire political class—of failing miserably to read the new grammar of people’s politics, beyond Parliamentary functioning and money-muscle-media power—introduced by the August crisis—continues unabated. But serious questions have emerged also about the way Team Anna handled itself and its agenda during  the August agitation.
          For one, during final negotiations, insistence of certain Team Anna members to organize Parliamentary debate under Rule 184, which calls for voting, made it unwittingly a part of BJP’s game-plan, which too was pursuing the same objective. Ultimately, the debate was conducted to convey the `sense of house’. So what kind of a victory did Team Anna achieve? If anything, the government when it got its act together, played smart, pleasing all sides, convincing even the BJP to shed its intransigence.  
          Kiran Bedi’s expression of how she met LK Advani—and how the latter called her `beti’ before offering support—put several well meaning democrats off. It also highlighted political naivety that seems to beset Team Anna.  When the government has slapped a financial notice on Arvind Kejriwal, the effort to collect money from the public—as Kejriwal’s supporters announced—to pay individual dues—is bound to backfire. It seriously erodes the credibility of any movement that is fighting expropriation of public money by individuals.  
          The manner in which Team Anna members went about utilizing foreign funds also, goes beyond the mere contribution of a Ford Foundation to a single individual, or a movement, at a particular juncture. It raises the basic question: can a people’s movement survive on outside funding? Can people’s initiatives stay reduced to NGO type functioning?
On two other issues—decentralisation of power and political participation—Team Anna again is unable to clarify its position. Panchayati Raj—a major move towards decentralization—was created by the present political system only. While Panchayats and other local bodies have led to limited empowerment in the villages, it has been seen that its benefits have been cornered largely by old and new rural elites—the old landlords, Kulaks and a new section of brokers, also from amongst the OBCs and Dalits. So, in the name of further decentralization, even if more powers are given to villages, will this suffice in improving conditions of the overwhelming masses of poor and backward section of the rural masses? What is needed is structural change along with decentralization in villages—thoroughgoing land reforms, which would shift the balance of power in rural India in favour of the poor masses and the small peasantry.
Team Anna however is silent on this issue. While admitting that they constitute a political movement, Team Anna members talk about not including electoral or party politics. This position is rife with confusion. After all, the Indian Parliamentary, multi-party system, despite all its faults, even the presence of criminals, is still the highest form of democratic expression in this country. While it is true that people’s movement can never be restricted to Parliamentary or party approval, it is also fair to acknowledge that movements—if they are to coalesce into serious political statements and change living conditions—have to go through party formation and electoral participation of some kind or the other.
The current mass upsurge actually hides a revolutionary potential. Class and cultural divisions created by corporate culture—its cosy and corrupt dalliances with the Indian political class, its buying of public and government undertakings at throwaway prices, its stranglehold on urban and rural property, its looting of natural resources, its contempt of peasant India and the poor, its choice of corruption as a way of life in India’s burgeoning crony capitalism—lies at the root of people’s frustration. Despite all good intentions, Anna has only touched the tip of the iceberg. His team hardly talks about corruption in the corporate, media and NGO sector. It does not touch upon lack of civil liberties in Kashmir or Manipur. Use of Vande Mataram type symbols, preclude the involvement of a large minority-Dalit-OBC section.  This  lacunae might lead the movement to adopt utopian-anarchist-opportunistic positions.  
          The political class—including well meaning, liberal-left sections in the Congress—are trying to understand the current phenomenon. While serious politicians are writing and admitting the need for electoral, democratic and political reforms, there is only a partial critique of corporate corruption, and almost no analysis of the economic roots of Anna’s agitation. Class disparities and the degradation felt by the common man in face of ugly display of wealth and power are not being considered as viable factors.  The wide ranging anger from Kashmir to Manipur to Kanyakumari to Mumbai via Chattisgarh— regarding civil liberties, mass graves of innocents killed by security forces, repeal of black acts like AFSPA, the condition of Sharmila Irom, appalling treatment of Tamils in Sri Lanka, discrimination against Muslims and Christians, politics of bomb blasts and right wing terror, hanging of Afzal Guru, pending Ayodhya case in the Supreme Court, issues in the Naxalite belt—is also being ignored: the political class is not taking a holistic view of the situation. The fact that India is standing on a powder keg—ready to blow up anytime—and that mere electoral and change of behavioural patterns is insufficient—is not being appreciated.
In such an atmosphere, given the fact that politics abhors vacuum, it is yet to be seen whether current political formations, including the Congress, can grasp multi-dimensional issues or whether India will see the rise of a new, Democratic Party or alternative. Anna’s show was only a rehearsal. The real political drama has yet to unfold.  

A rejoinder to Aruna Roy's statement: People cannot make law - zeenews.com -PTI

Comments posted on Zeenews.com article: People cannot make law: Aruna Roy dated: September 08, 2011:


Something appears to be missing from Aruna Roy's contention that 'people cannot make law'. That something is either fact, logic or vision or a combination of all. The fact that legislation is forwarded to Parliament's Standing Committee  to whet it from all angles while objections and suggestions are freely sought from the people and experts, would be enough to prove that there is no ban on people's participation in making law. The proposed legislation, whether coming from Government or from the people should mean little to the substance of the proposed to the legislation. Even when government of the day railroads laws that are not palatable to people or a section of it, that section does launch a protest movement and Government has to at times forced to make amendment to confirm to public demands. The propaganda by UPA that Anna Team cannot make law is a blatant lie to hoodwink people into thinking that Anna movement is against the very institutions of democracy. It is sad that a mature activist like Aruna Roy, clearly incensed at her colleagues stealing the thundered should be so shamefacedly projecting her prejudices and bias in front of the TV audience of discerning people, who can easily make out that her campaign against Anna team was deeply personalized and motivated and lacks the understanding of the tactical moves that Anna Team is making to take the entire subject of Jan Lokpal bill from the reluctant machinations of the political parties who had not passed the Lokpal bill for last 4 decades and will not be ready to pass it for another 4 decades, unless some clever tactic like what Anna’s fast is introduced to not only pass the Jan Lokpal legislation, but include some bull-dog teeth to its  prosecution and implementation authority. Aruna Roy kept on giving a class-room lecture as to how the bureaucratic route is sanctified to give each legislation a compulsory and torturous run through the wringers. It is sad that Aruna Roy and several of the similar activists groups, scorched by jealousy, have failed to grasp of big picture behind Anna Hazare’s movement.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

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People cannot make law: Aruna Roy

Last Updated: Thursday, September 08, 2011, 17:41
Views 33 Comments 0  


Chennai: In an apparent criticism of social activist Anna Hazare and his protest for passing Lokpal Bill, National Advisory Committee member Aruna Roy on Thursday said "people cannot make a law" and it had to be done by a drafting committee.

"Law has to be looked at it detail. If you change one comma or one full stop a right becomes no right. People can demand a law, people can say what kind of principle should be in a law... But law cannot be drafted by the people and we can't do the rubber stamp either. We have to set up a drafting committee and it should draft a law," Roy said while delivering a lecture here.


Referring to reported remarks of team  Anna member Arvind Kejriwal that "if Anna says it is the right thing, people will rubber stamp it," Roy said, "Our argument is that no one should rubber stamp. "

"We don't mean to say that the three or ten people will be given full authority on what they want in that nor are we saying that people do not have the right to say what they want to say," she said.

Slamming media for making "a black and white debate" reporting on the issue, she questioned "Can we allow the electronic media to take hold the definition of the democracy for us?"

Roy had earlier said Anna Hazare was "ill-advised" in going on the recent fast at the Ramlila Maidan in Delhi demanding passage of Lokpal Bill.

PTI


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