Accidental Blogger

Sabios Costumam Mentir …

The baby Jesus had to contend with only three on Christmas and they were thoughtful enough to bring birthday presents, wrapped if you please, judging from the fuzzy cell phone snapshots of the day.  Two millennia later we have a putz with a package in his pants, and a plague of pundits visited upon us.

“Perhaps the biggest lesson for airline security from the recent incident is that we must overcome our tendency to be reactive. We always seem to be at least one step behind the terrorists. They find one security gap — carrying explosives onto a plane in their shoes, for instance — and we close that one, and then wait for them to exploit another. Why not identify all the vulnerabilities and then address each one before terrorists strike again?”

This amazing revelation comes in the penultimate paragraph of a could’a-should’a op-ed piece in the NYTimes (28 Dec 2009) by someone with the risible name (given the context) of Clark Kent Ervin.  Is this the same Mr. Ervin, I wonder, who, after an obligatory stop in a phone booth, reviewed the corpus of medical research since Adam and came up with a brilliant suggestion for discovering a unified cure for all cancers?  Since then, our worthy superhero has served as “the inspector general of the State Department from 2001 to 2003 and of the Department of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2004”, and is now “the director of the Aspen Institute’s homeland security program”.  I find it uncommonly curious that Mr. Ervin has been overlooked by the czars of present and past administrations in their fight against crime, drugs, poverty, famine, drought, rapacious bankers, Ponzi schemers, and the like.  Given that the CIA and FBI are known to be populated entirely by dolts of the first water, I can see how Mr. Ervin’s ratiocinations are indispensible to national security.  I cannot imagine how such a perspicacious thinker was let go from Homeland Security.  Fortunately for us, his well paid sinecure at Aspen allows the country to benefit from his wisdom and his years in civil service. The sophist continues …

 “Since the authorities have to succeed 100 percent of the time, and terrorists only once, the odds are overwhelmingly against the authorities. But they’ll be more likely to defy fate if they go beyond reflexive defense and play offense for a change.”

There it is, despite the inapt and ambiguous locution of “defy fate” – the All-American Testosterone Option.
Since WWII America has learnt that she cannot win a war against “white” people.  Devotees of Reagan may demur, citing the defeat of the USSR, but I stand by my statement. The alternative is to go to war with “non-white” people presumably because we sense an easy victory, another notch in our gun.  Didn’t we kick a**  in Panama and the Grenada, but good?  What the “non-white” peoples have learnt is that they cannot win a war against “whites” but that guerilla tactics seem to stump them. Viet Nam was the last place where a combination proved effective, but that was then.  With Al Qaeda there will only be guerilla warfare, against which, “play offense” is a fool’s stratagem.  Nor can there be any victory against guerilla warfare; almost by definition, the best one can hope for is a stalemate. As surely as America does not understand or accept stalemate as a goal, guerilla leaders do.  Superman wants the resolution of a shootout on Main Street; Osama wants to shove a lump of Kryptonite down the sleeping superhero’s throat, and then to run away to his cave to gloat over the video.
Al Qaeda is a guerilla organization instituted to murder “white” people.  Can you imagine someone in the Al Qaeda camp losing his job in disgrace over Abdulmutallab’s failure of last week? Certainly a few heads will roll at Homeland Security in the dénouement to come, for we have failed – a mini-defeat – and someone must pay the price.  And for what?  Shall I sue the furniture store if I stub my toe, the builder if I fall down the stairs?  Shit happens – learn to live with dignity! And how often in recent memory has America forgiven egregious sins against the public with the judgment, “Mistakes were made”?  I suspect Osama would win a few hearts and minds if he only targeted the usurers of Wall Street who sin with impunity.
After the attack on the Pentagon Trade Center, we have avenged the death of 2819 by killing 6256 of our own and uncounted guerillas and innocents of the other with not even stalemate in sight.  Is no one alarmed by this imbalance?  Is this what our superhero wants more of?  How does one “identify all vulnerabilities”?  Surely not just by exhaustively searching for chinks in our armor.  To do so, one must have the mindset of a murderer – something better done in Maclean than at Aspen. Is that what we are prepared to do?
In summary, Mr. Clark Kent Ervin, there is dignity in learning from our mistakes, thereby converting what you contemptuously characterize as reflexive defense into anticipatory defense.  And much shame attends upon killing your neighbor’s son in sacrifice to your offensive play.

… Wise Men Habitually Lie