Month: August 2006

Faith and Incompetence

A reader writes:

I’m entertained by the theory that Cheney and Rumsfeld meant for the war to go this way. Depending on which bad mood I’m in, I’ll now vacillate between this and the incompetence theory. Both work for me. I’m probably still more convinced by the incompetence theory, but not because I believe they’re stupid. They’re not. But they have approached their political theory the same way they have been taught to approach their religious faith: unquestioningly. Once this theory of the domino-effect/wildfire blaze of the spread of democracy/beneficent contagion of western values/etc became ingrained in their own heads, they’ve asked their supporters, just as the great revivalists and zealots of the past and present have, to accept as gospel the righteousness of their mission, the infallibility of the logic, and pre-ordained superiority of the outcome.

I think their incompetence is triggered by a zealous need to believe that their theory is so righteous as to be unassailable. To alter it, or to adjust to circumstances is to be unfaithful. It’s the same godlike worship of the free market, as though that was also some directive from On High. There are similar examples of unquestioned reverence on the left, but I see too many parallels between GWB’s religious faith (I am a Christian too, I should say) and his faith in his more secular principles. I think he sees no distinction. I think the same of Cheney and Rumsfeld. I believe that this is the source of their incompetence, and is indeed the very thing that hamstrings lots of smart and faithful people:  the inability to reconcile one’s heart and mind.

I’m also intrigued by this aspect of what the second chapter of my upcoming book calls the "fundamentalist psyche." I don’t think you can understand the actions of this administration – i.e. make them make internal sense – without understanding the depth of the president’s fundamentalist mindset. He’s a fundamentalist convert and an alcoholic. Faith is the one thing that rescued him from a life of chaos. So fundamentalist faith itself – regardless of its content – is integral to his entire worldview. And fundamentalism cannot question; it is not empirical; it is the antithesis of skepticism. Hence this allegedly "conservative" president attacking conservatism at its philosophical core: its commitment to freedom, to doubt, to constitutional process, to prudence, to limited government, balanced budgets and the rule of law. Faith is to the new conservatism is what ideology was to the old leftism: an unquestioned orthodoxy from which all policy flows.

Cheney and Rumsfeld, however, do not strike me as the same. They’re just bureaucratic brutalists, thrilled to have complete sanction to do as they please because they have the mandate from the leader-of-faith. Bush and Rove provide the fundamentalist voters; Cheney and Rummy get on with the war they want to wage. If they have to condescend to Bush’s recently discovered faith in democratization, they’ll humor him, while they bomb, wiretap and torture along what they think is the only path to security. They are enabled by the Christianist; but they’re just plain old "bomb ’em to the stone-age" reactionaries.

Email of the Day

A reader writes:

Your most recent post on the details of the terror plot investigation was superb.  You did your homework. We all need to know the facts and make our own decisions about what is, or is not, going on. The decision to go public with the plot seems to have been initiated by the forced confession of this guy in a torture chamber in Islamabad and NOT based on the actual facts of the case as developed by MI5 and others. What is even more concerning is that the Bush administration balked when the Brits wanted to let the one guy go ahead with his dry run, perhaps providing more information and more suspects.  Why?  That is a bit concerning to me.  Seems Bush may have done more to jeopardize the investigation than anyone else.

When you are on the extremes it is easy to get caught up in the spin.  Those who have been quick to judge and condemn you are perfect examples of what I call "goose steppers". They obviously have NOT done any due diligence and quite frankly, I would imagine that they could care less about the actual facts. We cannot win this war on terror without knowing all the facts.  Those in the center, like yourself, must continue to raise their voices and be heard. It is hard to be heard above the extremist din but it is necessary for our survival.

We’ll find out more at some point. But skepticism seems to me to be in order at this point.

The UK Terror Plot, Ctd.

More details are emerging. The Brits didn’t want to arrest all the suspects but plans shifted after a Pakistan detention:

In contrast to previous reports, one senior British official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports. The sources did say, however, that police believe one U.K.-based suspect was ready to conduct a "dry run." British authorities had wanted to let him go forward with part of the plan, but the Americans balked.

So we have one Islamist planning a dry-run. We have no evidence that any of the others had even bought airline tickets. Malkin-stand-in Karol Sheinin produces a week-old story from the right-wing tabloid Daily Mail to bolster her view that an actual threat to innocent lives was "imminent". All I can say is that, since August 11, new data have cast that unsourced information more suspect, and if Sheinin were a little more savvy about the British press, and had absorbed information unveiled within the last week, she’d be a little more skeptical. From the Guardian today:

A security official said: "There was a mastermind, there was a planner, and there were the executioners." He claimed the al-Qaida link to the alleged plot in Britain had been established and that it had been at the planning stage when it was interrupted in London last week. [My italics].

I don’t know about you – but "a planning stage" does not mean "imminent" to me. But tell that to Karol Sheinin. If torture is permissible to get information for plots in the "planning stage," well you see how the narrow case for torture always expands as soon as it is entertained.

Still, there’s little doubt that there was a serious plot in the works. The Independent – a virulently anti-Blair paper – reported the following last Sunday:

It was the arrest of Rashid Rauf about a week to 10 days ago that triggered the security operation in Britain last week, according to accounts in Pakistan. After he disappeared from contact, a panicking fellow conspirator telephoned the UK to tell the bombers to bring the plot forward and go ahead immediately after Mr Rauf disappeared from contact. The call was intercepted, and the British police mounted an emergency operation to stop the bombers. [Apologies for the nutball site where the piece was reprinted.]

This kind of thing is always a tough call. But the danger is that you seize people too soon, don’t have enough evidence to detain them, and lose potential valuable intelligence. If what triggered this panic was a tortured confession that exaggerated the imminence of the attack, then we may have bungled again. Again, this plot was well-known and closely monitored for months:

The official shed light on other aspects of the case, saying that while the investigation into the bombing plot began "months ago," some suspects were known to the security services even before the London subway bombings last year.

He acknowledged that authorities had conducted electronic and e-mail surveillance as well as physical surveillance of the suspects.

Monitoring of Rauf, in particular, apparently played a critical role, revealing that the plotters had tested the explosive liquid mixture they planned to use at a location outside Britain. NBC News has previously reported that the explosive mixture was tested in Pakistan. The source said the suspects in Britain had obtained at least some of the materials for the explosive but had not yet actually prepared or mixed it.

So: no solid evidence of a) passports, b) tickets, c) prepared explosives. So far- and this may change, of course – we know of one individual allegedly prepping for a "dry-run." Everyone else was already under intense surveillance. And yet this group of potentially lethal Islamists was arrested suddenly, perhaps forfeiting subsequent evidence or intelligence, and maybe rendering a successful prosecution impossible. One wonders why. Faulty tortured evidence from Pakistan? Jitteriness in Washington? There did not seem to be much jitteriness in Downing Street in the week before the planned "dry-run." Tony Blair decided to go on vacation, and never left it. Most of the leading British officials were chilling. Brown was in Scotland. Two suspects have already been released without being charged. The British authorities are asking for time extensions on detaining the rest – not a good sign for the prosecution.