Sitting ducks Intelligence is no substitute for viligance

Sitting ducks
Intelligence is no substitute for viligance

Dec 8, 2001

Veterans commemorating the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack on Friday lamented the fact that America had not learned its lesson about vigilance.

Sixty years ago this week, terror rained down from the sky, and Americans never saw it coming, even though, in retrospect, there had been warnings. Three months ago, the same thing happened.

Intelligence methods have changed, but they still have not caught up with the communication methods of our enemies. Realists suspect they never will. Terrorists will always have a head start, because that’s the nature of the beast. Until we have some hint that they’re plotting, we can’t begin to watch them, and at that point we’re already far behind. They only have to find one way to wreak havoc, out of numerous possibilities, while we have to uncover and thwart a specific plan they’re taking great pains to hide. Given that reality, it makes sense that the United States government needs to acquire some advantage, somehow.

Now we’re debating the balance of constitutional rights and counterterrorism measures. If the government could watch our every move, terrorist acts could, in theory, be prevented. In reality, part of the problem is that intelligence agencies cannot quickly and efficiently process the information they already are allowed to collect, and adding to the bulk of that raw data will provide no solution.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer has criticized opponents of the Bush administration’s antiterrorism plan, saying that they undermine the fight by voicing their concerns, and Attorney General John Ashcroft went further: "To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve."

Aside from their resemblance to the position of totalitarian regimes everywhere, those statements miss an important point: National unity and resolve alone won’t deliver Osama bin Laden. Intelligence officials have complained that they are hampered by insufficient budgets, but huge spending increases also won’t reduce terrorism, unless that money is spent on effective methods for learning, in advance, about threats to American security and acting quickly enough to prevent them from becoming realities. Some will slip through. That hasn’t changed since Pearl Harbor, and it won’t in the future.

During wartime, the American people may be willing to tolerate some temporary erosion of their civil rights, as long as they remain convinced that some progress is being made against their primary enemy. In this case, though, that puts us behind the curve again by focusing so much of our attention on a group we’ve at least partially disabled, rather than on the multitude of others that share a similar goal.

Vigilance and intelligence are not the same commodity. Intelligence tells us where to look; vigilance keeps us prepared to respond quickly and appropriately, even when we’re taken by surprise. It took 60 years for history to cycle back around to another suicide attack from the air. That alone suggests the next attack will come in some other form, and military strategy affirms that.

The veterans are right in saying that we should have learned our lesson, and Sept. 11 reminded us that vigilance is about believing anything can happen, at any time, to anyone — even citizens of the United States of America. It’s not about allowing the government to see everything; it’s about being ready for something that we’ll never see coming.