Going Wobbly?
EDITORIAL Going Wobbly? Is the Bush administration going wobbly? Is the president preparing to back off the bold pledges he made to the American people four months ago in his State of the Union...
...Vice President Dick Cheney said another terrorist attack in the United States is "almost certain...
...The second step is ethnic profiling...
...If armed, however, the pilot could take on the terrorist...
...And the White House is interested in splitting the Immigration and Naturalization Service into two separate agencies...
...In short, dreamland...
...In fact, they apparently have argued that the continued "containment" of Saddam—the continuation of the Clinton policy, that is—is sufficient...
...Saddam will now grow richer, and he will have new cash to spend on his weapons programs...
...Bin Laden, al Qaeda, and other terrorists were eager to get their hands on such weapons...
...And he told us time was not on our side...
...Security personnel had let Reid on the plane...
...Fred Barnes, for the Editors...
...approval for a significant easing of the sanctions against Iraq...
...There are signs that President Bush and his team may be inclined to accept this recommendation...
...This is such a simple solution to airline hijacking—such a powerful deterrent— that pilots and passengers overwhelmingly agree it should be done as soon as possible...
...They also want an outside panel, appointed by Congress, to look into intelligence failures prior to September 11...
...So even if it were decided to man every plane, it would take months or years before enough marshals were hired, vetted, and trained, leaving most airlines vulnerable in the meantime...
...And officials said watch out for small planes that might be used by terrorists...
...inspections...
...Sense a disconnect...
...Did President Bush really not understand what he was saying when he pronounced the Bush Doctrine...
...Boeing has shot down this fear and, besides, bullets effective only at short range could be used...
...Scrutinizing Arab air travelers is no different from police departments who regularly narrow their search for criminal suspects on people of a certain race when the witness who reported the crime noted the perpetrator's color of skin," says Marc Levin of the American Freedom Center...
...That is what Clinton did for eight years...
...In the weeks and months that followed, Bush repeatedly let it be known, publicly and privately, that he was committed to removing Saddam Hussein from power, and by military force if necessary, which he presumed it would be...
...can Sen...
...It's good advice that applies here at home as well...
...Was it really a surprise to Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld when the Joint Chiefs told them 200,000 troops would be needed to take out Saddam...
...At the moment, there are roughly 1,000 air marshals available for 35,000 flights a day...
...When TSA director John W. Magaw appeared before a Senate committee last week, he was asked by RepubliThe emergency is now, the threat is real and urgent, and terrorists could strike any time, anywhere...
...They have a boss—President Bush...
...But even a clumsy terrorist might succeed at jimmying the lock, and, besides, it's not as if the pilot is going to hide in the cockpit while passengers are being systematically executed...
...Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld insisted it's inevitable terrorists will obtain weapons of mass destruction...
...And it could even be national rather than ethnic profiling, checking out people from countries with a history of funding or harboring terrorists...
...In any case, they'd be trained anew in firearm use...
...In fact, the administration recently made life even easier for Saddam, winning U.N...
...This is the policy of the Clinton administration, the one Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and a host of Republicans criticized so vociferously during the 2000 campaign: Keep Saddam "in his box" and pray for a miracle...
...On Thursday, in Berlin, the president said, "I have no war plans on my desk" and "we've got to use all means at our disposal to deal with Saddam Hussein...
...On his trip to Europe, Bush has blared one message over and over again: The threat of terrorism is real...
...He went on to say things are different now...
...As is the credibility of the United States and the whole security structure—or lack thereof— of the post-9/11 world...
...He could step in, either to take control of the plane or confront the terrorist...
...Did he think an invasion of Iraq would be easy...
...Magaw told the Senate committee last week that the pilot should keep his attention on flying the plane, not on fighting a terrorist...
...It's true a marshal on every flight would be a wonderful deterrent...
...Sure, it would be better if he resisted...
...Otherwise, the American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami might have gone down in the Atlantic...
...In other words, the administration may be returning to the idea of containment plus covert operations against Saddam—attempted coups, hoped-for assassination by people close to Saddam, hoped-for spontaneous combustion of his dictatorship, hoped-for serious U.N...
...No one...
...Now consider Washington's response...
...And their opposition is downright inexplicable...
...Or more likely choosing not to fly at all...
...inspections...
...And posing the grave peril that Bush so astutely identified in his State of the Union address...
...FBI Director Robert Mueller warned a suicide bomber is sure to strike and probably can't be stopped...
...And at the end of Clinton's term, Saddam was alive and kicking...
...Bush proclaimed that he was determined to confront and eliminate this threat, and he called on Americans to gird themselves for the difficult struggle that lay ahead...
...And there are other, worrying signs of non-seriousness about war in the highest reaches of the Bush administration: An unwillingness to substantially increase the defense budget...
...Well, it may have," Magaw said...
...But time is not on the president's side...
...American agents were rounded up and executed...
...They have the option of demanding a suspicious passenger be escorted from the plane or leaving themselves...
...Okay, but what about the copilot...
...Is the president preparing to back off the bold pledges he made to the American people four months ago in his State of the Union address...
...A lack of serious planning with Iraqi opposition groups...
...If we're really at war, let's be serious about doing what we have to do to win it...
...The president returns from Europe this week...
...Opponents also say a bullet might puncture the plane, causing decompression...
...Indeed, a military attack on Saddam may never happen at all...
...Magaw and Mineta don't have to be the final word on arming pilots or profiling passengers...
...He has lost considerable momentum in the war against terror and weapons of mass destruction...
...In Congress, Democrats are talking about the elevation of Tom Ridge, President Bush's homeland security adviser, to cabinet status...
...The first is arming pilots...
...The CIA tried to foment coups, to support plots against Saddam, and they all failed...
...He needs to take control of his administration, and remind them, as he said in Berlin on Thursday, that "we're still at war...
...And it was only a matter of time before the ultimate horror of terrorists armed with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons confronted us all...
...George Allen of Virginia whether the arming of pilots would have made a difference in warding off the hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11...
...That might happen, but it should be noted that most commercial pilots (70 percent) are military veterans...
...What's worse, there are two steps the administration refuses to take that would have an immediate impact...
...Magaw and the airlines have raised a series of silly arguments against arming pilots...
...Plotters were caught and executed...
...All 19 of the September 11 hijackers were young Arab males...
...Unarmed, however, a pilot is tempted to turn the plane over to the terrorist...
...William Kristol and Robert Kagan Arm the Pilots and Profile the Passengers Consider the terrorist alarms issued by the Bush administration in just the last week (May 18-24...
...In fact, practically everyone is on board, except the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the airlines themselves...
...But why put a pilot in that position when arming him with a handgun could prevent the horrible scenario from occurring in the first place...
...Bush administration officials leaked word of an upsurge in threats...
...Yet the response is backward-looking and bureaucratic...
...The president warned us then that the clock was ticking in Iraq...
...A lack of public (and private, so far as we can tell) diplomacy with respect to our allies...
...More drift and indecision would be disastrous...
...Who actually believes the creation of a cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security would have the slightest effect in thwarting terrorists in the foreseeable future...
...His presidency is on the line...
...Another fear cited by opponents is that a passenger might be hit by a stray bullet...
...They have also recommended against an operation that combined airstrikes with special operations forces on the ground...
...On Friday, the Washington Post published a credible report by the respected journalist Tom Ricks that the administration has put off the idea of an invasion of Iraq...
...Cockpit doors are locked and air marshals are on some flights...
...In the absence of official profiling, the task is, in effect, left to passengers...
...We could go on...
...Deal with it, he told Europeans...
...So why not concentrate on them instead of frisking grandmothers of Norwegian descent...
...Was it all hot air...
...Yet the response is bureaucratic...
...And while his decision may be politically correct and pleasing to Arab-American grievance groups, it defies common sense...
...Perhaps it was...
...Surely the president will step in and save the day...
...But now, apparently, the Bush administration may be seeing wisdom in Clinton's approach...
...And realizing this, the terrorist might choose to stay away...
...And the practice is for marshals to travel in pairs...
...A lack of preparation of the American public for the fact that the war on terror is going to get bigger, not smaller...
...The emergency is now, the threat is real and urgent, and terrorists could strike any time, anywhere...
...Viewing him warily, they grabbed Reid instantly when he tried to light his shoes...
...It seems that the Joint Chiefs of Staff have recommended against a military operation to remove Saddam, on the grounds that it would be difficult and would require some 200,000 troops...
...But it would also be extravagantly expensive and would require the hiring of 50,000 to 100,000 marshals...
...A lack of a strategy for how to avoid the trap of renewed U.N...
...Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta has adamantly refused to allow it at airports or other transit centers...
...We have a famous case of profiling by passengers and flight attendants that worked: Richard Reid, the shoe bomber...
...Saddam Hussein was working hard to acquire weapons of mass destruction...
...An official "familiar with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's thinking" told Ricks that "there are many ways in which [regime change] could come about, only one of which is a military campaign in Iraq...
...Virtually every bit of intelligence about potential hijackings, before and after September 11, has pointed to Arabs as perpetrators...
Vol. 7 • June 2002 • No. 37
