Aug 3, 2004
What Color is the Wolf Today?
What Color is the Wolf Today?
(Aug 2)
Orange is the color currently in fashion in the nation’s capital and its
main financial center. The U.S. government has once again raised the terror
alert level from yellow to orange—this time in Washington, D.C. and New York
City--based on information obtained from the arrest of a computer engineer
in Pakistan several weeks ago. Yet by frequently changing its colors, the
government has cried wolf too many times.
New Yorkers and Washingtonians are justifiably skeptical and nonchalant
about the heightened warning level. Although urging Americans to “keep
shopping” during all prior orange alerts, the government has never told us
how to behave differently at various “threat” levels. The rhetoric by Tom
Ridge, the nation’s Secretary of Homeland Security, and other anonymous U.S.
officials would have us believe that the current threat level is very
severe. Yet, they didn’t change the alert system to red, its highest color,
probably because people would be too frightened to leave their homes for the
shopping mall.
Come to think of it, since the inception of the alert system, the government
has toggled the levels only between yellow and orange. We’ve never seen
blue or green either. Maybe it’s because these lower levels might encourage
the terrorists to attack by signaling that U.S. defenses were relaxed. More
important, no self-respecting cautious bureaucracy would open itself to the
risk of future post-attack criticism for not sufficiently warning the
American people. To cover their backsides, the tendency of security
bureaucrats has been to “over-warn” Americans by crying wolf with unneeded
episodes of heightened alert. So there is plenty of room for suspecting
that the system has been politicized, especially in the wake of Attorney
General Ashcroft’s recent manipulation of terrorist threats for political
gain and John Kerry’s unexpected challenge to President Bush’s record on
security issues at the Democratic National Convention.
There may well be a real threat this time, but the information picked up in
Pakistan indicated that al Qaeda had been conducting surveillance on
financial buildings in these two cities for years and it apparently provided
no specific intelligence of an imminent attack on a particular date. Al
Qaeda conducted surveillance on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania for
four years before striking. Is the government going to keep the alert
system at the orange level for another four years or only until the November
election? Given the sorry performance of the U.S. intelligence agencies
prior to September 11(as noted by the 9/11 Commission) and on Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction (as exposed by the Senate Intelligence Committee), how
do we know that the “treasure trove” discovered in Pakistan is not false
information deliberately planted by al Qaeda either to scare the American
public or to tweak a response from U.S. defenses so that al Qaeda can better
learn how they react?
If President Bush and his security apparatus really want to make us safer,
they should use the alert system differently. Every time the U.S.
government meddles overseas—for example, needlessly invading the Islamic
country du jour—and enlarges the bulls eye already painted on us here at
home, the alert level should be raised a notch. Thus, in this election
year, voters would have a better idea of exactly how safe government actions
overseas were making all of us here at home. Gauging from the sheepishly
revised State Department report showing that terrorism has recently been on
the rise, the threat to America posed by the Bush administration’s foreign
policy is clearly in the red zone.
(Aug 2)
Orange is the color currently in fashion in the nation’s capital and its
main financial center. The U.S. government has once again raised the terror
alert level from yellow to orange—this time in Washington, D.C. and New York
City--based on information obtained from the arrest of a computer engineer
in Pakistan several weeks ago. Yet by frequently changing its colors, the
government has cried wolf too many times.
New Yorkers and Washingtonians are justifiably skeptical and nonchalant
about the heightened warning level. Although urging Americans to “keep
shopping” during all prior orange alerts, the government has never told us
how to behave differently at various “threat” levels. The rhetoric by Tom
Ridge, the nation’s Secretary of Homeland Security, and other anonymous U.S.
officials would have us believe that the current threat level is very
severe. Yet, they didn’t change the alert system to red, its highest color,
probably because people would be too frightened to leave their homes for the
shopping mall.
Come to think of it, since the inception of the alert system, the government
has toggled the levels only between yellow and orange. We’ve never seen
blue or green either. Maybe it’s because these lower levels might encourage
the terrorists to attack by signaling that U.S. defenses were relaxed. More
important, no self-respecting cautious bureaucracy would open itself to the
risk of future post-attack criticism for not sufficiently warning the
American people. To cover their backsides, the tendency of security
bureaucrats has been to “over-warn” Americans by crying wolf with unneeded
episodes of heightened alert. So there is plenty of room for suspecting
that the system has been politicized, especially in the wake of Attorney
General Ashcroft’s recent manipulation of terrorist threats for political
gain and John Kerry’s unexpected challenge to President Bush’s record on
security issues at the Democratic National Convention.
There may well be a real threat this time, but the information picked up in
Pakistan indicated that al Qaeda had been conducting surveillance on
financial buildings in these two cities for years and it apparently provided
no specific intelligence of an imminent attack on a particular date. Al
Qaeda conducted surveillance on U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania for
four years before striking. Is the government going to keep the alert
system at the orange level for another four years or only until the November
election? Given the sorry performance of the U.S. intelligence agencies
prior to September 11(as noted by the 9/11 Commission) and on Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction (as exposed by the Senate Intelligence Committee), how
do we know that the “treasure trove” discovered in Pakistan is not false
information deliberately planted by al Qaeda either to scare the American
public or to tweak a response from U.S. defenses so that al Qaeda can better
learn how they react?
If President Bush and his security apparatus really want to make us safer,
they should use the alert system differently. Every time the U.S.
government meddles overseas—for example, needlessly invading the Islamic
country du jour—and enlarges the bulls eye already painted on us here at
home, the alert level should be raised a notch. Thus, in this election
year, voters would have a better idea of exactly how safe government actions
overseas were making all of us here at home. Gauging from the sheepishly
revised State Department report showing that terrorism has recently been on
the rise, the threat to America posed by the Bush administration’s foreign
policy is clearly in the red zone.