Dear Friend and Reader:
Holy Mercury Station Retrograde, Batman.
What every pundit from here in San Francisco to The New York Times could try to say about Flight 253, also known in these parts as the Underwear Bomber event, none could be clearer than Rachel Maddow, with the help of NBC’s foreign correspondent Richard Engel on her primetime MSNBC show “The Rachel Maddow Report.”
In a little under 12 minutes, they set the record straight, explaining many ways in which our “war on terror” is totally misguided. It’s worth the watch; if this is your first experience of Ms. Maddow (who broadcasts nightly on MSNBC), welcome to one of the freshest, most alive and intelligent voices currently on television. (She recently gave Eric her exact chart data, and we will be doing her astrology close to her birthday, which is April 1.)
It was a foregone conclusion on the progressive blogs that once the Northwest Airline event happened, reaction from the Republicans would come like the second shoe dropping. The little noise parade included the timeworn elements of racial profiling, talk of detainment camps and Islamophobia, all of which flourished over the Christmas holiday, the season of Christian peace, joy and harmony. Al-Qaeda could not ask for better irony, but they didn’t get much else; Flight 253 landed on its wheels.
Karl Rove, George Bush’s longtime political adviser, was “deeply troubled” by Obama’s response, and Mary Matalin, former adviser to Vice President Cheney, was shocked, SHOCKED that the Bush-Cheney administration had inherited undealt with terror threats against Americans.
Radio host Mike Gallagher exclaimed: “There should be a separate line to scrutinize anybody with the name Abdul or Ahmed or Mohammed.”
In Congress, aside from Sen. Lieberman’s response, which Maddow tears apart in her spot, we have manufactured outrage from Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, the same senator responsible for the months-long delay of the appointment of Pres. Obama’s nominee Erroll Southers to the post of director of the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), because he feels TSA workers should not unionize.
It feels a lot like the usual cavalcade of idiots. What’s missing is that we can’t get past the whole fear-safety-victim conundrum which characterized the Bush administration.
We’re facing the mirror of our own fears coming back to us again and again and again. Two of the people who planned the Flight 253 event were released from Guantanamo Bay prison by the Bush administration in 2007. And as Eric has said, “the problem with places like Guantanamo is that if you weren’t a terrorist before you went in, you certainly would be once you got out.”
Could it be the very people decrying what the current administration is doing or not doing are the same people responsible for rubber stamping the bad policy that got us here in the first place? Perhaps distraction from finding the core truth of the situation is a response, but what we haven’t done yet is react in a way that unravels the problem successfully. Our traditional logic seems to be defying intelligence. Could we bring ourselves to stop dithering in fear and get to solving the problem effectively? Can we get smart on this, please?
Asymmetrical warfare is the warfare of the present and probably the future if it continues to be successful. Yemen has long been on the list of known Al-Qaeda havens, and we have been attacking Al-Qaeda there for years. But that as we can see is not a solution, as Afghanistan and Pakistan can attest. We are still a clumsy elephant, reacting out of fear with a big fisted hammer against a mercurial enemy when perhaps a soft scalpel and some long-term planning might be more effective.
Those solutions, which Engel mentioned in passing on Maddow’s show, are still in development. Their fruits have not yet appeared on our radar. As we listen to the noise we call news, we remain mindful that we’re still hauling freight from mistakes of the past. In dealing with the airlines whose new responsibilities post Christmas Day 2009 means painfully increased scrutiny which we will need, we’re still going to have to pay for that excess baggage.
Yours and truly,
Fe Bongolan
San Francisco
The link to Richard Engel’s revelations is http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#34626362
Not to turn this into a political blog (but, hey the personal is political). . . .check out Richard Engel’s report on Rachel Maddow last night about the sobering realities in Afghanistan. . . .
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
If this player didn’t paste correctly, here’s the link http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#34626362
Musicman:
This is smart as a whip kind of thinking:
“The Modus Operandi of terror groups to infiltrate seriously under developed areas of our planet can only lead to a quickening and sharper focus of administrations to fill the vaccuum with “security forces.” No doubt once Yemen is securitised(sic)…. we can look forward to a concerted effort to clean up the remaining poverty stricken countries who are surely as much victims of World Bank debt….Colonial fascism……. and Political corruption as they are “terrorists”.
It is the poverty driven by the major banks that are making places like Yemen safe havens for Al-Qaeda. Maybe, just maybe, our current financial condition where we can NOT afford three war fronts will actually make us smarter with how we handle this. Let us beat that drum until they get the message.
Thanks Fe…it is great to see Rachel Maddow for the first time. She does the job..!! I totally concur with Len ….. your grasp of the roots of this…. and the appeal to the transcendence of “the fear” is key to progress!!
Hathors Mirror springs to mind. Egyptian…….let us use the blurring of an honest readout as a tool in order to rage against this particularly dangerous and yet oh so clumsy and stupid machine…..!!
The Modus Operandi of terror groups to infiltrate seriously under developed areas of our planet can only lead to a quickening and sharper focus of administrations to fill the vaccuum with “security forces.” No doubt once Yemen is securitised(sic)…. we can look forward to a concerted effort to clean up the remaining poverty stricken countries who are surely as much victims of World Bank debt….Colonial fascism……. and Political corruption as they are “terrorists”
We are simply watching the sale of securitisation to countries who haven’t got a pot to piss in. They just need a little push to request it. What better way for the fascist right to take total control.
“Ahem….time to scare a few people in the Arctic Circle. Al Quaida is sending its best operatives up there to bring down one of those flying polar bears with a penguin in diapers stuffed with marzipan. But it is radio-active marzipan!! Oh right ….tell the Minister to ask the coalition for anti-terrorist operatives…we need them right away….”!!
Over and above all of that….I shall keep my anatomy intact……..and look forward to reading more from you guys……!!
PH
Len:
We have to credit Eric for help with the “hook”, which I wrote but Eric saw and bolded in the middle of the text. Sometimes working in the heat of the story, getting lost in the details can blur your vision of the story’s key.
Its always good to stay in touch with your inner and outer investigative journalist.
Fe, Thank you. Your concise and eloquent piece is every bit as clear as Ms. Maddow. Excellent rerference to news as noise, thought provoking assessment of asymmetrical warfare and a grounding plea for an intelligent approach to problem solving. i would give up a significant part of my anatomy to write as well as you do.