Fareed Is Juuust Right
by digby
Judging from Fareed Zakaria’s intro to his show today, as I predicted he’s taking some serious flack for his column saying that the US overreacted to 9/11. He said:
Yesterday was of course the ninth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. For me, these anniversaries have always been times of remembrance and mourning — I lost a friend in the twin towers — but also of reflection. And I’ve tried to reflect on how far we’ve come as a country since that day and whether we are safer now than we were then.
My answer is unequivocally yes. Look, al Qaeda flourished when governments the world over treated it as a minor annoyance rather than a major national security challenge. Since 9/11, cockpit doors are now sealed so planes can’t be used as bombs. Other simple security measures that focus on travel have made open societies much less vulnerable.
Al Qaeda terrorists and their ilk are being chased around the mountains of Afghanistan. They are being bombed in Pakistan. Their money trails are being tracked the world over.
It’s very tough to plan major terrorist attacks in that environment. So smaller, local groups inspired but not directed by al Qaeda have found ways to attack easy, open targets like cafes, nightclubs, train stations.
But the result is they kill locals rather than Americans or Brits or foreign soldiers. And, of course, this means that Islamic radicalism loses public support in all these countries. Think of Saudi Arabia as the perfect example.
The poll numbers on this are stunning. Islamic radicalism has been losing public support in every Muslim country over the last nine years. The result: al Qaeda is a much weakened enemy militarily, economically, politically. In the last nine years it has been able to put together scary videotapes, but it has not been able to mount a single terrorist attack.
Now is surely the time to evaluate soberly what has worked and what has been overkill in our reaction to al Qaeda. It’s clear to me that the massive expansion of the national security state, the Homeland Security Administration, the hundreds of billions of dollars spent, 17 million square feet of new office space for bureaucrats, the equivalent of three Pentagons, the code orange alerts, have all been an overreaction. Now is the time to begin rethinking the balance between security and liberty and re-balancing somewhat.
Now, here’s the scary part. I’ve made every one of these points before, but when I say it today, it seems controversial, and that tells you something about the polarized, dysfunctional political atmosphere we are living through right now.
And then, naturally, he comes up with this:
I think it has something to do with the fact that the right wants to maintain an atmosphere of fear and, therefore, accuses me of being cavalier about security. And the left can’t stand the thought that George W. Bush might have done a few good things after 9/11.
Does “the left” disagree with what Zakaria says? I don’t think so. Sure, the added global attention to Al Qaeda after 9/11 — inevitable I might add — has succeeded in dimming their prospects for more attacks. We might disagree as to which methods accomplished that, but the fact that it’s happened isn’t disputed by the left as far as I know. And we certainly agree that the obscenely expensive national security state that’s bankrupting the country was unnecessary overkill. (He doesn’t mention the massive waste of Iraq, of course — and how much better things might have been if we hadn’t done that ridiculous adventure.)
But let’s not let that stop Zakaria from putting the left in the same category as those who are right now ginning up a religious/culture/race war for their own profit and personal satisfaction. Everyone knows we are morally equivalent and anyway it would be very shrill for him to call a spade a spade and call out the right alone for its hideous exploitation of bigotry, fear and hate. Certainly, it would be rude to mention that that this militarization of our government is making a whole bunch of people wealthy and will likely lead to repression and authoritarianism if these people succeed in turning the country inside out. That wouldn’t be wrong — and would imply that Very Serious people in the middle of these two equally crazed poles aren’t the only people anyone should ever listen to. We can’t have that.
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