Frankly I don’t know, but the apparent reactive mode we seem to be following along with the attacks on the work and methods of our security agencies is troublesome. Do our leaders get that the threats we face are like none other in our history? Is the frustration with war that has no apparent reason for many Americans, leading to complacency? Will the desire for privacy be our undoing in the tech age?
Every time we claim “success” in fighting terrorism from George Bush to Barack Obama, it pops up in another form, usually stronger. That should tell us something about what we are dealing with and cause us to rethink our strategies. It should tell us we need to always be two steps ahead.
Reading the accounts of actions by terrorist groups or whatever we call them, we are faced with an almost impossibility of comprehension. What most of us would call atrocities, they see as doing God’s will in a noble cause. How can we reconcile such thinking?
Perhaps it’s time to stop worrying about who is tracking our phone calls and worry more about those who would delight at the opportunity to blow our children to pieces.
🌎What is your opinion?🌏
A year after the Edward Snowden disclosures, the U.S. still needs the best intelligence it can gather. The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, a group more extreme than al Qaeda, controls territory in Iraq and Syria and pledges: “We will raise the flag of Allah in the White House.” Members of the 9/11 Commission, whose 2004 report faulted restrictions on intelligence gathering, last month updated their assessment. “Complacency is setting in,” they wrote. “There is a danger that this waning sense of urgency will divert attention and needed resources from counterterrorism efforts.” WSJ 8-11-14
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The latest reviews of Barack Obama’s foreign policy are in, and flattering they are not. “Just leaves you scratching your head,” says one, about the President’s rationale for providing limited support to the Kurds in Iraq. “Nothing we can point to that’s been very successful,” says another about the President’s policy in Syria.
And then there’s this zinger: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”
In case you are wondering which trio of neoconservative naysayers we’re quoting here, we refer you, respectively, to James Steinberg, formerly the President’s Deputy Secretary of State, and Robert Ford, formerly his Ambassador to Syria, and Hillary Rodham Clinton, formerly his loyal Secretary of State. WSJ 8-11-14
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 