Many of the actions taken in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 may have made some sense at the time, but they were not well-thought through as long-term policy shifts. Since 9/11, however, the dominating fear of another attack has kept the White House focused on not losing the next skirmish rather than promoting the nation's long-term interests.
The result of continuing to operate in a state-of-emergency mode, what Jack Balkin calls "governing through terrorism," has been a pattern of policymaking that has often turned out to be short-sighted and self-defeating, whether in the wars we've chosen to wage and how we've waged them, the methods we have used to capture and handle detainees, or the ways we have confused spin and propaganda with public diplomacy. Not surprisingly, as we've been belatedly learning in the press over the past several weeks, the loosening of constraints on domestic intelligence collection has also appeared to produce mission creep by some agencies or parts of the military, unaccountable privacy intrusions, and unwarranted surveillance of political activities.
As we've pointed out frequently on this site, many of the Administration's post-9/11 policies, from the conduct of the Iraq war to the handling of detainees, have increasingly been opposed not only by the Administration's political opponents but by highly-respected professionals in the very departments and agencies devoted to security, intelligence and diplomacy. These "revolts of the professionals," as Ignatius calls them, can't be simply dismissed as classic turf-fighting. Instead, the pros have been trying to push the system back toward a more sensible, balanced and, in the long-run, more sustainable approach to strategy, operations and practices. The recent revolts by a number of Senators and Congressmen who are long known as strong advocates of the military and intelligence communities have been a clear signal that the pros have failed to get their message through to the White House, so they've decided that Congress must at least hear the full story.
In saying that we're moving into a post-post-9/11 world, I'm not suggesting that the risks facing America are necessarily greatly reduced compared to what they were on 9/12/2001. In some respects, threats to American interests abroad are considerably greater. But rather, the US is now in a much better position to evaluate, manage and respond to those risks.
Ignatius doesn't go as far as I would -- I think the proposal earlier this year to switch from the Global War on Terrorism to a Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, how daffy the acronym, is another long-overdue shift to a post-post-9/11 world. However, he's certainly correct that it's no longer productive for the White House (or the OVP) to continue to insist on every executive prerogative and to dig in their heels on every issue of executive authority. As Ignatius argues, it's past time for the President to start providing leadership so we can start fashioning a workable consensus on how we will operate in a post-post-9/11 world.
Revolt of the ProfessionalsAmen!
The national security structure that the Bush administration created after Sept. 11, 2001, began to crumble this month because of a bipartisan revolt on Capitol Hill. Newly emboldened legislators forced the administration to accept new rules for the interrogation of prisoners, delayed renewal of the Patriot Act and demanded an investigation of warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency.
President Bush has bristled at these challenges to his authority over what has amounted to an undeclared national state of emergency. But the intelligence professionals who have daily responsibility for waging the war against terrorism don't seem particularly surprised or unhappy to see the emergency structure in trouble.
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I asked [a senior intelligence official] what he thought, watching the emergency structure come down around him. "We all knew it would," he said. The interim structure was inherently unsustainable. But he noted that the very fact that the nation is debating rules for interrogation and surveillance of suspected terrorists demonstrates the success the intelligence agencies have had since Sept. 11 in disrupting attacks.
One little-noted factor in this re-balancing is what I would call "the officers' revolt" -- and by that I mean both military generals in uniform and intelligence officers at the CIA, the NSA and other agencies. There has been growing uneasiness among these national security professionals at some of what they have been asked to do, and at the seeming unconcern among civilian leaders at the Pentagon and the CIA for the consequences of administration decisions.
The quiet revolt of the generals at the Pentagon is a big reason U.S. policy in Iraq has been changing, far more than Bush's stay-the-course speeches might suggest. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is deeply unpopular with senior military officers. They complain privately about a management style that has stretched the military to the breaking point in Iraq. For months they have been working out details of troop reductions next year in Iraq -- not just because such action will keep the Army and Marine Corps from cracking but because they think a smaller footprint will be more effective in stabilizing the country.
A similar revolt is evident at the CIA. Professional intelligence officers are furious at the politicized leadership brought to the agency by ex-congressman Porter Goss and his retinue of former congressional staffers.
[...]
The CIA, like the military, wants clear and sustainable rules of engagement. Agency employees don't want their careers ruined by future congressional or legal investigations of actions they thought were authorized. Unhappiness within the CIA about fuzzy rules on interrogation, and the risk of getting clobbered after the fact for doing your job, was a secret driver for Sen. John McCain's push for a new law banning cruel interrogation techniques.
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President Bush needs to do what he so often talks about, which is to provide strong leadership. In place of the post-Sept. 11 emergency structure, the country needs clear rules that Congress can debate and finally endorse.
cross-posted at American Footprints