We've now learned a few important details about the US military's expanded role in domestic surveillance since 9/11. Like so many other aspects of the Bush Administration's "homeland security" strategy, this change is both ineffective and unnecessary.
Before getting into the pros and cons of the decision, let's first take stock of what else is supposed to be happening to prevent another 9/11-like attack. The US federal government is supposed to be funneling money to state, county, and city law enforcement to add personnel, equipment, and training. The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to help coordinate domestic counterterrorism efforts. Critical in these joint efforts is information sharing, since the 9/11 bombers could have been identified as a threat if someone had been able to pull the disparate pieces of information scattered across flight schools, FAA, local police departments, the FBI, into a coherent mosaic. Federal agencies are supposed to be better trained, staffed, and equipped to patrol the sensitive areas for which they already bear responsibility, such as airports.
So why, therefore, was there any discussion of giving the Department of Defense any responsibility for domestic surveillance at all, particularly after the sordid history of COINTELPRO? The answer, I would argue, lies somewhere in the Bush Administration's modus operandi. Hold on for a few minutes while I discuss American corporate culture before getting back to what the Pentagon should and shouldn't be doing.
While there is no single key to understanding the Administration or Bush himself, I think it would be a mistake to overlook George W. Bush's history as a businessman before he became governor of Texas or the president of the United States. He spent a significant part of his adult life, even as the owner of the Texas Rangers, immersed in the subculture of the corporate boardroom. It would be surprising, therefore, if he did not emerge from that world with some of it still clinging to him.
One of the untold stories of American business is how badly executives can run a corporation. You can reconstruct this part of American economic history through business journals, books on how to be a more effective manager, and the content of various management training courses. All of these exhortations tell you what, as a corporate executive, you should be doing—which, of course, implies what many in the audience are not doing.
Out of many bad habits of bad managers, I'll single out one that's relevant to this discussion. When an organization goes through a crisis, top decision-makers often respond by picking favorites and assigning new responsibilities to them. The favorites have the aura, whether justified or not, of getting the job done. Therefore, you give more jobs to them, especially ones that other parts of the organization seem to be bungling. If the favorites can't make better progress in their new areas of responsibility than their predecessors, the favorites and their executive patrons can always argue that the predecessors screwed things up so badly that it will take a long time to fix the problems. In this fashion, the favorites can easily escape responsibility, and in fact can enjoy a complete lack of accountability for a long time. The crisis doesn't pass, frank discussion of what's working and not working is difficult in the poisonous atmosphere that playing favorites creates, and the organization overall suffers. The dynamic usually starts when the managers think they don't have the time or need to look carefully into the origins of the crisis (or if there's even a real crisis at all). Instead, they look for someone to blame, or they treat the crisis as so extraordinary that old methods have to be thrown out entirely.
I've worked long enough in the private sector to have second hand knowledge of this dynamic, as well as first-hand experience in multiple organizations. Many decision-makers avoid making this mistake, but enough succumb to its temptation to make it a distinctive part of American business culture. In short, bad managers often play favorites, with disastrous consequences.
Now, back to Bush, the Department of Defense, and domestic surveillance. It doesn't take a great leap of logic or evidence to say that, after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration saw the US military as the answer to many problems. The efficiency, effectiveness, and professionalism of the services made them a logical candidate to lead US counterterrorism, at a time when shadowy foreign characters were clearly plotting the deaths of as many Americans as they could kill, in as spectacular a fashion as possible. The Pentagon became the favorite, while other agencies clearly got less attention and praise from the Bush team in general, and the president in particular.
The post-9/11 crisis is not as clear in hindsight as it seemed at the time. Although thousands of civilians died, Al Qaeda was not poised to follow up with a series of new attacks. What the available evidence indicates is not that a new chapter in the history of warfare opened, but an old one suddenly gained new prominence. The eagerness with which the Bush Administration proclaimed that history had somehow changed, and therefore all the old rules were off, should have caused wider concern at the time. Instead, the public and Congress turned a blind eye to things that should have been scrutinized and challenged.
The habits of an ineffective manager, therefore, got free play. The Pentagon accrued more responsibilities for intelligence gathering, abroad and (we now know) at home. Congress, the press, and other parties did not ask the question of whether or not the US military, armed with these new responsibilities, could have done anything to stop the 9/11 attacks. The short answer is, they would not have. Mohammed Atta's team did not do anything that might alert base commanders that an installation or military personnel were at risk. What, then, should the military be doing beyond force protection with these expanded powers?
That question is as old as the United States itself. It's easy to forget how an issue that seems quaint in hindsight, the proper mix of regular and militia troops, was in fact a bitterly contested issue during and immediately after the American War of Independence. The men and women who gave birth to an independent, democratic nation worried that regular troops would become an instrument of a national tyranny. The excuses were the same as now: threats from within and without. Then, the swarthy barbarians Americans feared were Native Americans. Now, they're Islamist terrorists. Only if the states maintained their own militias could the new American republic avoid a Caesarist coup at the point of the regulars' bayonets.
More importantly, perhaps, than the fear of a hazily-defined enemy was the very real problem that the militias were far less effective on the battlefield than regular troops. Throughout the war, American generals struggled with the problem of how best to deploy a mix of regular and militia forces. Put the militia troops in the wrong place on the battlefield, and the American line could be turned—and the war could be lost in the process.
However, there was always more to the American War of Independence than the skill and organization of the troops that fought. Good generalship was just as important, as George Washington showed on many occasions. The colonist's fortunes often turned on Washington's ability to exploit an opportunity, such as his surprise winter offensive in 1776. Just as often, the war depended on less dramatic moments in Washington's tenure as commander, such as holding the Continental Army together, or recovering from his own mistakes (for example, the decision not to retreat earlier from New York).
Other decisions critical to the colonists' success had nothing to do with military matters at all. For example, the reprisals against Tories, real or suspected, might have been far worse. With their independence and lives at stake, the Sons of Liberty might have decided it was better to burn Tory-dominated towns. (At the time, Washington had to defend himself from charges that he ordered New York burned.) The Continental Congress might have issued arrest orders for influential people suspected of supporting the British cause. The "homeland security" strategy of the time could have been far more repressive, with easy justification: until the Treaty of Paris, there was no assurance that the British government wouldn't simply keep sending troops to the colonies until it finally hunted down and finished the Continental Army.
Now, as then, military affairs are only part of the war effort. Soldiers have a job to do, as do FBI agents trained to handle criminal conspiracies from organized crime syndicates to terrorist groups, the people who inspect cargo offloaded at American ports, the local police who know the community better than any federal agent…You get the idea. Shoveling responsibilities at the US military can only dilute their effectiveness, not get the overall job of counterterrorism done better.
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