It is not surprising that the right-wing media arepreoccupied with ideological clowning and cheap partisanship, even at a momentwhen hundreds of Americans just barely escaped peril. This vapid entertainmentwas captured perfectly in a FOX News video segment (which can be viewed on theMedia Matters for Americawebsite). At the very moment FOX anchor Gretchen Carlson groused thatgovernment officials "refuse to say the word 'terror,'" theelectronic scroll directly beneath her image reported that Homeland SecuritySecretary Janet Napolitano had indeed referred to the car bomb as "apotential terrorist attack."
Such semantic carping suggests that the right-wingtalking heads cannot findor even inventa serious complaint about the Times Square incident. Perhaps that is because theresponse of government at all levels so far has been effective. The blockssurrounding the bomb were swiftly evacuated, and the bomb squad quickly disarmedthe device. Then the suspected perp was apprehended within 48 hours, just as heseemed to have been attempting escape on a flight to Dubai.
So whether government officials talk aboutterrorismor use it to frighten the public, as George W. Bush administrationofficials so often didseems to have little to do with whether they canadequately protect us.
Intelligence-Led Policing
The real lessons from the latest attempted attack onNew York areless political and more practical. The first line of defense is an alertcitizenry, a message that New Yorkers absorbed years ago. The next is a highlytrained police force that can respond instantly and effectively, whileconstantly evaluating, anticipating and monitoring potential threats.
Under the leadership of Commissioner Raymond Kelly,the New York City Police Department developed those capacities, in no smallpart because he lacked confidence in the federal counterterrorism bureaucracy.As Christopher Dickey reported in his excellent 2009 book Securing the City, Kelly created a special counterterrorism forcethat ventured well beyond the traditional boundaries of urban policing. Withagents working in cities abroad, front companies and community surveillance,the NYPD gathers copious intelligence that has thwarted numerous plots againstthe city, including schemes to bomb synagogues and subway stations.
What is now known as "intelligence-ledpolicing" has become a model for the nation and the world.
Yet this time, the car bomb came close to completingits murderous mission despite the vigilance of New York'speople and the skill and bravery of New York's cops. The reason is quite simple: There is nofoolproof way to stop every single terrorist attack, even in countries thatpermit far less freedom of movement and association than the United States.Many of the worst attacks have been carried out in authoritarian countries,such as Russia,where the state security forces do not hesitate to use intrusive and brutalmethods.
Still, New York's experience in protecting itself against anenemy that conspires to kill its people every day is instructive. Rather thanstigmatize Muslims through profiling, as various numbskulls in Congress and onTV would recommend, the city has cultivated relationships with the mainstreamIslamic community.
Among the critical lessons that Kelly learned fromSept. 11 was the importance of language skillsso he and his deputies haverecruited scores of officers who speak useful dialects of Arabic and Pashto,among others. Another key lesson was that the most likely terrorist recruitswere young men who had withdrawn from the local mosques, which don't promotejihadism.
Unfortunately, learning from New York is scarcely on the minds ofright-wing pundits, some of who even seem disappointed when the terroristsfail. But that kind of nihilistic rage is too often what passes for patriotismin this country now.
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