Tuesday, August 03, 2004
In-Country Catastrophe: Planning Responses
Today, the urgency of the latest alarm over an al-Qaida attack in the United States seems to have receded. It is now seems agreed, as many suggested earlier, that the detailed planning that had been reported was several years old.
But this time, the warning was a little more believable, because its specificity caused an Orange alert to only affect a few defined targets in New York, Newark (unlikely I would think) and Washington D.C. The emphasis was to be financial institutions and the means were to be truck bombs, whether suicidal or not we do not know.
This makes us consider response horizons for events or nonevents like this. How many times can we have such false alerts and not have everyone take them less than seriously? During an alert that seems real, what measures could or should be taken? It would depend I suppose on how the information and the subsequent scenario plays out. One could shut down a city or a large part of it (for example, close all bridges leading into Manhattan, clear the sky of all planes over the New York area). But the country cannot afford at this juncture to take such extreme actions very often or keep them up indefinitely.
One time period that they should be intensely considered, however, is while an attack may be underway. Al-Qaida seems to like to have as series of attacks grouped together. This implies that as soon as one attack is reported, the system should immediately attempt to cut off or lessen the effect of other attacks that might be on the list. This is obviously a difficult task, but it is not necessarily hopeless, as a reconsideration of 9/11 might show.
Then in the immediate aftermath, after we assume that there is no more to this "series", we must attempt to do two things. First, we must try to immediately exploit any leads that the series has opened up, stop the uncontrolled movement of people out of the country and out of certain defined areas for at least a short time. Second, we must reassure the people and get the country functioning again as soon as possible. The emphasis this time cannot be on how incomparable the tragedy is for the country. It must rather try in a thoughtful and kind manner to put the destruction that has occurred and may occur in any more near-term events in perspective. London lived through a blitz with many more deaths and injured. Pearl Harbor was destructive, but we came back rapidly. "We will this time and this is how we are going to do it."
Finally, in the period of excitement following another "event" we should take care to not make attacks on other countries based on the heated intelligence of the moment. There is very little that cannot be done as effectively after more consideration of who was directly or indirectly responsible and of the best means to attacks these actors.
Today, the urgency of the latest alarm over an al-Qaida attack in the United States seems to have receded. It is now seems agreed, as many suggested earlier, that the detailed planning that had been reported was several years old.
But this time, the warning was a little more believable, because its specificity caused an Orange alert to only affect a few defined targets in New York, Newark (unlikely I would think) and Washington D.C. The emphasis was to be financial institutions and the means were to be truck bombs, whether suicidal or not we do not know.
This makes us consider response horizons for events or nonevents like this. How many times can we have such false alerts and not have everyone take them less than seriously? During an alert that seems real, what measures could or should be taken? It would depend I suppose on how the information and the subsequent scenario plays out. One could shut down a city or a large part of it (for example, close all bridges leading into Manhattan, clear the sky of all planes over the New York area). But the country cannot afford at this juncture to take such extreme actions very often or keep them up indefinitely.
One time period that they should be intensely considered, however, is while an attack may be underway. Al-Qaida seems to like to have as series of attacks grouped together. This implies that as soon as one attack is reported, the system should immediately attempt to cut off or lessen the effect of other attacks that might be on the list. This is obviously a difficult task, but it is not necessarily hopeless, as a reconsideration of 9/11 might show.
Then in the immediate aftermath, after we assume that there is no more to this "series", we must attempt to do two things. First, we must try to immediately exploit any leads that the series has opened up, stop the uncontrolled movement of people out of the country and out of certain defined areas for at least a short time. Second, we must reassure the people and get the country functioning again as soon as possible. The emphasis this time cannot be on how incomparable the tragedy is for the country. It must rather try in a thoughtful and kind manner to put the destruction that has occurred and may occur in any more near-term events in perspective. London lived through a blitz with many more deaths and injured. Pearl Harbor was destructive, but we came back rapidly. "We will this time and this is how we are going to do it."
Finally, in the period of excitement following another "event" we should take care to not make attacks on other countries based on the heated intelligence of the moment. There is very little that cannot be done as effectively after more consideration of who was directly or indirectly responsible and of the best means to attacks these actors.
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