Iraq and Afghanistan

The sad story in Monday's paper of the inability of the Pentagon's procurement system to provide adequate body armor to the soldiers in Iraq and the equally sorry performances in the provision of armored humvees or even in the retrofitting with armor of humvees and other vehicles, or in the provision of already tested devices to make it the electronics in roadside bombs inoperable is complemented in recent media by the story of the enhanced use of torture by the CIA and the Pentagon after 9/11. In this latest chapter, the torture has been an integral part of a policy called "rendition", that is the sending of suspects, often not charged with anything, to foreign countries where they will be made to talk. The countries chosen for such visits may not even be allies (for example, Syria), but they have the distinction of being known for the use of methods of torture that American officials feel they should avoid themselves because of American law and international commitments. Then there is today's article in the Times about the inability of the government to stop the sale of guns, including high-powered automatic guns, to known or suspected terrorists in the United States. Most of the people who applied for such guns lately were cleared for purchase. My friends also tell me of a recent talk they heard on the Plum Island center for the study of exotic viruses and bacteria. The speaker detailed many ways in which Plum Island, a small government owned island laboratory that harbors such friends as the Ebola, is actually less secure today that it was years ago. Extremely hazardous materials are regularly brought in an out by truck, with little securing along the way, and there is little protection on the island against a raid by terrorists.

These sad stories tell us many things about our government. When combined with the inability of the government to rationally address the deficit while insisting on cutting taxes while ignoring a decline in the dollar, this suggests that our political leaders and perhaps even our political system are not up to the challenge of leading the world while protecting the country against the inevitable blowback from our foreign adventures. Yes, as the only superpower we do have responsibilities. But in the long run we can only fulfill these responsibilities if our leaders are willing to tell the American people, and especially the wealthier taxpayers among them, that playing our role in the world requires sacrifices by all Americans. To be sustained, military and police actions require a strong economy to back them up. Handling the inevitable load of prisoners produced by our actions and by the terrorists, domestic and foreign, requires procedures and arrangements that can be sustained in terms of the body of national and international law on which our leadership depends. Fighting effectively in difficult environments requires the streamlining of procurement procedures that go beyond the "business as usual" approach that the Pentagon too often accepts. Controlling terrorists in the United States requires a new understanding of the requirements of security at sensitive facilities; it requires setting aside support for NRA positions long enough to enforce new controls on the availability of arms to suspected terrorists.