Tag: #commission

Gatestone Institute : The #commission itself was a typical product of such thinking.

So, it was not surprising that it came up with only two new proposals: one is to create a Cabinet post dealing with #intelligence, a twin for the existing #Homeland #Security tsar. The other is a suggestion to spend #money on “improving the lives of disaffected youths in Arab and other #Muslim countries”.

I am not kidding! Less than 10 percent of the report, basically its Chapter II, was devoted to the key question: who were these terrorists, where did they come from, and what made them tick?

The report said:

“We learned about an enemy who is sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal. The enemy rallies broad support in the #Arab and #Muslim world by demanding redress for #political #grievances, but its hostility towards us and our values is limitless.”

Leaving aside the odd syntax — obviously someone insisted that the last phrase be added – the #paragraph quoted above shows how the commission got on the wrong track. The report assumes that there was a single, readily identifiable enemy. This is the routine way of #political thinking, as shaped during the #ColdWar.

Anyone with #knowledge of the Arab countries and the #Muslim world in general would know that this is not the case. The problem with the 25-year war on #terror is precisely that the #democracies, and those Muslims who aspire after #democracy, are faced with a multi-faceted threat that assumes numerous forms.
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Gatestone Institute : It all starts with what looks like a misunderstanding of the #mission of the #commission.

The commissioners tell us that they had three aims:

To offer “the most complete narrative” of the events. But what the report offers is a collage of numerous articles and books that have already covered the “event”.

To #assemble as many personal #testimonies as possible of the survivors of the #attacks and their #families. This, though, a laudable effort, is of little help in identifying the #ideology and the machine that produced the killers in the first place.

Making #recommendations about ways and means of preventing similar attacks That should have been the “meat” of the report. It is not. It was, in fact, its Achilles heel. The reasons are not hard to imagine. The commissioners have a politico-technocratic #mindset. They are the products of a #political #culture that assumes that all problems have #technical and bureaucratic solutions. Such solutions are standard: create a new layer of bureaucracy and spend some more #money.
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