Two interesting, relatively unnoticed and uncommented upon, stories from this week deserve more attention. The first, noted by Lorenzo Vidino at Counterterrorism Blog, emerged from a court case in London:
Lessons from Madrid and London
A British court today sentenced to life in prison the five “Fertiliser Plot” men, mostly British-born and Pakistani-trained militants who were planning to blow up targets in London (including a nightclub, power plants and shopping mall) with half a ton of ammonium nitrate and other substances. As a consequence today the MI5, finally free to disclose its information without jeopardizing the case, released new information about the links (some of them already known) between the Fertiliser Plot and the 7/7 bombers.
The information is quite detailed, but, in a nutshell, the MI5 revealed that two of the 7/7 bombers, Mohammed Siddique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, had been seen with Omar Khyam and other Fertiliser Plot members in early 2004. Khan and Tanweer were taped discussing ways to raise money through fraudulent schemes but, since no specific mention of an attack was made, the MI5 decided not to investigate them. As the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Report into the London Terrorist Attacks has already pointed out, “in light of the other priority investigations being conducted and the limitations on Security Service resources, the decisions not to give greater investigative priority to these two individuals were understandable." Given its limited resources, MI5’s decision not to divert human resources to investigate individuals that, while clearly interested in jihadi activities and intentioned in committing crimes to support them, did not constitute an immediate threat, was probably a sound one and second guessing it today is as easy as useless. [Emphasis mine-SW]
There are many important points in Lorenzo Vidino's post and the related post by Aaron Manes, Sympathy for the Spy-Masters: MI-5's Mission Impossible, but my focus is on the difficulty presented in fighting terror from a position of defense. It is never possible to create and maintain an ironclad defense, a problem made more difficult when resources are limited.
The second story relates to this very point.
The Drudge Report links to the story in the Washington Times, House GOP hits shift of spy funds to study climate. Christina Bellantoni reports:
Senior House Republicans are complaining about Democrats' plans to divert "scarce" intelligence funds to study global warming.
The House next week will consider the Democrat-crafted Intelligence Authorization bill, which includes a provision directing an assessment of the effects that climate change has on national security.
"Our job is to steal secrets," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
"There are all kinds of people analyzing global warming, the Democrats even have a special committee on this," he told The Washington Times. "There's no value added by the intelligence community here; they have no special expertise, and this takes money and resources away from other threats."
Democrats, who outnumber Republicans on the committee, blocked the minority from stripping the warming language from the bill.
Intelligence panel Chairman Silvestre Reyes, Texas Democrat, said the climate-change study is one of several shifts his party has made to intelligence policy.
"We're concerned that global warming might impact our ability to maintain national security," he told The Times, describing the idea as "cutting edge."
This is the same Silvestre Reyes who did not know the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam when asked several months ago; it is not clear from his comments whether his understanding of Islamic based terror has gotten any better since that time.
Such a story raises the question: What Are They Thinking?
Even for those who are absolutely convinced that Anthropogenic Global Warming represents an existential threat to humanity, the threat is by their admission, at least 50-100 years in the future and there are, as mentioned, a great many groups and individuals, both private and government funded, who are studying the issue. I would wager that the number of people with expertise in analyzing terror threats is far smaller than the number who have (or imagine they have) expertise in analyzing the threats from global warming.
There are clearly two competing "narratives" at work here. The Left side of the political divide believes that we are facing an existential threat from AGW and Islamic fascism is a minor nuisance with occasional dire consequences for unlucky individuals. For them, counterterrorism should arise from a defensive posture. Yet they reveal a fundamental lack of seriousness when they propose we react primarily from a defensive posture at the same time proposing to cut the funding for precisely what they claim to support. Since the Democrats relentlessly accuse the Republicans of inadequately funding "first responders", the combination of cutting funds from counterterrorism and increasing funds to "first responders" suggest that if the Democrats have a coherent strategic approach to Islamic terror, it essentially consists of hoping no attacks occur and when one does occasionally occur, focus on the clean-up.
The opposing narrative recognizes that AGW remains an open question, that 50-100 years is more than enough time to allow technological solutions to emerge that will obviate most of the risk to our environment without keeping most of the world in an impoverished state and adding millions of vulnerable people on the margins to their numbers. At the same time, the Right side of the political divide sees Islamic fascism as a near threat that must be combated with an active defense and overt offense at times.
These two world views have become increasingly irreconcilable, to the detriment of efforts to address both problems. With positions so hardened and so cynical, reasonable efforts to decrease our dependence on imported oil and press for development of alternative energy sources have become nearly impossible to imagine.
In such an environment, moving resources away from counterintelligence to "intel" on global warming is the height of irresponsibility, but sadly, this is what we have come to expect from people who believe the greatest danger facing our country is the Bush Administration.
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