Reading the Terror In The Skies, Again article and the various reactions to it around the Web ( here , here , and here), I think the important question to ask, if not answer because I'm not sure of the answer: When do you know enough to act? This also relates to the decision to invade Iraq. When do you stop gathering information or intelligence and start acting on the information that you have?
Ideally, you want to gather enough information so that you are certain there is a clear threat but you want to act before the threat occurs. But how much is enough? You want enough information to support the action that you're going to take. What does that mean?
Consider the situation on the airplane in Ms Jacobsen's article. Reading the article and assuming the facts are more or less as she says, I think I would have wanted the flight crew to take more action than they did. There were frightened passengers and the flight attendents & crew were also very concerned. Many people on the plane felt the 14 Syrian were behaving suspiciously. Now that's no reason to duct tape them to their seats or send them to Gitmo, but it would have made sense for the captain to announce that, for security reasons, everyone should remain in their seats and not congregate in the aisles or outside of the bathrooms. The flight attendents could then periodically examine the bathrooms for signs of suspicious activity. I think the very fact both passengers and flight crew were concerned was reason enough to take this small step. If you're taking a small step that doesn't single out anyone in particular, you don't need certainty or proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
Now let's look at the situation leading up to the Iraq war. Ignoring the semi-hysterical, irrational He Lied! He Lied! contingent, the intelligence developed before the war was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He had programs and he had stockpiles. That's what we thought, that's what the British thought, that's what the French thought, that's what the UN thought. That's what John Kerry thought before he didn't think that; it's what Al Gore thought before he lost his mind. We also thought that Saddam had links to Al Qaeda and other terrorists. And Saddam was behaving in a suspicious manner; through 17 resolutions and 12 years, he still failed to cooperate fully with inspections; the onus was on him to demonstrate that he didn't have weapons or programs and he failed.
It seems to me clear that we had to act. The French wanted to wait; did they want to wait for more evidence or because they didn't want to endanger their oil contracts with Saddam? The UN wanted to wait; were they waiting for more evidence or were they afraid of jeopardizing their proceeds, both legitimate and illegitimate, from the Oil-for-Food program?
Other people wanted to wait because war is a bad thing. Yes, it is, but so are the things that happen when you refuse to go to war. Mass graves, torture, children's prisons, support to terrorists. And a lot of the bad things that these people predicted would happen did not happen. Thousands of refugees fleeing Iraq, massive civilian casualtlies, use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. (You know, the ones he didn't have. These are the same things they predicted in Afghanistan. And they'll make the same predictions the next time we act and the media will never call them on it). Some people take the position that you cannot act unless you can guarantee that nothing bad is going to happen: there must be no civilian casualties, no friendly-fire incidents, no mis-behavior by any troops. These are impossible demands, of course, and they're meant to be; the people who raise them are simply trying to prevent action and they wash their hands of the consequences of that inaction.
Continuing to go through the cycle of Resolution, Failed Inspection, New Resolution, New Failed Inspection was insane and the leaders who argued for it betrayed their responsibilities. After 12 years and 17 resolutions, did we owe Saddam another benefit of a doubt? And should the President have taken the risk that nothing was going to happen? For what event or sign should he have waited? Another round of Resolution and Failed Inspection? Some of intelligence may have been bad (although the infamous "trying to buy uranium from Africa" story is starting to look better), but how long do you wait?
We know what the consequences of not waiting are: a small war (as wars go, this was a small one, which isn't the same as being unimportant), 800+ allied dead, civilian casualties, a mass-murdering, terror-supporting dictator out of power, a popular civilian government that has the potential of becoming the first democratic Arab regime in that region.
It seems to me that many of the critics of the President fall into 2 camps: those who would never be satisfied with any amount of evidence, who felt we simply should never act; and those who criticise him for acting and who also would have criticised him for not acting if anything had happened.
How do you know when you have enough information?
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