Too many eyes, too little seeing

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, politics, history

This will be quite short. I truly don't know what to make of The One Percent Doctrine (subtitled Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11) by Ron Suskind. The book's thesis: In 2001 Vice President Cheney declared that if there is a one percent chance that a particular regime has or will soon have nuclear or other mass-destruction weapons, we must act as though it were a certainty. Years later, the present world condition is the result.

Though the book was written primarily in 2004, it was not completed until the following year, and published sometime in 2006; it was written from the viewpoint of a time prior to the 2004 election.

Suskind is a compelling writer, and his talents have been ghosted by others. In his Afterword, he mentions two years of research, with many helpers. Perhaps this explains why, time and again as I read, I would think, "He couldn't have been privy to that, even years later." Many, many conversational tidbits seem to me to be interpretive or fictional. While he was able to gather many facts, including having about 19,000 documents at his disposal, the face-on, conversational descriptions seem to be historical fiction rather than journalism.

Nonetheless, the broad outline is clear:

• The stovepipes and firewalls between the various Intelligence services, some due to rivalry, some set up by overly-liberal administrations, were only partly breached after 9/11/2001.
  
• The President and his closest advisers favor action over analysis.
  
• America's enemies gradually learned how to communicate—both messages and finances—in a world of pervasive surveillance.
  

The US has not just the CIA, NSA, and FBI, but at least a dozen other intelligence-gathering bodies, and none communicates well with any of the others.

The author's opinion, or perhaps that of his most favored sources, is that the US hasn't been attacked directly since 2001 primarily because al-Qaeda has been focusing elsewhere, and is actually gratified that we are mired in Afghanistan and Iraq; that they'll get around to us later.

Maybe so. It is true that for every kid-bomber who blows up a taxi stand in Baghdad, two more willing recruits show up. However, we have captured or killed two-thirds of al-Qaeda's leadership, and driven the remaining ones into hiding in Pakistan. The head is not lopped off yet, but it is clearly impaired. Equally clear, the real work was all behind the scenes, done by "invisibles", while the visible notables took the credit or took a fall.

I expect further attacks on American soil. It is unlikely that anything less will fail to bring together the scattered agencies and offices who are presently checking tree after tree, and have yet to locate the forest.