Can’t Winn’em All
posted in General |CAN'T WINN'EM ALL
James Q. Wilson is a savvy editorialist/columnist and whenever I see his by line I make it a point to read the article. In a recent issue of the WSJ, he authored “The enemy will always surprise us”.
The point of the article was the virtual impossibility of our investigative agencies in discovering the nuggets of information in the “clutter” – the intelligence term for useless trivia. With hundreds of thousands or millions of bits of information received every day from do-gooders, off-the-wall wackos, disgruntled spouses, double agents, misguided academics, those desiring to mislead, foreign agents, etc., etc., there is no way that the brightest guys in the world can consistently or reliably sift thru all the clutter and come up with good hard data – particularly in a finite period of time. And add to this the fact that lots of data comes in umpteen foreign languages where translation is required. Now that is not to say that the FBI and CIA can't do a better job. Sure they can. But under the best of circumstamnces, they might spot 3 out of 5 terrorist plots – maybe 4 out of five – but not all five. We may as well live with that harsh reality.
Nowadays the media and congressional committees are in a feeding frenzy over blame fixing and “connecting the dots”, the current buzzword that is surely best suited for 20:20 hindsight. Easy to connect the dots when the game is over. But, we are going down a predictable path. To wit:
Nazism could have been prevented……..if..
The holocaust could have been prevented….if..
Pearl Harbor could have been prevented…….if..
Princess Diana could have survived…….if..
and now,
The 9/11 tragedy could have bee prevented….if..
And what does all this accomplish? Ashcroft is a good man. Let's let him do his job. And the FBI and CIA will do better. They were never founded to be cuddly buddies exchanging information. Each protected their own turf – and Congress planned it that way. Now that is changed. Now, let's see how well they do.
Wilson was right. We can't winn'em all, but we just changed the odds. That's a positive step.