Disturbing late-night drunken phone call from an ex, but not like you're thinking...

[muckefuck]

Got a drunken call from Nuphy last night. By a strange turn of events, he's been made head of his department and isn't happy about it. Dildohead wrapped up his tour of the Southwest and is now in Manhattan, though he left some of his crap behind, so the old man presumes he'll be returning for a bit before the term starts. At least he helped Nuphy get the deck party-ready so we might actually have that cook-out we've been promised. (Or not. He's balking at buying the requisite Weber because he doesn't know where to store it in the off season.)

In any case, the annual dragon boat races are this weekend in South Chinatown (a month late according to the traditional calendar, but what the hey) and we made tenative plans to catch some heats in the afternoon and wind up at Spring World or Lao Szechuan for dinner. Does that sound appealing to any of y'all?

We made the error of getting into politics near the end of the call. Never thought I'd hear the "If we just left them alone..." argument from someone as educated, aware, and generally sensible as him. His response to the war-of-annihilation argument was also puzzling, since he seemed to think that even a series of suitcase bombs in our major cities would leave us stunned and collapsing instead of united as never before in murderous retaliation.

The line of debate did manage to conjour up frightening new possibilities I hadn't previously considered. Chief among them: What if Americans began adopting terrorist tactics? I don't mean the government squads, I mean regular good ol' boys. Nuphy doesn't think even the irradiation of Chicago by an al-Qaeda operative would trigger the nuking of the Middle East, but what if a team of ex-soldiers decided to take matters into their own hands? If their guys can smuggle a bomb into the States, what's to prevent domestic nutjobs from getting one into Mecca?

Comments

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

FWIW, our weapons-collecting domestic nutjobs seem to divide neatly into: 1) Survivalists who are much more likely to take themselves off to the hills than risk their necks fighting overseas for ungrateful weaklings like the rest of us; 2) Religious crazies who think the U.S. government is out to get them, too, so they don't really think Islamic terrorism is so bad as all that. (See Jerry Fallwell for the "respectable" end of that particular corner of the political spectrum). But in a country of hundreds of millions, you never know.

[prilicla.livejournal.com]

we made tenative plans to catch some heats in the afternoon and wind up at Spring World or Lao Szechuan for dinner.

lhn and I can't make it to the races, but we can probably join you for dinner, as long as you're eating after 5:30 or so. I'm glad to hear Nuphy is doing so well.

[gopower.livejournal.com]

If their guys can smuggle a bomb into the States, what's to prevent domestic nutjobs from getting one into Mecca?

Middle East Islamic countries have the advantage of rigidly controlled homogeneous societies -- a bunch of white guys wandering through Mecca might be stoned to death even if they weren't carrying pocket nukes.

If Nuphy listened to a little more talk radio and country music, he might better appreciate the massive retaliation theory. That said, I admit that I was (pleasantly) surprised that Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001. The "let's lob a few cruise missiles and forget it" had been the policy for the preceding 20 years. I do not think the "Vietnam Syndrome" ever changed the public's attitude, but it certainly dominated policymakers of both parties.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to agree, I think Americans would not at first react coherently to the suitcase bombs scenario. They are just not used to thinking of themselves as vulnerable and subject to the same catastrophies as other countries. And the PR crap from your leaders is only reinforcing that- disaster recovery is not a part of either party's platform, it's not even discussed AFAIK. Lots of talk about prevention, security, sacrifices etc etc but nothing along the lines of, this could happen, here's what to do in the event of an attack ...

[carneggy.livejournal.com]

You're only partly correct. It's definitely true that not much has been discussed in the sense of 'let's tell the general public what to do in the event of an attack', but you are wholly incorrect that nothing is being discussed by the organizations who would actually be in charge of disaster response/relief/cleanup.

Speaking as an employee of the AMA, a whooooole lot of work has been put into disaster relief planning since 9/11 by a lot of agencies - it wasn't that long ago (May 2003) that large-scale mock disaster scenario drills in Chicago and Seattle were held to field-train/test strategies and personnel. (Seattle's was a dirty bomb explosion, Chicago's was a pneumonic plague bioterror attack.) The drills were one of the few beneficial things (har har) that the Dept. of Homeland Security has done; it involved groups like the Red Cross, CDC, FEMA, etc.

Lots of non-government groups have also been working on how to prepare to assist in such occurences. The AMA specifically has worked on how best to coordinate and optimize the medical staff that want to go volunteer in a disaster relief effort, after seeing how chaotic that process turned out to be with 9/11.

The primary reason why disaster recovery is not a part of either party's platform, IMO, is that neither side would do much different. You're not going to see one party saying 'well, we'd send doctors to treat the sick and use the CDC to prevent diseases from spreading' while the other says 'well, _we_ would just say 'fuck the sick, we'll just napalm any town infected and write it off as a loss!' And since both parties would basically do the same thing (let the governmental agencies whose functions in such scenarios are long-defined do their jobs), there's no debate to be had over the procedures between candidates or political parties. Nobody is going to choose to vote for a candidate primarily based on the minute difference in how they might handle this, so it's very much a non-issue that can be omitted from the platforms.

As to 'why isn't there more telling the populace what to do', part of that is the immensely large number of things that might happen in a disaster. You simply can't issue every citizen a handbook saying 'in case of anthrax, page 3. In case of bombed office building, page 4. In case of bombed power station, page 5. In case of bombed subway train, page 6. In case of dirty bomb, page 7.' Instead, the agencies in charge of dealing with such events are including in their plans 'what do we tell the populace to do, and how, in response to a disaster' rather than telling people every minutae ahead of time.

(And the few times they _have_ said something ahead of time, it's gone badly and just prompted runs on essential supplies. "Buy duct tape to seal your house", anyone?)

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

a bunch of white guys wandering through Mecca might be stoned to death even if they weren't carrying pocket nukes.

I've come across references to losing generals in various battles in Islamic history slinking off the field dressed as women (i.e., in full face- and body- covering hijab). These stories may all be invention for the purpose of humiliating the loser (a similar rumour about Saddam Hussein moving about in women's clothing circulated after the invasion of Iraq), but on the other hand, that would pretty much work.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

There are also numerous examples of Westerners disguising themselves as Arab men in order to sneak into Mecca. But why would they have to go that far? Pilgrimage to Mecca is a requirement for every Muslim and--like Jews and Christians--they come in every colour under the sun. Arabs are white guys, at least for most people. I don't see blending in as being a significant problem.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

Thanks for taking the time to present this. In fact I remember a couple of instances of your military and ours doing joint exercises of this nature.

I was thinking of the general popultion though - in the context of this discussion - ordinary people don't seem to have been presented with any sort of information that might prepare them for the *possibility* of such a disaster. Psychologically. Discussion is couched in terms of prevention, security, defense. Plans are made by people in authority, for the populus. This does nothing to give people a sense of self-reliance and (I'm sorry) empowerment. Even without specific information, the acknowledgement that such a thing *might* happen, and that we *can* cope with it, goes a long way towards preventing panic.

IMO the reason neither party talks about response is that they are promising people they will prevent such things happening - to admit a need for response and self-directed action on the part of citizens is to admit that they might not be 100% able to prevent it happening. The ultimate no-no.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Ah, good point. I guess I was thinking more about how much a bunch of guys fitting my stereotype of an American nutjob would stick out in Saudi Arabia. (Although I'm not sure if they would seem any less weird wearing hijab, now that I think about it. From what I've read, if you're around women in full hijab all the time, you learn to recognize individuals, and personality traits are much more discernible than you would think).

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

In some of the cuckoo talk about the Berg video, there were some decent observations about general differences in body language between Middle Easterners and Westerners. These are obvious regardless of what a person is wearing.

Maybe it was foolish of me to use the word "nutjob", because it summons up images of the kind of rednecky guys who gun down Sikhs at gas stations. A sufficiently appalling attack might lure much more mainstream people into militancy--I'm thinking of a mirror image of what's happened in the Middle East.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

IMO the reason neither party talks about response is that they are promising people they will prevent such things happening

As far as I can tell, both parties are very carefully not making any such promise. (They may not be geniuses, but they know that any promise to prevent future attacks is political suicide as soon as one happens on their watch.) They may not be doing great in terms of encouraging self-reliance, but that's probably more because both parties are currently led by people who think primarily in terms of government solutions to problems. That future attacks are possible, though, I don't think they make any bones about. For example, here's one comment by the President at an April 28 press conference:

Let me talk about vulnerabilities, then I've got to get back to work. We are still vulnerable to attack.

And the reason why is al-Qaida still exists, al-Qaida's dangerous, al-Qaida hates us, and we have to be correct 100 percent of the time in defending America and they've got to be right once. And therefore we are vulnerable.

But people need to know we're working — we, the government — at all levels are working long hours to protect America. We're doing the best we can.

The best way to secure America, however, is to stay on the offensive and bring those people to justice before they harm America again. And that's what we're continuing to do.

But, you know, so long as they're an al-Qaida enemy that is willing to kill, we are vulnerable.

(I'm not going to look for a comparable Kerry quote right now, but I take it as read that he wouldn't make any claims that Bush administration policies equate to safety against future terror attacks, and that he's not rash enough to claim that that will swing 100% the other way on January 20, 2005.)

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

I'd be up for race viewing and subsequent dining. I don't know my way around the south side at all, but if people want to meet and take the bus/el down I'd be game for that.

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

A mirror image would have to involve about 20 or 30 years of domestic terrorism before attacking foreign targets, though. I think if we start to see a pattern of hate crimes against Muslims and Islamic institutions in the U.S. that indicates some sort of organization by vaguely competent people, then it's time to worry, probably.