The British Parliament will stand for election on 12 December 2019. The norm, which all of us have come to expect, is for “October surprises.” That is, carefully hoarded negative stories to be sprung on the “conservative” party just in time to decisively tilt the election. Obama’s college transcripts have never been leaked, nor has the damning Los Angeles Times recording of Obama with Rashid Khalidi, a Jew-hating Muslim radical. So, it is a true “man bites dog” story when the Times of London publishes a crushing story, based on a massive leak of potentially fatal internal Labour Party documents. The updated story starts:
MoreJohn McDonnell has apologised to the Jewish community “for the suffering we have inflicted on them” after Labour’s failure to stamp out rampant anti-semitism in the party was exposed in a massive leak of documents from its own disciplinary department.
So another young, educated, privileged Saudi man, here all nice and legal, has attempted to commit mass murder for terrorist reasons. Oh, the authorities are mouthing the usual cautions about letting the FBI get to the bottom of it, and you may believe they are diligently working to uncover or bury the truth as you will. But, the American people already have all the evidence needed to come to a reasonable conclusion. What we might not get is the fuller picture, the full target set. For that, let us turn to a parallel development.
We haven’t had a major terrorist action like the 9/11 attacks in the US for good reason. Our governmental agencies still take potential attacks seriously in this country and are vigilant. My greatest concern now is that we, the public, will become complacent.
While lots of us engage in the guilty pleasure of watching selective clips of our favorite Congressional actors in the latest kabuki theater, we might profit more from considering some of the sights and sounds coming from the NATO 70th anniversary meeting of heads of state. I especially invite your attention to two official videos, one of President Trump meeting before the press with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, and the other of the “2 Percenters” lunch meeting. Relevant excerpts from the transcripts appear below.*
Everyone in the vaunted “interagency,” is well aware of the concept of the instruments of national power. The old Army War College acronym is “DIME,” for diplomatic, informational, military, and economic tools. You will notice that each tends to rest primarily in different departments, different agencies in the “interagency.” This would be why you need multiple agencies to coordinate rather than always operating “in their own lane.”
Here we go again: rockets fired into Israel from Gaza; Israel retaliates; and the story continues. But it is a different and more ominous story, and we should all be concerned.