In addition to being the secret power that runs huge multinational corporations, one of the things I do for cash to buy my yachts is create and review business continuity plans. These are the documents that companies can show to auditors and say, "Yes, we have a plan in case our building is attacked by an amorphous blob from beyond the stars and the servers go down."
Here in New York such documents are a bit more important. There's a section in the plan I'm currently reviewing that summarizes the results of past recovery efforts--power outages, burst pipes in the server rooms, that sort of thing. But there's one effort that tops the list: "Terrorist attack on NYC on 9/11/2001." I was here in this very building on that day, and it's strange to see it so casually mentioned, one sentence out of a 160-page document. Five words and a date... 3,000 lives, dust, smoke, fear, powdered gypsum in my bicycle chain, and drifts of finely shattered building crunching beneath my tires as I fled downtown Manhattan between the fall of the first and second towers.
Since then: war abroad, in Afghanistan and Iraq. A fragile new order in the former, the toppling of Hussein and the killing of his psychopathic progeny in the latter. The defiance of insurgents by millions of purple-fingered Iraqis. The disclosure and dismantling of the Libyan nuclear weapons program. The withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. The resignation of Lebanon's pro-Syrian government. The Syrian government's handing over of Hussein's half-brother and other Iraqi insurgent leaders who formerly enjoyed safe haven in Damascus. Democratic-sounding noises from Egypt, the Palestinians, and even Saudi Arabia.
Even if much depends on our keeping the "tipping points tipped," as Thomas Friedman wrote, it must be a truly difficult time for the flagrantly pious.
This is history on the move: a sudden burst of human activity, a conflagration of change, conflict, and turmoil that wil merit at least a sub-heading in the crappy high-school textbooks of the future. If I look out of the windows in the southeast conference room, I can see a small sliver of where this all started, neatly framed by two nearby buildings: 16 acres that were once full of death and burned steel, into which the cornerstone of a new tower has already been laid.
On the drive to the train station this morning, I listened to an NPR interview with a "prominent" Democrat who voted against the use of force in Iraq. Referring to recent events in the Middle East, the interviewer asked (and I'm paraphrasing, here), "Doesn't this give some hope for long-term reform in the region?" The Congressman's response? "We won't know for ten years, whether this will take hold or not," and, apropos of nothing, he also managed to work in "The Administration claims that 140,000 Iraqis have been trained, but 88 of 89 batallions are not properly equipped, and have limited mobility." It was important to him that the public knows that barely two years after the total upheaval of every aspect of Iraqi society, and one month after Iraq's first free elections in decades, 140,000 new troops are not properly equipped. And despite the interviewer's dim amazement at his "ten years" estimate, I don't recall anyone ever saying that the Iraq campaign would be quick, or its eventual consequences soon realized. In fact, just this past January someone fairly high up on the org chart said, once again, the clear and exact opposite:
The great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations. The difficulty of the task is no excuse for avoiding it.
Even Daniel Schorr is admitting that "Bush may have had it right when he said that a liberated Iraq could show the power of freedom to transform the region." But to this Congresscritter, whose name I didn't recognize then and can't recall now, the prospect of a 10-year wait and the importance of pointing out that the Administration's language isn't quite accurate outweighs all of the other currents that are sweeping through the world.
God save us from these blinkered mental punks.
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It turns out that the punk in question was Michigan Senator Carl Levin. Infamy Or Praise details the Senator's spin. NPR broadcast link here. [Via Mr. Green.]
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James Taranto has more intellectual midgetry on display.
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Ten Fingers 6 Strings comments. And, it really is OK to link to me. Honest. It's all part of the plan, you see...
