While I don't wholly disagree with your assertion regarding 9/11, there is an important distinction in that the immediate response to those attacks was not nearly as botched as the response to the Mumbai attacks. Any major U.S. city and the crisis is resolved in six hours, tops, less if there is evidence that it is still more of an active shooter scenario and less a pure hostage taking. I could go on about how the security forces responding were poorly equipped, poorly trained, and how their failure in shutting down the TV news feed during the operation may have directly resulted in the death of hostages (the terrorists saw on live TV that they were being assaulted and decided to kill the hostages) but the simple fact that it took THREE DAYS to resolve the situation should speak for itself.
True that the initial response wasn't as awful as India's was, but the big things for me are the NYFD radio failures and Giuliani's decision to put the command center in the biggest target in the city. Two failures as big as anything in Mumbai. More NYFD firefighters died (343) than the total deaths in Mumbai. But still no accountability.
True that the placement of the command center was stupid, but that's in retrospect. The response in India was a result of planning in reaction to some event, which (I would think, but could be very wrong) tends to be more straightforward than trying to predict the future. I also don't think that you can compare the number of deaths of firefighters vs hostages, because the scales and methods of the attacks were very different. If it is possible to speak of potential deaths, then the Mumbai terrorists probably got fairly close to some maximum of potential deaths causable by their method of attack, whereas the NY attacks didn't do nearly as 'well'.
% total of potential deaths is a good way to measure the response to a terrorist attack.
So that'd be another metric in which the US response to 9/11 was much better than the Indian response to Mumbai. But with the firefighters' radios, Giuliani refused after the first WTC attack in 1993 to upgrade firefighter's radios, and that led to more firefighters dying on 9/11. And people were telling Giuliani before 9/11 "why on earth would you put the command center at the site of a former terrorist attack?" Both with NYC and India, there have been plenty of prior attacks or warnings so that the people in charge really should have done a better job. In NYC they did an inadequate job, but that looks pretty good compared to the disasterous job in India.
as to your overall point, when was the last time you saw a politician held accountable for anything in this country?
the political class likes to trumpet out elections as a moment of accountability, but thats complete bullshit. elections are referendums on _policies_, not politicians themselves.
One of Bob Gates' selling points has been that he's actually held people accountable in DoD. He fired people in the Air Force for losing track of nuclear weapons, etc. But yeah, generally the people requiring accountability are appointed people like George Tenet or Condi Rice, not Congress people with no executive authority.
9 comments:
While I don't wholly disagree with your assertion regarding 9/11, there is an important distinction in that the immediate response to those attacks was not nearly as botched as the response to the Mumbai attacks. Any major U.S. city and the crisis is resolved in six hours, tops, less if there is evidence that it is still more of an active shooter scenario and less a pure hostage taking. I could go on about how the security forces responding were poorly equipped, poorly trained, and how their failure in shutting down the TV news feed during the operation may have directly resulted in the death of hostages (the terrorists saw on live TV that they were being assaulted and decided to kill the hostages) but the simple fact that it took THREE DAYS to resolve the situation should speak for itself.
True that the initial response wasn't as awful as India's was, but the big things for me are the NYFD radio failures and Giuliani's decision to put the command center in the biggest target in the city. Two failures as big as anything in Mumbai. More NYFD firefighters died (343) than the total deaths in Mumbai. But still no accountability.
True that the placement of the command center was stupid, but that's in retrospect. The response in India was a result of planning in reaction to some event, which (I would think, but could be very wrong) tends to be more straightforward than trying to predict the future. I also don't think that you can compare the number of deaths of firefighters vs hostages, because the scales and methods of the attacks were very different. If it is possible to speak of potential deaths, then the Mumbai terrorists probably got fairly close to some maximum of potential deaths causable by their method of attack, whereas the NY attacks didn't do nearly as 'well'.
% total of potential deaths is a good way to measure the response to a terrorist attack.
So that'd be another metric in which the US response to 9/11 was much better than the Indian response to Mumbai. But with the firefighters' radios, Giuliani refused after the first WTC attack in 1993 to upgrade firefighter's radios, and that led to more firefighters dying on 9/11. And people were telling Giuliani before 9/11 "why on earth would you put the command center at the site of a former terrorist attack?" Both with NYC and India, there have been plenty of prior attacks or warnings so that the people in charge really should have done a better job. In NYC they did an inadequate job, but that looks pretty good compared to the disasterous job in India.
as to your overall point, when was the last time you saw a politician held accountable for anything in this country?
the political class likes to trumpet out elections as a moment of accountability, but thats complete bullshit. elections are referendums on _policies_, not politicians themselves.
One of Bob Gates' selling points has been that he's actually held people accountable in DoD. He fired people in the Air Force for losing track of nuclear weapons, etc. But yeah, generally the people requiring accountability are appointed people like George Tenet or Condi Rice, not Congress people with no executive authority.
Adrian Martin for SecDef!
My associations with questionable Frenchmen would sink me at the Senate confirmation hearing.
so what you're saying is that you'd be held accountable (accountablified, if you will) even before being appointed?
that's preposterous.
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