Two Sundays ago, the headline of the New York Times was “Climate Change Seen as Threat to US Security” in this article by John Broder. While I stopped short of checking the date to see if it was April first. It sounded like something more fitting for the tabloids, or at the very least page 18 instead of such an alarmist headline. Here’s the first paragraph:
“The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.”
So it got me thinking, with unemployment where it is, and the Iraq war winding down, we aren’t going to send all of the Iraq troops to Afghanistan, maybe declaring a war on global warming is the only way to continue to maintain, or grow, military spending. The more practical side of me took some comfort in the fact that some folks in Washington really have their finger on the pulse of global warming and they see clearly on what is needed to prepare for it.
That comfort was blown out of the water when I read an article in the paper today (click here) describing that 31 year-old Joseph Mahmoud Dibee, who was arrested for ecoterrorism (arson and destruction of property) on behalf of the group known as the Earth Liberation Front, or ELF, in January 2006 still has a valid pilot license. How is that possible?
I remember back on September 11, 2001, back when we were still pretty naive about the risks of terrorism, we knew that some of the top terror suspects were in the country and we could have cross referenced several data bases to track them down. Excusable then, perhaps, but that was eight years ago and we still haven’t cross-referenced the FAA data base with the F.B.I.’s most wanted list? Incredible.
Now, I will grant you when it comes to high stakes terror, if someone commits a crime in an airplane, it’s not going to matter whether the person was, or wasn’t flying with a valid license. That’s not my point. My point is that if these seemingly simple and obvious data cross reference checks aren’t happening, what else isn’t happening? How smart are we really about what the real risks are and where they are.
I don’t think there’s any need for a witch hunt, but really, someone in D.C. ought to really take a look at cross-referencing some of the criminal data bases with other key sources so our comfort level can go up a few notches when it comes to national security.
-Ric
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