The commission reports

THE 9/11 commission issued a report with many policy recommendations. President Bush endorsed the call for a new national intelligence director and the establishment of a National Counterterrorism Center. He is hurrying to keep up with John Kerry, who had endorsed all of the commission's complicated bureaucratic recommendations in a matter of 48 hours and insisted they be adopted "with great haste." What appears to be about to happen is a typical Washington travesty in which a complex idea like creating a national intelligence director with authority over all the intelligence operations spread throughout the government becomes the flavor of the month and is passed in a rush to "do something." The commission compares its proposed reforms to the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 that modernized the military and created increased "jointness." But that legislation was debated and carefully thought through for years. That both Kerry (who has demagogically set the pace here) and Bush are willing to short-circuit this process for a cheap election-year soundbite is absurd.

That said, it could be that the commission's reforms will turn out, after serious consideration, to make sense. We are relying on a management structure for intelligence that was built for the Cold War; rewiring it for the War on Terror could be useful. But no one should overestimate the value of shuffling the organizational charts. It won't automatically create better intelligence. We would do better to look to the lessons of other democracies facing a similar threat, whether Britain against the IRA or Israel against Palestinian terrorists, to discover how to do the down-and-dirty work of penetrating and disrupting a vicious enemy. The 9/11 commission's recommendations that the CIA in particular build up its analytic capabilities, focus on human intelligence, and develop a stronger language program all are welcome, but the most important change would be fostering an institutional culture that welcomes creativity and risk-taking, something for which gotcha politicians have little appetite in the real world. Indeed, the overarching theme of the commission's historical narrative is that both the Clinton and Bush administrations weren't imaginative and forward-looking enough in dealing with a gathering threat. This critique should be read as an endorsement, in essence, of Bush's aggressive post9/11 approach. The commission, to be sure, did not dare explicitly approve of pre-emption or say that law enforcement is a flawed model for fighting terrorism. While such commissions are meant to tackle issues too difficult for ordinary politicians, they are often creatures of convention. We should not be surprised that many of the commission's proposals were calls for such things as more public diplomacy and international aid. At best, these are useful supplements to the War on Terror; they are hardly substitutes for it.

The commission deserves credit, however, for saying explicitly that the United States is fighting "Islamic terrorism." Defeating it means bolstering the forces of reform and modernization in the Islamic world. Bush critics do not acknowledge how Iraq, where a decent government with legitimate democratic aspirations has replaced a radical tyranny, fits into this picture. Ultimately, the War on Terror will be won "over there," not in bureaucratic flow charts.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The next issue of NATIONAL REVIEW will appear in three weeks.

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