Failure by imagination

“The most important failure… was one of imagination,” is how the 9/11 Commission report describes America’s vaunted intelligence and law enforcement’s failure to comprehend the magnitude and nature of the threat that resulted in a successful jihadist attack, and the loss of nearly 3,000 innocent lives. The notion that those tasked with our security simply could not conceive of so evil a plot, nor understand the nature of those who would perpetrate it, has become axiomatic.

But on the 19^th anniversary of 9/11, I would submit that the issue we face is not a matter of a failing to imagine, but rather failure by imagining- by indulging analysis which is really a projection of a world that does not exist.

For too many of America’s analysts and policy experts, the primary failure since 9/11 has been inventing fallacious “root causes” as the proposed motivations for America’s enemies, rather than taking those who declare themselves our enemies at their word.

This delusion reached a crescendo eleven years later with the second September 11^th attack on the U.S. Consulate and CIA Annex in Benghazi. Obama Administration and elements of the bureaucracy chose to blame the exercise of American free speech rights for an attack perpetrated by foreign terrorists.

As Andrew McCarthy pointed out in a recent article:

“Dealing with reality head-on is what adults do. It is critical thinking. The objective is to solve difficult problems, not tell stories about them.

The Obama-Biden administration rejected this approach. Their substitute is a fantasy, peddled tirelessly and protected by shutting down all debate — indeed, by making their opposition’s position unutterable, not just by intimidation but by the force of law.”

Put more simply, when you engage in fantasizing about the enemy, the ultimate enemy because the truth.

This failure to view threats –not as we might imagine them to be but as they truly are—continues to grip America’s policy elite with tragic consequences and is responsible for some of our most disastrous policy decisions.

Over the past four years of the Trump administration some of these decisions –such as the Iran Deal and the failure to address the rapid expansion of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria—were successfully reversed through clear-sightedness and hard work. But others, like the long-standing obsession within the State Department and elements of the Defense Department to achieve a peace deal with the Taliban, continue to plague policy thinking.

The jihadist threat represented foremost by Al Qaeda and Islamic State alongside other terror groups, and allied organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood remains all too real. Domestic threats –such as the ongoing civil unrest perpetrated by Antifa and its allies- continue to grow. Meanwhile too many of those responsible for America’s security are busy chasing phantasms.

On this anniversary of 9/11, let us not give in to the temptation of failure by imagination but dedicate ourselves, as Patrick Henry urged, “to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to provide for it.”