THE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies since 9/11
2007; The MIT Press; Volume: 87; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0026-4148
Autores Tópico(s)Intelligence, Security, War Strategy
ResumoTHE ONE PERCENT DOCTRINE: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11, Ron Suskind, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2006, 354 pages, $27.00. According to Ron Suskind, Vice President Dick Cheney developed the Percent in response to information that Pakistani scientists might be helping Al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon. Also known as the Cheney Doctrine, the One Percent Doctrine states that the United States must treat a one percent chance of catastrophe as a certainty. This low threshold of proof, according to Suskind, has caused a number of problems for the United States in its post-9/11 War on Terrorism. If U.S. doctrine really requires us to act decisively to preempt an event that will occur only 1 time out of 100, we create conditions that virtually assure errors, some of which will be enormously damaging. The main problem with the doctrine is that the leaders of our intelligence system seem to be both political and incompetent, concerned with telling administration officials what they want to hear while ignoring the analysis of the professional cadre working beneath them. Suskind, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal author, does not have the typical profile of a Bush administration critic. However, much of this book seems to suggest that nothing President George W. Bush or his team can do will ever quite meet the mark. Suskind accuses Bush of the usual shortcomings-lack of curiosity, concern with style over substance, and impatience with those who will not confirm his view of the world. In the end, the author succeeds only in proving that this war against terrorists will be enormously complex. Suskind complains about shortcuts the Bush administration has taken, particularly in the area of human rights. He provides several examples of torture, either conducted or condoned by the United States. However, he then describes the mubtakkar, a simple-to-produce and easily transportable delivery system for hydrogen cyanide, a gas similar to that used by the Nazis in their gas chambers. He claims that the development of this device is the terrorist equivalent of splitting the atom. Suskind states that Al-Qaeda was within 45 days of executing a gas attack on the New York City subway system using several of these devices when Ayman al-Zawahiri inexplicably cancelled the operation, one that would likely have resulted in casualty rates comparable to those suffered on 9/11. In effect, Suskind laments America's extreme response to the terrorist threat-and then describes a near doomsday terrorist scenario. To my mind, it's hard to worry much about water-boarding someone connected to a scheme like the mubtakkar. Still, it's true that if we apply the One Percent Doctrine (presuming the vice president's statement in a stressful meeting constitutes doctrine) faithfully and often, ready to take off our gloves with alacrity, we could end up torturing innocent people who fit a one-percent profile. Suskind answers some interesting questions. For example, how did CIA Director George Tenet, who took the blame for almost all that went wrong both before and after 9/11, manage not only to survive but to thrive, eventually standing before Bush to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom? …
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