December 4, 2008

Mumbai Has Happened Here: In Slow Motion

So here’s the question I’m hearing repeated in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai: Could it happen here?

Uh, yeah. In fact, it already has – though admittedly on a smaller scale and in slow motion.

Six years ago this fall, the entire Washington metro area was brought to its knees. Innocent victims were struck down by gunfire at shopping centers, outside their homes, entering schools, leaving restaurants, walking down the street, waiting for buses, washing cars, pumping gas. 

Outdoor school activities were called off, athletic contests postponed, kids kept under lockdown. Tarps were hung around gasoline stations to protect customers. Traffic at retail establishments dropped as much as half as area residents stayed home and under cover. Even hotel occupancy rates plummeted as tourists avoided the capital region like a plague wrapped up in a bomb scare inside a natural disaster.

The perpetrators of that panic, the authors of all that angst? Two social outcasts in a blue 1990 Caprice sedan with a hole in the trunk – and a single, high-powered hunting rifle.

Yes, their shooting spree claimed “only” 10 victims and took place over three weeks. But for those of us who spent those 22 days looking over our shoulders at the gas station, the terror was real, palpable and widespread. And the effect on our economy and our daily lives was tangible and troubling.

I’ve often wondered why, after observing the extraordinary effect on a community of two do-it-yourself gunmen, no terrorist organization took up where they left off. After all, if a couple of nut jobs with a relatively cheap rifle could nearly paralyze a metro area with more than five million people, imagine the confusion and mayhem a cadre of heavily armed, well-trained assassins could inflict.

Well, now we don’t have to wonder – or imagine – anymore.

Yeah, yeah. I know it’s coming out that the Indian authorities may have had warning of possible terror attacks – 10 if by land, 20 by sea. OK, Mumbai’s ports bring new meaning to the term “porous.” 

Sure, that region of India is within easy striking distance of unfriendly factions in Pakistan. And the attacks were planned in minute detail for months and carried out by highly trained professionals. Acknowledged.

But tell me again what part of that scenario couldn’t play out here. C’mon – we couldn’t prevent 19 amateurs with box-cutters from taking out the Twin Towers, blowing a hole in the Pentagon and nearly trashing the White House. And it took three weeks to catch two loony snipers practically begging to be apprehended.

So what’s to stop small bands of professional marauders with high-powered weapons from shutting down Chicago for a week? Or lowering the boom on LA? Or even closing Cleveland or canning Kansas City?

One thing, and one thing only: Spying. It’s become a cliché to talk about the value of intelligence in preventing terrorist activity. But at this point, it’s all that’s really keeping Memphis from becoming Mumbai, or Baltimore from turning into Bali.

The good news is that the real-life issues surrounding intelligence appear to be giving our president-elect – who didn’t name a CIA or national intelligence director when he announced Hillary & Company – some pause as he completes his national security team.

Perhaps the word is getting to Barack Obama that it may not be such a great idea for the Justice Department to minimize NSA wiretaps because warrants have to be dumbed down enough to get them past clueless judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court.

Maybe it isn’t such a great idea to require applications that, according the Heritage Foundation, chew up 200 hours of government time for each telephone number intercepted.

Maybe it isn’t such a great idea to reverse recently enacted legal protections for phone companies cooperating in government surveillance, as interest groups are now trying to force courts and the incoming administration to do.

For that matter, maybe it isn’t such a great idea to shut down Gitmo and the military tribunals and dump America-haters into our legal system, where they might well be released to take up arms right here in the good ol’ USA.

Mumbai should serve as an excellent reminder – as if Washington needed one after those fateful three weeks in October 2002 – of just how vulnerable an open society can be if it unilaterally disarms on intelligence-gathering. And personally, now that gas prices are back down under $1.85, I don’t want a new reason for discomfort when I pull into a service station.