[Newspoetry] My Dinner with Ari

[Donald L Emerick]

Precise Prediction: Booby-Trap Presidency

About airports, airplanes and air security
and crashing those things into various targets,
ala kamikaze methods of true believers,
when no other avenue of attack seems rational:

I first learned about air security when I was drafting
conflict escalation scenarios back in the late 1960's,
for mid-career officials, come back to graduate school, as if
for a finishing school, in various diplomatic-military settings.

I was a lowly undergrad/graduate student, assisting a study
that I thought was sponsored (in part) by the USACDA,
but it could have been USCIA money that was paying bills,
it's always hard to know who is paying for such things.

We had a pretty fair simulation developed, I guess.
I didn't get to assist in the senior level play of the game,
when the bosses of those mid-level career officials
came in to play the game, because their reactions, as
behavior patterns, would be stamped, properly, (top)secret
by any national security convention that makes any sense.

So, as a "move" in the plan for the conflict escalation scenario,
I suggested to my fellow "game" operators that the enemy force
be allowed to take out the President by attacking AirForce One,
in route by hitting it with a light aircraft, armed like a bomb.

The well-connected professor in charge of the scenario stated:
"That move is not credible, think of some other enemy move." 
"Why?" I dumbly asked, "surely AirForce One is vulnerable,
surely it is not such a hardened target that it  could survive?"
I was carefully informed that AirForce One was secure against
the type of attack that I proposed, because they had various
counter-measures in place, to prevent that from happening.

At another point in the scenario, if my memory serves rightly,
I suggested that a nuclear weapon be slipped over the side
of an enemy trawler and left in NewYork's harbor. Once again,
it seems that I was beaten to the punch: a senior professor
said "Well, you know during the Cuban Missile crisis, in an
event that has never been played up much, all the senior
navy frogmen in the East were routed into a certain harbor,
like the one you suggest, for reasons of the kind that you
mention, but I could not tell you what they might have found."

So, I doubt that anyone in the Command-and-Control Directorate
was exactly "surprised" (unless he was a complete idiot (and
Bush would qualify, I might sadly guess, for that status -- for
there he was lounging down in Crawford Texas on vacation,
when he might have been doing something useful in Washington,
while the terrorists were hard at work, preparing to do fell deeds))
by the events of September 11, 2001.

It's a ridiculous dodge of the issues, when Bush and company
claim "No one could have predicted the precise details of E."
It's ridiculous because the precise details of no event
could ever be predicted by anyone, precisely --
as every defense / prosecuting attorney knows.

The issue, on defense, is not whether you could predict
precisely anything, but whether you have the capability
to counter the offense when it tries that type of move --
whether you have the fielded the right defense assets,
trained and deployed, to blunt and nullify the offense.

The "precise prediction" line is a load of bullshit
that is intended to obscure what a good manager,
or a good president, is supposed to be doing.
Bush needs to start watching more football,
and spend less time choking down pretzels.

Bush also says "I don't have to be very smart,
I just pragmatically hire very good managers,
and let them tell me what my options are, and
then I choose to do what is right for America."
Well, obviously, that only works if you know
how to listen to your very good managers,
if they understand how truly lazy you might be,
at understanding things with depth or compassion.
But, if you are lazy or inept, the best advisors,
when unheard, will be as good as the worst ones.

I could go on, but I still nurse many grievances
against this swindling tinhorn fraud from West Texas,
who rustles cattle from my range, slant drills my oil,
pollutes the Pecos River, and wears silk stockings.

Thanks for listening,
Donald L Emerick
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