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Rice on the Hill Does She Task? Don't Ask!By Rick Horowitz
Don't ever let anyone tell you that being the president's national security adviser is easy work. Far from it. If it's not one thing, it's another thing -- except when it's both things. Or a third thing, too, just to make it even more interesting. For instance: If you're the president's national security adviser, you're constantly tasking. You're tasking this person to do this, and you're tasking that person to do that. And it's not as if there are only a few taskings to choose from -- not at all! You could be tasking someone to provide actionable intelligence. You could be tasking someone to ensure contingency planning processes. You could be tasking someone to provide alternatives to stand-off options. You could be tasking someone to weigh strategic responses against tactical responses -- recognizing, of course, that you don't want to limit yourself to ineffective tit-for-tat responses, which will only embolden them. But what if somebody's hair is on fire? Can you still bring about transformative institutional change? Or is it already too late to connect the dots? Meanwhile, you're trying to focus on the rendition of terrorists, which is difficult enough under the best of circumstances, let alone when you're trying to marry up foreign intelligence agencies with domestic intelligence agencies and the president is tired of swatting flies. What do you do? Even a heightened security profile might not be sufficient in these circumstances, and as you roll your taskings out on the table, you might wonder how you're supposed to move the country to a war footing, especially when the light is shining abroad. What does the NSPD have to say about it? How about the CSG and the SACs -- not to mention the August 6th PDB? After all, you might be able to justify battle stations during a threat spike, but you certainly don't want to settle for simply moving boxes, not when you could be pulsing the agency and shaking the trees. Not that shaking the trees guarantees success either. If you're shaking the trees expecting to find a silver bullet, you know it takes more than 233 days. In 233 days, you might get only carrots and sticks. And even if you do shake the trees, even if you take the briefing, even if you task the field agents four or five levels down to harden the country, you still have to ask yourself: Will a series of near-term decisions do anything to deal with the ongoing structural impediments? Because when you're the president's national security adviser, you understand that structural impediments can require hard choices, especially when you're trying to address the source of the problem and your hair is on fire. You know better than anyone how the muscularity of your response depends on your willingness to use all the means of our national assets and demonstrate our infinite resolve -- but saying these things merely gives you an organizing principle. Connecting the dots requires much more than that. It requires a comprehensive review. It requires connecting regional and anti-terrorism strategies. Most of all, it requires intense activity in the high-threat period. (So does swatting flies.) And never forget: Unless your plans have an adequate political basis, you may find that the country has an allergy to the notion, in which case -- actionable intelligence or not -- you may find yourself in a post-September 11 context, wishing that steps were taken. I can't put it any more plainly than that. Posted 4/8/04. For
actionable satire, click to "Rick's" twice every week. (But beware of
laugh spikes.)
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Rick Horowitz
