Well, 60 Minutes is clearly desperate for material, so they’ve again dredged up this story about the 28 page document initially suppressed by the Bush Administration. Inertia has set in, and the Obama Admins have no desire to open that proverbial can of worms. And frankly, at this point, why bother? Between the two retired pols that talked with Steve on the program, all’s been revealed anyway. Some lower level Saudi government officials helped the 9/11 hijackers get along in California until they were ready to fly on planes and blow up the buildings. Okay? That’s it. Big whoop.

But that got me to thinking and wondering: what would have prompted the Saudi government to support this plot in the first place? And after thinking a bunch of deep thoughts, I’ve come to three conclusions:

1) The lower-level Saudis helped the plotters because it’s what they’ve always done to keep the radicals happy and away from plotting against the Royal family;

3) Most important of all: the Saudi Royal family=Saudi Arabian government never thought they’d pull it off, and it would be safe to humor them and buy peace.

In other words, the foolish Saudis thought we Americans were smarter than we were. They certainly dropped enough hints to the Bush Administration – the intel community knew something was coming, and they failed to stop it because they didn’t think the group could pull it off either. After all, lots of plots had come and gone, and none had succeeded before, eh? So what we have here is the proverbial black swan. Who knew?

I’m not cynical enough to believe that the Bush Administration knew it was going to happen and let it for political reasons – only the Russians pull stunts like that, and only to cover up major corruption left over from the Yeltsin era. Nah – bureaucratic bungling is only part of the issue – the rest was a misguided belief in our security systems. That’s certainly changed, eh? But has it really?

We have spent more than half a trillion dollars on security since 9/11. And how many genuine plots have been uncovered? Obviously that’s hard to say because an uncovered plot generally doesn’t make the news. But I’d argue that since the 9/11 attack was effectively a black swan event, we have spent huge sums in pursuit of the unattainable – a 100% secure country. How much has France spent on homeland security since 9/11? Between 29 and 36 billion Euros a year. And has that kept them safe? Ask the staff at Charlie Hebdo; the Jewish deli; the concert hall. It has not kept France safe.

Okay, so nobody can buy safety. So what do we do?

1) Understand the roots of the problem and be candid about them;
2) Once the roots are understood, find ways to address the problems, recognizing that for some it’s too late and a certain level of violence can be expected.
3) Use statistical analysis to figure out how to best address existing violence. Trying to find everybody means we likely find nobody and plots will continue to be hatched and succeed.
4) After a generation or so, it’s likely the problem will go away on its own.

Wow – all that is heresy in this post-9/11, “let’s kill them all” world. But you can’t kill them all: killing the ones there breeds more terror and more terror breeds killing more and … you get the idea. So let’s find a new way to go about it and try telling the truth instead of covering up, making up and turning a blind eye to root causes. What is there to lose? Current strategy not working. Try new strategy.

So simple…hah!