The old cliché that hindsight is 20/20, like most good clichés
is because there is some truth to them. Two former White House National
Security types who have moved on into the private sector, Richard A. Clarke and
R P Eddy offer up the new book Warnings:
Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes in an apparent effort to sound the
claxons of impending doom panoply of liberal thought.
It’s pretty easy to look at something in hindsight and
make the circumstances or “facts” fit the storyline you are trying to sell.
Clarke and Eddy set up the premise of the book by siting examples of what they
believe were folks who played the proverbial canary in the coalmine; folks who
tried to warn us of pending events of doom who somehow got ignored when they
should not have been.
If you’re confused by the title, Greek mythology
teaches us that Cassandra had the ability to predict impeding disaster but was
cursed to be ignored by the Gods.
I find it more than a bit laughable that the author
think that a so-called Cassandra was ignored in the case of the storm damage
caused by Hurricane Katrina, as if man could have somehow prevented the damage
caused by a natural disaster. But the Katrina case is a great example of how
these master of foresight often get ignored because it boils down to politics.
Google Ray Nagin (former New Orleans Mayor) and school buses if you need a fine
example.
The authors also point to the Middle East ambassador
who seemed to foretell the rise of ISIS and the so-called Arab spring, only to
be ignored. You won’t need to bother with Google to remember Barack “Red Line”
Obama and his utterly failed Middle East/War on Terror policy, which was more
concerned with politics and campaign promises than doing what was right to
prevent the “JV Team” from over running Syria and Iraq. I also find it a little
difficult to take seriously a section on Arab Spring and terror that fails to
even mention Benghazi.
For this go around it will be easy to understand why
Cassandra will be ignored.
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