"Senja Buta Menyelubungi Indonesia"
Having a prescience of what was to come, we reported back in May of this year, among other things, that both Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah were finding renewed sanctuary in Indonesia and that Abu Bakar Ba'asyir would be released before the end of this year.
Last month, we saw Abu Bakar Ba'asyir's sentence reduced by four and a half months following the celebrations for Indonesia's 60th anniversary of independence and in direct defiance to the intense lobbying of the Australian government to keep Abu Bakar Ba'asyir behind bars.
If the Bali bombings of 2002 were indicative of Western intelligence failures, then last week's Bali bombings should be indicative of just how isolated and utterly impotent Western intelligence in Southeast Asia has become and how we have failed to learn from our previous mistakes.
The line that was drawn in the sand after 9/11 by President Bush seems to have somehow been blurred in the last few years. As a nation, we still seem hopelessly addicted and enamored with the self-destructive and naive concepts of diversity and outsourcing. The end result has been that we have become completely dependent on foreign nations to supply us with intelligence matters that are essential to our own nation's national security. How did we ever get to this point?
The nationals of other nations who hold no allegiance to the United States and who in many cases are also sympathetic to the concerns of our adversaries. This alone is a dangerous volatile mix, and one that should never be trumped by political correctness and yet it has been and continues to be to our peril.
Despite what we might think, we're not being told what we need to know. We're being told only what others want us to know. Not only did the latest Bali bombing not have the intended effect, it has now become a terrible tragedy for all those who were involved, Jemaah Islamiyah not being one of them. There is always more than one way to skin a cat, and this was not one of them.
The end result is that we have twenty-two victims who have died in what can best be described as a "friendly fire" incident and we are led away from Bandung and Bogor to fish for the baby "red herrings" in Banten while Abu Bakar Bashir omnipotently and justifiably chastises those involved.
There are several lessons to be learned here, one being that "the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend".
Last month, we saw Abu Bakar Ba'asyir's sentence reduced by four and a half months following the celebrations for Indonesia's 60th anniversary of independence and in direct defiance to the intense lobbying of the Australian government to keep Abu Bakar Ba'asyir behind bars.
If the Bali bombings of 2002 were indicative of Western intelligence failures, then last week's Bali bombings should be indicative of just how isolated and utterly impotent Western intelligence in Southeast Asia has become and how we have failed to learn from our previous mistakes.
The line that was drawn in the sand after 9/11 by President Bush seems to have somehow been blurred in the last few years. As a nation, we still seem hopelessly addicted and enamored with the self-destructive and naive concepts of diversity and outsourcing. The end result has been that we have become completely dependent on foreign nations to supply us with intelligence matters that are essential to our own nation's national security. How did we ever get to this point?
The nationals of other nations who hold no allegiance to the United States and who in many cases are also sympathetic to the concerns of our adversaries. This alone is a dangerous volatile mix, and one that should never be trumped by political correctness and yet it has been and continues to be to our peril.
Despite what we might think, we're not being told what we need to know. We're being told only what others want us to know. Not only did the latest Bali bombing not have the intended effect, it has now become a terrible tragedy for all those who were involved, Jemaah Islamiyah not being one of them. There is always more than one way to skin a cat, and this was not one of them.
The end result is that we have twenty-two victims who have died in what can best be described as a "friendly fire" incident and we are led away from Bandung and Bogor to fish for the baby "red herrings" in Banten while Abu Bakar Bashir omnipotently and justifiably chastises those involved.
There are several lessons to be learned here, one being that "the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend".
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