A 9-11 HERITAGE RETROSPECTIVE – Commentary by Jim Dean

I have spent part of the day listening to the FBI and CIA counter Intel chiefs plus the Attorneys General sit on the hot seat. There are a lot of lessons to learn here for those of us in the heritage movement.

The top civil servants came out swinging, praising their own dedicated people, but laying it right on the line that they did not have enough people nor funding to mount much of a defense to terrorism. Without coming right out and saying it, they were just waiting for it to happen.

Attorney General Ashcroft complained that the Justice Department, prior to his arrival, had issued a legal opinion that improper sharing of information between criminal and intelligence cases could be a career ender, and that errors should be made on the side of caution. He also harshly criticized the information technology of the FBI, which was using '80's technology where information sharing and analysis ended up in a swamp. The lack of manpower and poor info tech assured that plenty would fall through the cracks and plenty did.

The heritage movement suffers from a similar climate of fighting the last war rather than prepping itself to fight the new one. We are like the undermanned FBI fighting terrorists with 1980's computer technology.

Number one is manpower. As heritage violations have mulitiplied, they pile up on whatever volunteer heritage org office the geography angels choose. If one gets dealt more than he can deal with, that is just too bad. Number two is money. As our war has cranked up, the funding to fight it has not been addressed. Most budgets are business as usual.

Like 9-11, it takes a crisis event for priorities to get shaken up. We have suffered our own crisis and yet I don't see much of a crisis attitude. We have gotten a few dollars dues increase through [SCV Georgia Division dues], but that took years and was still opposed by those for whom membership means everything, and winning the heritage wars is way way down the list.

But alas we have no power to tax or run up $500 billion deficits.

I have talked to more than a few who feel the new Perdue/Chamber flag is "pretty." The fact that we have suffered a major heritage defeat seems lost in the fog. This is kind of like New Yorkers looking at the post-Twin-Towers reflecting pool memorial and saying..."I like it a lot better than those cold ugly buildings that blocked the view anyway."

I have found none of our enemies who suffer from this perception delusion. They know they have inflicted a huge defeat upon us. They are tickled to death. They know we will be easier to defeat next time as they now have the momentum and they have divided our forces, a double whammy.

Rusty Paul did his work well. Our flag of honor is gone. The Perdue flag was designed to be the two-ton slab over our tomb. Those who think it's a pretty tomb are not serving the Cause. They have been co-opted, a sad, sad fate for a Confederate. I sure wouldn't look forward to facing my ancestors at the Pearly Gates with the "it's a pretty flag" defense.

My personal feeling is that this "delusion" is usually self-inflicted. It spares the patient from having to do anything, which is its purpose. I am not sure if there is a cure. My experience is that people who don't want to do something are very talented when it comes to finding reasons why it is not necessary. Their personal heritage war perversely gets transformed into fighting for the right not to fight. It is a painful reality. Like the 9-11 commission, it is time we face this and try to fix it. If we do not, we will reap the whirlwind----and deserve it.

After 9-11 a lot of the U.S. inertia problems disappeared overnight. Not so with our battles. There were no top-down reviews, no investigations as to what we did not do that maybe we could have that might have saved us. On the contrary, there was no introspection at all. We were left only with the neighborhood watch groups to keep an eye out for bad guys and "put the skeer on them."

There are rumblings now that the FBI was overwhelmed with taking on a realistic anti-terrorist program and underwhelmed by the support they received. I agree. I'm all for a new separate counter-terrorism agency where the problems of the past go out with the first janitorial service. This may also be the only solution for the Heritage Wars.

A study was released last week that the inter-agency turf wars and those within the FBI alone render it incapable of fixing itself. Loading the looming terrorism war onto the FBI would just gut the other responsibilities on its plate. A twenty-two month hiring freeze was in place prior to 9-11. Hello! Is anybody home? There are terrorists coming at us and we need to do something about it.

Turnover was another problem. The FBI deputy director testifying retired after 9-11. He served two years, longer than anyone else in recent history. People move up into the job, learn it, and then leave...so we get to start over with a new guy. Hello. Who are you?

There are countless issue lobbies that have full time funded staffs, as they have learned that that is the only way to get consistent attention to their needs, the only way to build anything. I think the heritage wars should rank up in that class. Yet there seems to be no move afoot to transform our efforts in the heritage wars to a permanent fighting force.

AARP and the NRA have shown us there is tremendous affinity funding out there, but somehow we seem stuck in the revolving door. It is time to find the escalator. We need to make a quantum leap in our heritage defense and fighting capabilities. If this makes sense to anyone, give me a holler.

Jim Dean is the producer of Heritage TV and a member of the Georgia Heritage Coalition. 404-966-6827