优质解答
More than a year after the September 11 attacks,as congressional panelists bore in on CIA,FBI,and INS officials for intelligence missteps and egregious failures to communicate across agency lines,the media was equally unforgiving.The disclosures certainly did present a vivid portrait of government officials unable to “connect the dots.” As New York Times editorialists said in a column headlined “While America Slept,” the findings of this committee were “profoundly disturbing,” the government’s counter-terrorism efforts were little more than “anemic.”1
As accurate as this performance review might have been,there was something just as distressing about the media’s complete lack of self criticism of its own performance in the years preceding the calamity,which in hindsight also seems somewhat “anemic.”
Although 9/11 was first and foremost a failure of law enforcement,intelligence,and immigration procedures,the journalistic establishment also bears some responsibility for the disarmed condition in which we found ourselves on September 11.For years that establishment looked at the issue of immigration largely through ideological,rose-colored glasses,and gave minimal attention to many of the numerous holes in the state and federal immigration net that September 11 revealed.(According to the INS,three of the 19 hijackers were here illegally on expired visas,and two were able to obtain valid visas despite being on U.S.intelligence agency watch lists.) It also cheerily perpetuated the erroneous notion that while the immigration system in the country was indeed chaotic,the blessings of this chaos clearly outweighed the costs,and that there were few onerous consequences for the nation as a whole.
The attacks brought down two of the biggest buildings in the world,killing several thousand people in the process.But they also shattered a decade of journalistic denial and avoidance that helped make the attacks possible in the first place.As terrorism expert Steven Emerson told a far less righteous House subcommittee a year before the September 11 attacks,“an absence of a vigilant media” has allowed terrorists to anchor themselves and operate here.2
September 11 has indeed spurred much of the media to report about immigration more vigilantly.Yet an analysis of immigration issues in the year following 9/11 shows that mainstream journalism still bears considerable evidence of a politically correct mindset.This mindset is largely reflected in a new solicitude toward Muslim and Arab immigrants and the place of Islam in a multicultural America,as well as enduring hostility to basic immigration reforms the 9/11 attacks would seem to have put beyond argument.And though 9/11 has made it more acceptable to highlight problems associated with immigration,it has not changed the climate of indifference and hostility to those arguing for immigration reform,however much the link between policy lapses and terrorism have been abundantly underscored,in evil and deadly ways.
After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing revealed that even then terrorists had exploited our dysfunctional visa system and our poor immigration screening procedures,U.S.officials overseas were supposed to tighten procedures governing screening procedures for visas issued to the more than 10 million foreigners who apply for them annually.(Approximately seven million of those who apply get them,including every one of the 9/11 hijackers.) But the screening system continued to be spectacularly lax and badly run.Consular officers did not gain access to FBI criminal databases,faced tremendous pressure to push the line forward,and worried about offending “the host country” by denying too many applications.In some cases,much of the day-to-day work was being performed by non-American nationals in embassy employ,their loyalties uncertain.This was distressingly true in Saudi Arabia,where 15 of the hijackers came from and where U.S.visa processors allowed through the system applications that were laughably incomplete,vague,and that should have been rejected.Responding to a question on destination in the U.S.,one applicant answered “hotel.”3
More than a year after the September 11 attacks,as congressional panelists bore in on CIA,FBI,and INS officials for intelligence missteps and egregious failures to communicate across agency lines,the media was equally unforgiving.The disclosures certainly did present a vivid portrait of government officials unable to “connect the dots.” As New York Times editorialists said in a column headlined “While America Slept,” the findings of this committee were “profoundly disturbing,” the government’s counter-terrorism efforts were little more than “anemic.”1
As accurate as this performance review might have been,there was something just as distressing about the media’s complete lack of self criticism of its own performance in the years preceding the calamity,which in hindsight also seems somewhat “anemic.”
Although 9/11 was first and foremost a failure of law enforcement,intelligence,and immigration procedures,the journalistic establishment also bears some responsibility for the disarmed condition in which we found ourselves on September 11.For years that establishment looked at the issue of immigration largely through ideological,rose-colored glasses,and gave minimal attention to many of the numerous holes in the state and federal immigration net that September 11 revealed.(According to the INS,three of the 19 hijackers were here illegally on expired visas,and two were able to obtain valid visas despite being on U.S.intelligence agency watch lists.) It also cheerily perpetuated the erroneous notion that while the immigration system in the country was indeed chaotic,the blessings of this chaos clearly outweighed the costs,and that there were few onerous consequences for the nation as a whole.
The attacks brought down two of the biggest buildings in the world,killing several thousand people in the process.But they also shattered a decade of journalistic denial and avoidance that helped make the attacks possible in the first place.As terrorism expert Steven Emerson told a far less righteous House subcommittee a year before the September 11 attacks,“an absence of a vigilant media” has allowed terrorists to anchor themselves and operate here.2
September 11 has indeed spurred much of the media to report about immigration more vigilantly.Yet an analysis of immigration issues in the year following 9/11 shows that mainstream journalism still bears considerable evidence of a politically correct mindset.This mindset is largely reflected in a new solicitude toward Muslim and Arab immigrants and the place of Islam in a multicultural America,as well as enduring hostility to basic immigration reforms the 9/11 attacks would seem to have put beyond argument.And though 9/11 has made it more acceptable to highlight problems associated with immigration,it has not changed the climate of indifference and hostility to those arguing for immigration reform,however much the link between policy lapses and terrorism have been abundantly underscored,in evil and deadly ways.
After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing revealed that even then terrorists had exploited our dysfunctional visa system and our poor immigration screening procedures,U.S.officials overseas were supposed to tighten procedures governing screening procedures for visas issued to the more than 10 million foreigners who apply for them annually.(Approximately seven million of those who apply get them,including every one of the 9/11 hijackers.) But the screening system continued to be spectacularly lax and badly run.Consular officers did not gain access to FBI criminal databases,faced tremendous pressure to push the line forward,and worried about offending “the host country” by denying too many applications.In some cases,much of the day-to-day work was being performed by non-American nationals in embassy employ,their loyalties uncertain.This was distressingly true in Saudi Arabia,where 15 of the hijackers came from and where U.S.visa processors allowed through the system applications that were laughably incomplete,vague,and that should have been rejected.Responding to a question on destination in the U.S.,one applicant answered “hotel.”3