What is the Deal with the 9/11 Commission?
By Jan A. Larson
The so-called 9/11 Commission's efforts to determine the reasons for
the government's failure to prevent the attacks of September 11 has
degenerated into an exercise of "cover my posterior" by the
principals and "who is to blame" by pundits and politicians.
Playing the part of a clown in this three-ring circus is former counter-terrorism
expert, Richard Clarke, who has leveled charges that President Bush
did not place sufficient urgency to preventing terrorism during the
less than eight months he was in office prior to September 11.
Clarke, who made headlines with his appearance on CBS' 60 Minutes in
which he blasted the Bush administration's handling of pre-September
11 terrorism threats, has been largely discounted in the past week.
It is apparent that Clarke has been either less than fully truthful
in the past or is stretching the truth now.
In any event, it really makes no sense that the Bush administration,
especially it its first months in office, or even the Clinton administration
could have prevented the September 11 attacks.
Prevention would have required a substantially different approach to
intelligence and preemption than existed prior to September 11. The
U. S. intelligence apparatus had been in decline since the end of the
Cold War. Many in Congress (including Senator John Kerry) and in the
public did not see the need to continue to fund intelligence agencies
to previous levels
after the fall of the Soviet Union.
It is quite ironic that some that are criticizing the current administration
for not preempting the September 11 attacks are the same that are criticizing
the decision to take out Saddam Hussein without a multinational coalition
(although there was a multinational coalition, just not with France
and Germany).
If the Bush administration were to have taken an active role against
terrorism prior to September 11, it would have required an invasion
of Afghanistan with the purpose of removing the Taliban and rooting
out al Qaeda. As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld suggested to the
Commission, it is difficult to imagine just how many, if any, nations
would have joined the United States in an invasion of Afghanistan, never
mind the
political fallout in this country. The bottom line is that it would
not have been politically possible to send troops into Afghanistan before
September 11.
Even if a preemptive invasion of Afghanistan could have been launched,
by the time President Bush took office, the plans for September 11 had
already been hatched.
It is human nature to deal with problems when they arise, not to prevent
them, especially when they cannot be foreseen. There can be no question
that mistakes were made before September 11, but those mistakes are
only clear in hindsight. With thousands of bits of intelligence pouring
into the various agencies each day and with those agencies admittedly
not readily sharing information prior to September 11, it seems that
the prevention of such an attack as was seen that day would have been
more the result of luck than skill.
The 9/11 Commission, after all of the grandstanding and bluster, will
issue a report that will point fingers at someone or something, although
that will serve no useful purpose.
Concerning recommendations, I could have saved the commission a lot
of time and money by pointing out that the only way to prevent future
attacks are to (1) improve worldwide
intelligence gathering, (2) streamline the sharing of intelligence among
those that use it and (3) use preemptive action against those states
that would support or harbor terrorists.
It must be made perfectly clear, however, that while our intelligence
and defenses must be right 100% of the time in order to prevent all
possible attacks, the terrorists only have to be right once to inflict
their carnage. It is simply not realistic to believe that as long as
there are people in the world that are willing to kill themselves while
killing innocent civilians, that all terrorist attacks can be prevented.
Jan A. Larson publishes a weekly commentary, "What is the Deal?"
at the Pie of Knowledge (http://www.pieofknowledge.com).
His work also appears from time to time on opinion Editorials
(http://www.opinioneditorials.com),
the Washington Dispatch
(http://www.washingtondispatch.com)
and American Daily (http://www.americandaily.com).
