Sorting Through the Accusations
March 26, 2004 1921 GMT
Summary
The United States is in the process of picking apart the intelligence and political failures that led up to the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001. This is an unprecedented process. Normally such reviews occur after the war has ended. In this case, the review was made necessary by the president's failure to clean house after Sept. 11. That said, the truth of the matter would appear to be more complex than the simplistic charges being traded. The fact is, in our view, the Bush and Clinton policies were far more similar than they were different. We are not quite certain who we have insulted with that claim.
Analysis
Conducting a highly public inquiry and debate over the origins of a war while that war is being conducted would appear to be one of the most self-destructive exercises imaginable. No reasonable person could argue that mistakes were not made prior to Sept. 11, 2001, any more than it could be argued that mistakes were not made before Dec. 7, 1941. There is no question but that the intelligence system failed to predict the event and that it was supposed to.
But just as the Pearl Harbor inquiry was carried out after the war, so as not to interfere with the war effort, it would seem reasonable that the Sept. 11 inquiries should take place after the war is over. Officials and former officials hurling charges against each other in a public display of disunity does not seem to serve the national interest. There were secret investigations and discussions before World War II ended, but the public report by Congress was not released until July 1946 and not really undertaken in earnest until after the war ended.
It has been argued that the unlimited nature of this war makes waiting for the end impossible. But this war is not unique in appearing to be potentially endless. Only with the benefit of hindsight can one make the argument that previous wars would be temporally contained. As British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey so poignantly stated in 1914 -- at the start of World War I, the shortest of the 20th century's major conflicts -- "The lights are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." The review could have waited.
However, in all fairness, it should be pointed out that George W. Bush set himself up for this, although not in the way his critics charge. One of the things that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did was to clean house after the Pearl Harbor attack. This housecleaning was not necessarily fair. Adm. Husband Kimmel, Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC), for example, was fired even though a strong case could be made that he was less responsible than others for Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, Pearl Harbor happened on his watch and he was gone.
It went deeper than that. Roosevelt wanted to signal that something had gone terribly wrong not only with one person but also with a generation of leaders. Relatively junior commanders Chester Nimitz and Dwight Eisenhower were catapulted into senior command positions. Not all of the old leaders were replaced -- consider Douglas MacArthur or George Marshall -- but there was a broad enough housecleaning that no one could escape the fact that the war had changed everything. You could argue that Roosevelt did this to protect himself, but if so, he was doing his job.
President Bush did not clean house after Sept. 11. He kept the same team in place with some very minor second-tier shifts. There was no whirlwind of activity designed to bring in a fresh, wartime team using streamlined procedures. He went with the team he had. There was a defensible case to be made for this. The country was in a state of shock, and an upheaval in the intelligence and defense communities was perceived to be an unnecessary follow-on shock to public morale. Moreover, the battle was joined, and changing commanders in the middle of the battle was dangerous.
Finally, there was a political aspect. The man who was institutionally responsible for detecting Sept. 11 was CIA Director George Tenet. He was 2001's Kimmel. Whether it was his fault or not, Sept. 11 was an intelligence failure. Tenet was in charge of intelligence, and it happened on his watch. Kimmel was sacked -- but Tenet was not a Bush appointee. He had been appointed by Bill Clinton. Bush began with a crippled presidency due to the Florida fiasco. He did not have the national authority of Roosevelt, and he badly needed bipartisan support. Bush obviously respected Tenet since he kept him on after his election. He might have decided to keep him on after Sept. 11 in order to help bulletproof his administration. Tenet was, after all, a Clinton appointee.
The problem with this strategy was that, rather than deflect inquiries, it made them unavoidable. After Dec. 7, those directly and visibly responsible for Pearl Harbor -- excepting the president and his key political appointees -- were removed from the chain of command. After Sept. 11, those most directly and visibly responsible remained in the chain of command. If there were mistakes made, then the people who made those mistakes were still in control of huge parts of the war effort. The question of whether these people were competent could not be avoided.
To put it a little differently: Unlike Roosevelt, Bush failed to armor himself against his political enemies. While Roosevelt, who had a lot more political weight in 1941-1942, successfully deflected political attacks by combining a sense of national emergency with a sense that he was taking steps to deal with the problem, Bush kept his team intact. That meant it was essential to examine their performance -- and their culpability, if any -- prior to Sept. 11.
Bush argued that the United States was in a war, but he never shifted his administration into a wartime mode. Failure -- real or perceived -- was never punished. Bush's one administrative innovation, Homeland Security, moves at a snail's pace. The armed forces did not undergo massive expansion, and the intelligence community was not torn apart and rebuilt in an emergency measure.
The war began with a massive surprise attack. Bush said there was a war going on, but somehow Bush never appeared to be reconfiguring his team for war. It undermined his ability to demand a pass until after the war was over because he sometimes did not act as if a war were going on. This has been noticed. Many Americans do not consider the Bush administration's "war on terror" to be a war at all.
What is most ironic is that an administration regarded as being so highly politicized has been, in fact, so politically incompetent. It is as if the administration never understood that this moment was coming and never prepared for it. It is particularly amazing because the charges against Bush administration -- at least in the way they have been framed -- are so weak. The administration is essentially being charged with two things: first, that it came into office obsessed with Iraq, to the extent that it was considering invading Iraq from the very first meetings it had on national security. Second, it is charged with failing to heed intelligence warnings about al Qaeda, downplaying the threat and therefore not taking actions that might have prevented the attack. Implicit in both these charges is the notion that Bush policies were fundamentally different from Clinton policies -- and that the Clinton policies were superior.
There is no question but that the Bush administration had a focus on Iraq and considered invading Iraq. The explanation that has been given is that this was the desire to complete Bush Senior's job. The actual answer does not require strained readings of Sigmund Freud. The fact is that the Bush administration was simply continuing the Clinton administration's policies on Iraq, virtually without change.
Continued on next post
March 26, 2004 1921 GMT
Summary
The United States is in the process of picking apart the intelligence and political failures that led up to the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. on Sept. 11, 2001. This is an unprecedented process. Normally such reviews occur after the war has ended. In this case, the review was made necessary by the president's failure to clean house after Sept. 11. That said, the truth of the matter would appear to be more complex than the simplistic charges being traded. The fact is, in our view, the Bush and Clinton policies were far more similar than they were different. We are not quite certain who we have insulted with that claim.
Analysis
Conducting a highly public inquiry and debate over the origins of a war while that war is being conducted would appear to be one of the most self-destructive exercises imaginable. No reasonable person could argue that mistakes were not made prior to Sept. 11, 2001, any more than it could be argued that mistakes were not made before Dec. 7, 1941. There is no question but that the intelligence system failed to predict the event and that it was supposed to.
But just as the Pearl Harbor inquiry was carried out after the war, so as not to interfere with the war effort, it would seem reasonable that the Sept. 11 inquiries should take place after the war is over. Officials and former officials hurling charges against each other in a public display of disunity does not seem to serve the national interest. There were secret investigations and discussions before World War II ended, but the public report by Congress was not released until July 1946 and not really undertaken in earnest until after the war ended.
It has been argued that the unlimited nature of this war makes waiting for the end impossible. But this war is not unique in appearing to be potentially endless. Only with the benefit of hindsight can one make the argument that previous wars would be temporally contained. As British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey so poignantly stated in 1914 -- at the start of World War I, the shortest of the 20th century's major conflicts -- "The lights are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." The review could have waited.
However, in all fairness, it should be pointed out that George W. Bush set himself up for this, although not in the way his critics charge. One of the things that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did was to clean house after the Pearl Harbor attack. This housecleaning was not necessarily fair. Adm. Husband Kimmel, Commander in Chief, Pacific (CINCPAC), for example, was fired even though a strong case could be made that he was less responsible than others for Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, Pearl Harbor happened on his watch and he was gone.
It went deeper than that. Roosevelt wanted to signal that something had gone terribly wrong not only with one person but also with a generation of leaders. Relatively junior commanders Chester Nimitz and Dwight Eisenhower were catapulted into senior command positions. Not all of the old leaders were replaced -- consider Douglas MacArthur or George Marshall -- but there was a broad enough housecleaning that no one could escape the fact that the war had changed everything. You could argue that Roosevelt did this to protect himself, but if so, he was doing his job.
President Bush did not clean house after Sept. 11. He kept the same team in place with some very minor second-tier shifts. There was no whirlwind of activity designed to bring in a fresh, wartime team using streamlined procedures. He went with the team he had. There was a defensible case to be made for this. The country was in a state of shock, and an upheaval in the intelligence and defense communities was perceived to be an unnecessary follow-on shock to public morale. Moreover, the battle was joined, and changing commanders in the middle of the battle was dangerous.
Finally, there was a political aspect. The man who was institutionally responsible for detecting Sept. 11 was CIA Director George Tenet. He was 2001's Kimmel. Whether it was his fault or not, Sept. 11 was an intelligence failure. Tenet was in charge of intelligence, and it happened on his watch. Kimmel was sacked -- but Tenet was not a Bush appointee. He had been appointed by Bill Clinton. Bush began with a crippled presidency due to the Florida fiasco. He did not have the national authority of Roosevelt, and he badly needed bipartisan support. Bush obviously respected Tenet since he kept him on after his election. He might have decided to keep him on after Sept. 11 in order to help bulletproof his administration. Tenet was, after all, a Clinton appointee.
The problem with this strategy was that, rather than deflect inquiries, it made them unavoidable. After Dec. 7, those directly and visibly responsible for Pearl Harbor -- excepting the president and his key political appointees -- were removed from the chain of command. After Sept. 11, those most directly and visibly responsible remained in the chain of command. If there were mistakes made, then the people who made those mistakes were still in control of huge parts of the war effort. The question of whether these people were competent could not be avoided.
To put it a little differently: Unlike Roosevelt, Bush failed to armor himself against his political enemies. While Roosevelt, who had a lot more political weight in 1941-1942, successfully deflected political attacks by combining a sense of national emergency with a sense that he was taking steps to deal with the problem, Bush kept his team intact. That meant it was essential to examine their performance -- and their culpability, if any -- prior to Sept. 11.
Bush argued that the United States was in a war, but he never shifted his administration into a wartime mode. Failure -- real or perceived -- was never punished. Bush's one administrative innovation, Homeland Security, moves at a snail's pace. The armed forces did not undergo massive expansion, and the intelligence community was not torn apart and rebuilt in an emergency measure.
The war began with a massive surprise attack. Bush said there was a war going on, but somehow Bush never appeared to be reconfiguring his team for war. It undermined his ability to demand a pass until after the war was over because he sometimes did not act as if a war were going on. This has been noticed. Many Americans do not consider the Bush administration's "war on terror" to be a war at all.
What is most ironic is that an administration regarded as being so highly politicized has been, in fact, so politically incompetent. It is as if the administration never understood that this moment was coming and never prepared for it. It is particularly amazing because the charges against Bush administration -- at least in the way they have been framed -- are so weak. The administration is essentially being charged with two things: first, that it came into office obsessed with Iraq, to the extent that it was considering invading Iraq from the very first meetings it had on national security. Second, it is charged with failing to heed intelligence warnings about al Qaeda, downplaying the threat and therefore not taking actions that might have prevented the attack. Implicit in both these charges is the notion that Bush policies were fundamentally different from Clinton policies -- and that the Clinton policies were superior.
There is no question but that the Bush administration had a focus on Iraq and considered invading Iraq. The explanation that has been given is that this was the desire to complete Bush Senior's job. The actual answer does not require strained readings of Sigmund Freud. The fact is that the Bush administration was simply continuing the Clinton administration's policies on Iraq, virtually without change.
Continued on next post