JAKE TAPPER
September 12, 2001
But White House passed on recommendations by a bipartisan, Defense department-ordered commission on domestic terrorism.
They went to great pains not to sound as though they were telling the president "We told you so."
But on Wednesday, two former senators, the bipartisan co-chairs of a Defense Department-chartered commission on national security, spoke with something between frustration and regret about how White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year.
Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney study the potential problem of domestic terrorism -- which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying -- while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh.
The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA's attention.
Before the White House decided to go in its own direction, Congress seemed to be taking the commission's suggestions seriously, according to Hart and Rudman. "Frankly, the White House shut it down," Hart says. "The president said 'Please wait, we're going to turn this over to the vice president. We believe FEMA is competent to coordinate this effort.' And so Congress moved on to other things, like tax cuts and the issue of the day."
"We predicted it," Hart says of Tuesday's horrific events. "We said Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers -- that's a quote (from the commission's Phase One Report) from the fall of 1999."
On Tuesday, Hart says, as he sat watching TV coverage of the attacks, he experienced not just feelings of shock and horror, but also frustration. "I sat tearing my hair out," says the former two-term senator. "And still am."
Rudman generally agrees with Hart's assessment, but adds : "That's not to say that the administration was obstructing."
"They wanted to try something else, they wanted to put more responsibility with FEMA," Rudman says. "But they didn't get a chance to do very much" before terrorists struck on Tuesday.
The White House referred an inquiry to the National Security Council, which did not return a call for comment.
The bipartisan 14-member panel was put together in 1998 by then-President Bill Clinton and then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., to make sweeping strategic recommendations on how the United States could ensure its security in the 21st century.
In its Jan. 31 report, seven Democrats and seven Republicans unanimously approved 50 recommendations. Many of them addressed the point that, in the words of the commission's executive summary, "the combination of unconventional weapons proliferation with the persistence of international terrorism will end the relative invulnerability of the U.S. homeland to catastrophic attack."
"A direct attack against American citizens on American soil is likely over the next quarter century," according to the report.
The commission recommended the formation of a Cabinet-level position to combat terrorism. The proposed National Homeland Security Agency director would have "responsibility for planning, coordinating, and integrating various U.S. government activities involved in homeland security," according to the commission's executive summary.
Other commission recommendations include having the proposed National Homeland Security Agency assume responsibilities now held by other agencies -- border patrol from the Justice Department, Coast Guard from the Transportation Department, customs from the Treasury Department, the National Domestic Preparedness Office from the FBI, cyber-security from the FBI and the Commerce Department. Additionally, the NHSA would take over FEMA, and let the "National Security Advisor and NSC staff return to their traditional role of coordinating national security activities and resist the temptation to become policymakers or operators."
The commission was supposed to disband after issuing the report Jan. 31, but Hart and the other commission members got a six-month extension to lobby for their recommendations. Hart says he spent 90 minutes with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and an hour with Secretary of State Colin Powell lobbying for the White House to devote more attention to the imminent dangers of terrorism and their specific, detailed recommendations for a major change in the way the federal government approaches terrorism. He and Rudman briefed National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on the commission's findings.
For a time, the commission seemed to be on a roll.
On April 3, before the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Technology, Hart sounded a call of alarm, saying that an "urgent" need existed for a new national security strategy, with an emphasis on intelligence gathering.
"Good intelligence is the key to preventing attacks on the homeland," Hart said, arguing that the commission "urges that homeland security become one of the intelligence community's most important missions." The nation needed to embrace "homeland security as a primary national security mission." The Defense Department, for instance, "has placed its highest priority on preparing for major theater war" where it "should pay far more attention to the homeland security mission." Homeland security would be the main purpose of beefed-up National Guard units throughout the country.
A new strategy, new organizations like the National Homeland Security Agency -- which would pointedly "not be heavily centered in the Washington, D.C. area" -- would be formed to fulfill this mission, as well with the fallout should that mission fail. As the U.S. is now, the Phase III report stated, "its structures and strategies are fragmented and inadequate." Diplomacy was to be refocused on intelligence sharing about terrorist groups. Allies were to have their military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies work more closely with ours. Border security was to be beefed up.
More resources needed to be devoted to the new mission. "The Customs Service, the Border Patrol, and the Coast Guard are all on the verge of being overwhelmed by the mismatch between their growing duties and their mostly static resources," the report stated. Intelligence needed to focus not only on electronic surveillance but a renewed emphasis on human surveillance -- informants and spies -- "especially on terrorist groups covertly supported by states." As the threat was imminent, Congress and the president were urged to "start right away on implementing the recommendations put forth here."
Congress seemed interested in enacting many of the commission's recommendations. "We had a very good response from the Hill," Rudman says.
In March, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, introduced the National Homeland Security Agency Act. Other members of Congress -- Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, R-Md., John Kyl, R-Ariz., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. -- talked about the issue, and these three and others began drafting legislation to enact some of the recommendations into law.
But in May, Bush announced his plan almost as if the Hart-Rudman Commission never existed, as if it hadn't spent millions of dollars, "consulting with experts, visiting 25 countries worldwide, really deliberating long and hard," as Hart describes it. Bush said in a statement that "numerous federal departments and agencies have programs to deal with the consequences of a potential use of a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon in the United States. But to maximize their effectiveness, these efforts need to be seamlessly integrated, harmonious and comprehensive." That, according to the president, should be done through FEMA, headed by Allbaugh, formerly Bush's gubernatorial chief of staff.
Bush also directed Cheney -- a man with a full plate, including supervision of the administration's energy plans and its dealings with Congress -- to supervise the development of a national counter-terrorism plan. Bush announced that Cheney and Allbaugh would review the issues and have recommendations for him by Oct. 1. The commission's report was seemingly put on the shelf.
Just last Thursday, Hart spoke with Rice again. "I told her that I and the others on the commission would do whatever we could to work with the vice president to move on this," Hart said. "She said she would pass on the message."
On Tuesday, Hart says he spent much of his time on the phone with the commission's executive director, Gen. Charles G. Boyd. "We agreed the thing we should not do is say, 'We told you so,'" Hart says. "And that's not what I'm trying to do here. Our focus needs to be : What do we do now?"
Of course, as a former senator, Hart well knows what happens to the recommendations of blue-chip panels. But he says he thought that the gravity of the issue -- and the comprehensiveness of the commission's task -- would prevent its reports from being ignored. After all, when then-Secretary of Defense William Cohen signed the charter for the 21st Century National Security Strategy Study, he charged its members to engage in "the most comprehensive security analysis" since the groundbreaking National Security Act of 1947, which created the National Security Council, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of Secretary of Defense, among other organizations.
Neither Hart nor Rudman claim that their recommendations, if enacted, would have necessarily prevented Tuesday's tragedy. "Had they adopted every recommendation we had put forward at that time I don't think it would have changed what happened," Rudman says. "There wasn't enough time to enact everything. But certainly I would hope they pay more attention now."
"Could this have been prevented?" Hart asks. "The answer is, 'We'll never know.' Possibly not." It was a struggle to convince President Clinton of the need for such a commission, Hart says. He urged Clinton to address this problem in '94 and '95, but Clinton didn't act until 1998, prompted by politics. "He saw Gingrich was about to do it, so he moved to collaborate," Hart says. "Seven years had gone by since the end of the Cold War. It could have been much sooner."
Rudman said that he "would not be critical of them [the Bush administration] this early because the bottom line is, a lot has to be done." The commission handed down its recommendations just eight and a half months ago, he said, and they'll take years to fully enact.
"On the other hand," Rudman said, "if two years go by and the same thing happens again, shame on everybody.
"I'm not pointing fingers," Rudman said. "I just want to see some results." He may get his wish. On Wednesday, Thornberry renewed his call for a National Homeland Security Agency. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the assistant majority leader, called for the formation of a federal counter-terrorism czar.
Three days ago, if asked to predict what the first major foreign terrorist attack on America soil would involve, Hart says he would have guessed small nuclear warheads simultaneously unleashed on three American cities. But, he says, "there wasn't doubt in anyone's mind on that commission" that something horrific would happen "probably sooner rather than later. We just didn't know how."
In addition to the Bush administration, Hart has another group that he wishes had paid the commission's suggestions more heed. "The national media didn't pay attention," Hart says. One senior reporter from a well-known publication told one of Hart's fellow commissioners, "This isn't important, none of this is ever going to happen," Hart says. "That's a direct quote."
Hart points out that while the New York Times mentioned the commission in a Wednesday story with the sub-headline "Years of Unheeded Alarms," that story was the first serious mention the Times itself had ever given the commission. The Times did not cover the commission's report in January, nor did it cover Hart's testimony in April, he points out. "We're in an age where we don't want to deal with serious issues, we want to deal with little boys pitching baseballs who might be 14 instead of 12."
Hart says he just shook his head when he saw a former Clinton administration Cabinet official on TV Tuesday calling for the formation of a commission to study the best way to combat terrorism. "If a former Cabinet officer didn't know, how could the average man on the street? I do hope the American people understand that somebody was paying attention."
In his April 3 testimony, Hart noted that "the prospect of mass casualty terrorism on American soil is growing sharply. That is because the will to terrorism and the ways to perpetrate it are proliferating and merging. We believe that, over the next quarter century, this danger will be one of the most difficult national security challenges facing the United States -- and the one we are least prepared to address." He urgently described the need for better human intelligence and not just electronic intelligence, "especially on terrorist groups covertly supported by states."
He's far from happy to have been proven correct. Both Hart and Rudman say with grim confidence that Tuesday's attacks are just the beginning. Maybe now, Rudman says, Congress, the White House, the media and the American people will realize how serious they were about their January report.
"Human nature is prevalent in government as well," Rudman says. "We tend not to do what we ought to do until we get hit between the eyes."
September 12, 2001
The global electronic surveillance network, codenamed Echelon, failed to alert the US intelligence service of plans for Tuesday's (September 11) terrorist attacks on the US.
The US government has never officially confirmed the existence of Echelon, but an investigative committee of the European Parliament recently concluded that the spy network is real.
"Echelon can intercept any communications worldwide. If there have been phone calls or faxes, this system should have intercepted it. If there have been communications, it was done under a cover of encryption or by old-fashioned courier" said Elly Plooij-van Gorsel, Dutch MEP and vice-chairman of the committee.
"Technology is not a solution, but a race. Terrorists also have technology. Intelligence services worldwide have to cooperate with technology as a tool. Information is currently shared on a bilateral basis, but there is no real cooperation," she said.
Echelon, which is thought to be operated by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and intelligence services in Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, is probably being used in the hunt for the perpetrators of the attacks in the US.
Other observers commented that technology might not have been a good investment for intelligence services.
"There has been an intelligence failure," said Peter Sommer, senior fellow of the computer security research centre at the London School of Economics. "Is that because some aspects of [security] have been overplayed at the expense of others?
"The area that is interesting is this question of the role of electronic surveillance. There is bound to be a wholesale re-evaluation of intelligence doctrines. There is likely to be a continuation of the debate of funding for [surveillance technology] at the expense of older types of spying."
He added : "We need intelligence assets and human assets; people who can infiltrate these groups. We have moved into a more dangerous world now. There will be another set of arguments that say that we have undervalued the role of human intelligence."
September 13, 2001
The dust has barely settled in New York, and the aides of George Bush are busy putting things right.
Unfortunately they're not busy finding out what happened or sending the president before the cameras to answer questions from the press. Nope, they're using the terrorist attacks on the United States to re-sell George Bush to us in the face of declining polls.
Let's call it "Operation Manhood". Yesterday morning while the country looked to Washington for hope and information, instead we got the spectacle of George Bush being ferried all over the country like a high end version of Road Rules. For twelve hours he bounced from Florida to Lousiana to Nebraska to DC like he was on a scavenger hunt for courage. Finally he showed up in Washington to deliver a typical deer-in-the-headlights string of platitudes, apparently picked up at a Nebraska Rotary prayer luncheon.
Meanwhile, New York and the Pentagon burned.
When columnists such as the New York Time's Maureen Dowd and William Safire, as well as a few scattered cable talking heads delicately suggested that maybe the President should have come straight back to Washington and acted like the leader of a great country, the great Karl Rove-Karen Hughes Bush-image roadshow groaned to life.
Suddenly, we are told, the Secret Service had information that the White House and Air Force One were the next targets in a conspiracy that they no knowledge of until people started dying 45 minutes prior. Apparently bringing Air Force One into Washington DC was dangerous because those wily Middle Eastern terrorists had the advanced capability of chasing it down from behind in their lumbering hijacked jumbo jets. It would appear that all of our fighter jets at Andrews Air Force base were in the shop and couldn't provide cover. So while people died, buildings collapsed, and America looked to it's leadership for answers and assurance, George Bush went on a 12 hour aerial Home to the Heartland tour.
Operation Manhood commenced this morning when he spoke to the nation with his National Security team in full silent view,infering that he had everything under control and those other guys were just along for the ride. This afternoon, the White House started rolling out the spokepeople from Ari to Mindy to John Ashcroft to tell us that they had really, really, really good sources telling them what the terrorists were going to do next.
That George Bush isn't the Coward in Chief. That, according to a now groveling and contrite William Safire, Bush wasn't going to be chased away from Washington by any "tinhorn terrorists" (Safire didn't indicate whether Bush followed this with "dad-gummit!"). But, alas, the Secret Service forced the issue. We were also told the White House wasn't safe, but Ari Fleischer couldn't answer why it was safe enough for Dick Cheney.
For those who watched the press conference, Ari took a flop sweat shower in front of the whole country. Later today Bush ventured outdoors where he did a photo-op at the Pentagon, and hemmed and hawed for a few minutes about bravery and other things he's read about.
If all of this wasn't enough, now Safire's "sources" (one of whom, he admits, is Karl Rove) have indicated that the terrorists knew lots of secret stuff about Air Force One and White House procedures which can only mean one thing ... a "mole" in the White House, or Secret Service, or the FBI, CIA, etc etc. This just happens to be a Bill Safire obsession that the White House is playing on. The subtext here is, of course, somehow it's Clinton's fault.
Now we understand. Apparently everyone in the whole world knows that Bush is a hero among heroes, and only he can bring us through this horrible tragedy. That's why there are spies in the White House plotting against him, and terrorists hijacking planes with full tanks of gas so they can chase him around the sky. It's all about the Bush.
He is THE MAN. Without his steady hand at the helm, we are doomed to chaos.
So, while we dig through the rubble, patch the bleeding, pick up the pieces, and wonder what has become of a world that seemed so different two day ago, one thing is certain : George Bush has officially started his campaign for 2004, "tinhorn terrorists" or not ...
DAN K. THOMASSON
September 13, 2001
President Bush's response to the worst mainland attack on the United States in the nation's history was hardly Henry V of England at Agincourt, Winston Churchill during the Blitz or Franklin Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor.
The president's low-key approach carried with it none of the anger and steely determination that one would have expected of a leader of a confused and wounded public looking for the reassurance that their supreme leader had things well in hand, which actually he does. In fact, the lack of passion in his activities during the day and in his evening speech to the country seemed calculated to show the rest of the world that despite this tragedy, Americans don't panic.
That may be all well and good but the truth is there was a great deal of hysteria from California to New York. In the vast American heartland almost all normal activity stopped. Schools closed, malls closed, banks closed, movies closed, grocery stores and gasoline stations were overwhelmed and citizens scanned the skies nervously every time they thought they heard an airplane.
From the minute he was informed of the circumstances during a visit to a Florida school, Bush seemed as unsure as the rest of us about how to respond. He appears initially to have deferred to the wishes of his personal security advisers and headed for the command centers that are set up for the possibility of a nuclear attack, which despite its severity, this clearly was not. That is completely excusable given the confusion about exactly was happening. But by the time he had left the first military installation for a super secure one in Nebraska, authorities knew pretty much what was going on.
Whether or not he personally realized how his absence from the capital appeared both to his fellow Americans and the enemies that perpetrated this cowardly act — and whether it was his own decision or that of advisers to return to Washington — is immaterial. It was the right decision, for obvious reasons.
But when he did return to Andrews Air Force base, he apparently once again deferred to the Secret Service and stayed away from the one place his helicopter should have taken him immediately, the Pentagon. Clearly the reasoning for not doing this was that it would be seen as a cheap attempt to make political hay of this awful tragedy and that his presence might hamper workers trying desperately to save lives.
In answer to the first objection, the heroic image of a besieged president on the ground at the site of this disaster would have been accepted, if not expected, by Americans as irrefutable evidence of the concern he obviously has. It is the ceremonial aspect of the job. It would have a calming impact. New York Gov George Pataki, for instance, was everywhere in Lower Manhattan in a police jacket. Governor Frank Keating hardly left the site of the Oklahoma City bombing during the arduous days of rescue and became an instant hero. Winston Churchill walked the streets of London inspecting the damage during the Blitz, his presence a solid reassurance.
As to the second point, an immediate, unannounced landing at the Pentagon would hardly have been an interference in the measures being taken there. Workers know how to take these things in stride, even the arrival of a president.
The words that the president spoke to the nation were good ones. He urged calm and called for the prayers for those murdered by these fanatical hooligans. But those words were delivered in an almost monotone. Missing was the palpable anger that most of us felt over this obscene disruption to our civilized society, the unwarranted and despicable slaughter of innocents. When he stated that not only would we hold those who committed the act responsible but those who sheltered them, what would have been wrong with clenched teeth or trembling anger? No one should doubt his resolve in this matter nor the unity of the nation behind him, but his actions and his words will not be what is remembered about this day and that is too bad for him. Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.
Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St.Claire September 13, 2001 Tuesday's onslaughts on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon are being likened to Pearl Harbor and the comparison is just. From the point of view of the assailants the attacks were near miracles of logistical calculation, timing, courage in execution and devastation inflicted upon the targets. The Pearl Harbor base containing America's naval might was thought to be invulnerable, yet in half an hour 2000 were dead, and the cream of the fleet destroyed. This week, within an hour on the morning of September 11, security at three different airports was successfully breached, the crews of four large passenger jets efficiently overpowered, the cockpits commandeered, navigation coordinates reset. In three of the four missions the assailants attained successes probably far beyond the expectations of the planners. As a feat of suicidal aviation the Pentagon kamikaze assault was particularly audacious, with eyewitness accounts describing the Boeing 767 skimming the Potomac before driving right through the low lying Pentagon perimeter, in a sector housing Planning and Logistics. The two Trade Center Buildings were struck at what structural engineers say were the points of maximum vulnerability. The strength of the buildings derived entirely from the steel perimeter frame, designed so its lead architect said only last week - to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. These buildings were struck full force Tuesday morning by Boeing 737s, with fuel tanks fully loaded for the long flights to the West Coast. Within an hour of the impacts both buildings collapsed. By evening, a third 46-story Trade Center building had also crumbled. Not in terms of destructive extent, but in terms of symbolic obliteration the attack is virtually without historic parallel, a trauma at least as great as the San Francisco earthquake or the Chicago fire. There may be another similarity to Pearl Harbor. The possibility of a Japanese attack in early December of 1941 was known to US Naval Intelligence and to President Roosevelt. Last Tuesday, derision at the failure of US intelligence was widespread. The Washington Post quoted an unnamed top official at the National Security Council as saying, "We don't know anything here. We're watching CNN too." Are we to believe that the $30 billion annual intelligence budget, immense electronic eavesdropping capacity, thousands of agents around the world, produced nothing in the way of a warning? In fact Osama bin Laden, now prime suspect, said in an interview three weeks ago with Abdel-Bari Atwan, the editor of the London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, that he planned "very, very big attacks against American interests." Here is bin-Laden, probably the most notorious Islamic foe of America on the planet, originally trained by the CIA, planner of other successful attacks on US installations such as the embassies in East Africa, carrying a $5 million FBI bounty on his head proclaiming the imminence of another assault, and US intelligence was impotent, even though the attacks must have taken months, if not years to plan, and even though CNN has reported that bin-Laden and his coordinating group al-Qa'ida had been using an airstrip in Afghanistan to train pilots to fly 767s. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, when hijacking was a preoccupation, the possibility of air assaults on buildings such as the Trade Center were a major concern of US security and intelligence agencies. But since the 1980s and particularly during the Clinton-Gore years the focus shifted to more modish fears, such as bio-chemical assault and nuclear weapons launched by so-called rogue states. This latter threat had the allure of justifying the $60 billion investment in Missile Defense aka Star Wars. One of the biggest proponents of that approach was Al Gore's security advisor, Leon Fuerth, who wailed plaintively amid Tuesday's rubble that "In effect the country's at war but we don't have the coordinates of the enemy." But the lust for retaliation traditionally outstrips precision in identifying the actual assailant. By early evening on Tuesday America's national security establishment were calling for a removal of all impediments on the assassination of foreign leaders. Led by President Bush, hey were endorsing the prospect of attacks not just on the perpetrators but on those who might have harbored them. From the nuclear priesthood is coming the demand that mini-nukes be deployed on a preemptive basis against the enemies of America. The targets abroad will be all the usual suspects: rogue states, (most of which, like the Taleban or Saddam Hussein, started off as creatures of US intelligence). The target at home will of course be the Bill of Rights. Less than a week ago the FBI raided Infocom, the Texas-based web host for Muslim groups such as the Council on Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the Holy Land Foundation. Palestinians have been denied visas, and those in this country can, under the terms of the CounterTerrorism Act of the Clinton years, be held and expelled without due process. The explosions of Tuesday were not an hour old before terror pundits like Anthony Cordesman, Wesley Clark, Robert Gates and Lawrence Eagleburger were saying that these attacks had been possible "because America is a democracy" adding that now some democratic perquisites might have to be abandoned? What might this mean? Increased domestic snooping by US law enforcement and intelligence agencies; ethnic profiling; another drive for a national ID card system. Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. For most of the day the only Bush who looked composed and control in Washington was Laura, who happened to waiting to testify on Capitol Hill. Her husband gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Florida, then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing in at a base in Barksdale, Louisiana, where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of bring on tranquilizers. He was then flown to a bunker in Nebraska, before someone finally had the wit to suggest that the best place for an American president at time of national emergency is the Oval Office. Other members of the cabinet were equally elusive. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has managed to avoid almost every site of crisis or debate was once again absent from the scene, in Latin America. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remained invisible most of the day, even though it would have taken him only a few short steps to get to the Pentagon pressroom and make some encouraging remarks. When he did finally appear the substance of his remarks and his demeanor were even more banal and unprepossessing than those of his commander in chief. At no point did Vice President Cheney appear in public. The presidential contenders did expose themsleves. John McCain curdled the air with threats against America's foes, as did John Kerry, who immediately blamed bin-Laden and who stuck the knife firmly into CIA director George Tenet, citing Tenet as having told him not long ago that the CIA had neutralized an impending attack by bin-Laden. Absent national political leadership, the burden of rallying the nation fell as usual upon the TV anchors, all of whom seem to have resolved early on to lower the emotional temper, though Tom Brokaw did lisp a declaration of War against Terror. Tuesday's eyewitness reports of the collapse of the two Trade Center buildings were not inspired, at least for those who have heard the famous eyewitness radio reportage of the crash of the Hindenberg zeppelin in Lakehurst, New Jersey in 1937 with the anguished cry of the reporter, "Oh the humanity, the humanity". Radio and TV reporters these days seem incapable of narrating an ongoing event with any sense of vivid language or dramatic emotive power. The commentators were similarly incapable of explaining with any depth the likely context of the attacks; that these attacks might be the consequence of the recent Israeli rampages in the Occupied Territories that have included assassinations of Palestinian leaders and the slaughter of Palestinian civilians with the use of American aircraft; that these attacks might also stem from the sanctions against Iraq that have seen upward of a million children die; that these attacks might in part be a response to US cruise missile attacks on the Sudanese factories that had been loosely fingered by US intelligence as connected to bin-Laden. In fact September 11 was the anniversary of George W. Bush's speech to Congress in 1990, heralding war against Iraq. It was also the anniversary of the Camp David accords, which signaled the US buy-out of Egypt as any countervailing force for Palestinian rights in the Middle East. One certain beneficiary of the attacks is Israel. Polls had been showing popular dislike here for Israel's recent tactics, which may have been the motivation for Colin Powell's few bleats of reproof to Israel. We will be hearing no such bleats in the weeks to come, as Israel's leaders advise America on how exactly to deal with Muslims. The attackers probably bet on that too, as a way of making the US's support for Israeli intransigence even more explicit, finishing off Arafat in the process. "Freedom," said George Bush in Sarasota in the first sentence of his first reaction, "was attacked this morning by a faceless coward." That properly represents the stupidity and blindness of almost all Tuesday's mainstream political commentary. By contrast, the commentary on economic consequences was informative and sophisticated. Worst hit : the insurance industry. Likely outfall in the short-term : hiked energy prices, a further drop in global stock markets. George Bush will have no trouble in raiding the famous lock-box, using Social Security Trust Funds to give more money to the Defense Department. That about sums it up. Three planes are successfully steered into three of America's most conspicuous buildings and America's response will be to put more money in missile defense as a way of bolstering the economy.
MICKEY KAUS September 13, 2001
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's crisis performance has not only made President Bush's look bad--it has also given commentators a way to criticize the president without seeming unpatriotic. In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attack, TV anchors who belittled Bush's leadership were instantly denounced as disloyal partisans. But the contrast with Giuliani is impossible to ignore : In several appearances each day, New York's mayor has been informative, accessible, spontaneously human. He answers questions. He's clearly in control. As Salon's Joan Walsh notes, Giuliani says what needs to be said, acknowledging the tragedy without being overwhelmed by it, praising the efforts of rescue crews, counseling against anti-Arab vigilantism, sharing credit, avoiding personal grandstanding. Meanwhile, Bush has appeared for a few moments a day, reading scripts or (as in his visits to the wounded) giving a few rambling impressions. He doesn't answer questions. On the first day, he sent out an aide, Karen Hughes, to inform the public. She didn't answer questions either. Even Bush's friends don't really dispute the overall verdict on the president. When columnist and former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan writes that "the great leaders in our time of trauma were the reporters and anchors and producers of the networks and news stations," the negative implication is clear. If Bush had offered any great leadership, Noonan would have mentioned it. Over the next few days, we're likely to see various mechanical attempts by Bush's advisers to correct for his deficiencies as a crisis-performer. Like Jimmy Carter's various attempts to cure his (admittedly different) flaws, they're likely to fail or even backfire. (Today, Bush seemed to be "fighting back tears.") The elaborate second-day campaign to justify Bush's airport-hopping in the hours immediately after the terrorist attacks, for example, gave the impression that the White House was paying attention to fixing Bush's own image instead of the nation's problem. (The "set-it-straight" efforts also made Bush seem like a wimp, unwilling to overrule either his vice president or his own Secret Service.) What should Bush do? Not listen to the New York Times. The Times editorial page urges Bush to "earn the country's confidence ... by appearing frequently in public, and by not being afraid to answer questions." In other words, Bush should be more like Giuliani. It's hard to believe this advice is offered in good faith -- if Bush's staff trusted him to answer questions he would have made a practice of answering them long ago. Bush isn't Giuliani and won't become Giuliani. If it's important that the nation be effectively and constantly reassured, then we shouldn't pin our hopes on the slim possibility of presidential "growth in office." A safer course would be for Bush to implicitly accept his limitations and abandon the traditional FDR model (adopted by Giuliani) in which the chief executive himself is also the chief public confidence-inspirer. True, there's a certain value in the public being able to see first hand that the man in charge is in fact in charge. But this is no time to hold out for the ideal. Bush has assembled a competent Cabinet capable, with varying degrees of success, of communicating that competence. Let them do the talking, while Bush visits hospitals and is photographed chairing National Security Council meetings. P.S. : In echoing the media criticism of Bush, I'm under no illusion that a President Gore would have inspired more confidence. Nor do I especially wish Bill Clinton were back in office. Clintonian levels of empathy are not what the current situation calls for. (This isn't a natural disaster.) And Clinton's reaction to the last major bout of terrorism--his bombing of the pharmaceutical factory in Sudan--does not at this point look like one of his finer moments in office. Photograph of Rudy Giuliani by Mitchell Gerber/Corbis
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