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Gifts for all occasions in the Galleria! Subscribe to the "What is the Deal?" mailing list. March 28, 2004 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. -- Send feedback to the author. The "What is the Deal?" column will appears weekly on the Pie of Knowledge website. Guest submissions are welcome and encouraged. To submit an article to "What is the Deal?" click here. To subscribe to the "What is the Deal?" mailing list and receive early notification when a new column is available, click here. The Pie of Knowledge will never, ever divulge email addresses to any third party for any reason unless so ordered by a court of law. Contributions to the Pie of Knowledge are greatly appreciated. 
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