Posted on 04/14/2004 12:04:23 PM PDT by .cnI redruM
No, I don't feel any better after George W. Bush's shaky press-conference appearance, either. But I also don't feel any better as the 9/11 Commission veers into absurd degrees of eagle-eyed hindsight. Increasingly, Commission interrogations boil down to: Why didn't you know the future! Once an outcome is known, it's easy to draw lines backward that seemed to foretell the event--skipping that there were multiple lines that seemed to foretell events that did not happen. Nobody knew September 11 was coming: no Republican, no Democrat, no intelligence agency of any nation, no newspaper, no television network. Please end this carnival of pointless recriminations. It makes America seem faint and foolish.
Meanwhile let's put one aspect of current doubletalk into relief. Hindsight types of all stripes now maintain that even though, in August 2001, there was only a general warning--a knowledge that a danger existed, specifics unknown--the United States should have staged unilateral, decisive military action against Al Qaeda. In effect this means we should have invaded Afghanistan in August 2001. It's not enough vaguely to proclaim that Al Qaeda should have been stopped. How? Cruise missiles and mini-drones and other remote-controlled options had already been tried and found wanting. Sustained bombing of Al Qaeda and the Taliban and large numbers of ground troops in Afghanistan would have been required, plus the seizing of staging areas in neighbor states. At that time there's no chance Pakistan would have cooperated with a U.S. attack in Afghanistan, and little chance Islamabad would even have allowed overflights.
So this means that in August 2001 the United States would not only have had to invade Afghanistan but also to seize staging areas in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, or even in eastern Iran. Just take a look at a map. Helicopters don't descend from outer space, they operate from staging bases. Critics of pre-9/11 policy wildly underestimate what the practical barriers to a U.S. attack on Afghanistan would have been before Pakistan's post-9/11 decision to switch sides. Again, look at a map. (American politicians and commentators also show scant appreciation for Pakistan's post-9/11 decision to switch sides. But that's another matter.)
Yet the same politicians and commentators who say Bush failed because he did not take decisive military action in August 2001 after a general warning about Al Qaeda also say Bush was wrong to invade Iraq because there was only a general warning.
History may judge the attack on Iraq as anything from an idealistic liberation to crazed folly. But let's think for a moment about what's happened in the last 13 months solely from the perspective of the impact on U.S. and global security.
Since the United States and United Kingdom invaded Iraq, Libya has admitted to and voluntarily surrendered an atomic-weapons program that the world community did not know about. Pakistan has admitted to peddling atomic secrets, and presumably stopped. Pakistan's intelligence agency, the leading state supporter of Islamist fanatics, has stopped backing this movement. North Korea has admitted the true status of its atomic program. Iran has started talking honestly with the International Atomic Energy Agency about the true state of its nuclear facilities. All of these are huge advances for U.S. and global security. The ones that involve atomic threats may turn out--in terms of what doesn't happen--to mean more in the long run than what did happen on September 11.
Maybe some of the items in the above inventory would have come to pass regardless of the military resolve shown by Washington and London against Iraq. Maybe some or all were caused by other nations' fears of that resolve. We'll never know. But it's two-faced to maintain that the United States should have taken decisive military action in August 2001 based only on general warnings, and simultaneously to maintain that the gains from the decisive military action of March 2003 don't count because we can never be sure that action was necessary.
Had decisive military action been taken in August 2001, and had that action been successful--September 11 avoided and thus its possibility never even known--there would now be a carnival of recriminations about why we invaded Afghanistan "unnecessarily." A presidential commission into the Afghanistan invasion might now be demanding to know why George W. Bush and his advisors paid too much attention to intelligence warnings about Al Qaeda.
As for Richard Ben-Veniste, his Know-It-All-In-Retrospect act at this point is insufferable, as is his open sneering at those who don't share his gift of retroactive clairvoyance. I imagine this would have happened if Ben-Veniste rather than Abraham had argued with God about the fate of Sodom:
BEN-VENISTE: Mr. God, isn't it true that before the creation, you received a memo saying that men would become wicked?
GOD: If I find at Sodom 50 righteous within the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.
BEN-VENISTE: According to the DDB, Divine Daily Brief, you were informed in advance about lack of righteousness, and yet still created humanity.
GOD: I will not destroy Sodom if I find 45 righteous there.
BEN-VENISTE: Why haven't all scrolls and vellum you received before the creation been declassified? What are you hiding?
GOD: For the sake of 40 righteous I will not do it.
BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it obvious you should have foreseen debauchery and licentiousness?
GOD: I will not do it if I find 30 righteous there.
BEN-VENISTE: Why wasn't more funding given to anti-sin programs?
GOD: For the sake of 20 righteous, I will not do it.
BEN-VENISTE: Mr. God, you claim to be all-knowing, yet the iniquity at Sodom was not prevented.
GOD: For the sake of 10 who are righteous, I will not destroy Sodom.
BEN-VENISTE: This witness is being evasive, He keeps changing numbers.
Not much needs to be added to this. It still don't see how Easterbrook can stand votinmg for Democrats.
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