Yesterday, I had the audacity to suggest that the lack of any terror attacks on American soil since 9/11 represented an accomplishment for the Bush administration. Frankly, I thought this was a rather banal assertion. Nevertheless, many Bush haters took issue with the contention – much to my surprise. First of all, mea culpa. Make that mea maxima culpa. The way I worded things allowed for a surfeit of blogger mirth. Some overly clever types eagerly pointed out that since the Clinton administration saw several years of no terror attacks on American soil after the 1993 attempt to take the World Trade Center down, then it too had to qualify as a success. Once again, I apologize for providing careless wording that would inevitably serve as catnip for Bush critics. Yet I assume the critics’ playfulness wasn’t really meant to serve as a serious argument that the Clinton administration had effective anti-terror policies. Yes, it’s true enough that after the ’93 attack there were no more Jihadist incidents on American soil for over seven years. But there was the attack on the Cole, the embassy bombings and a general growing of the Jihadist menace that went unchecked and culminated on 9/11. For what it’s worth, I’ve never been one who thought the Bush administration deserves a pass for 9/11. Several administrations’ neglect made 9/11 possible, and the second Bush administration was part of the malfeasance. This administration came to office with a Secretary of Defense who talked about two things – transformation and asymmetrical threats. So there was at least one high ranking guy who perceived the danger. And yet the administration did nothing of substance until the towers fell. One can chalk this failing up to Washington inertia or the possibility that America never would have tolerated traveling without its precious box cutters until something dramatic had happened. Still, the fact remains the Bush administration did little (or more likely nothing) to address the dangerous dynamic that had developed under his predecessors until 9/11 shook the entire body politic out of its torpor. Back to the preset day – the issue of whether or not the administration deserves any credit for the subsequent lack of terror attacks reveals a fundamental philosophical divide in our current politics. Fareed Zakaria’s article in Newsweek today is in its own strange and confused way enlightening on that matter:
Later in his article, Zakaria generously allows that the administration deserves “some credit for its counterterrorism activities.” Still, the wording that I quoted above is interesting. Note how Zakaria mentions that Al Qaeda’s abilities “have crumbled.” It’s as if he’s suggesting that the “crumbling” was the result of nature or perhaps old age. The notion that American policies had something to do with the “crumbling” is strangely absent from his brief history on the battle with Al Qaeda. There are dire implications to this way of thinking. There’s a revisionist school of thought that posits that the best way to treat the war on terrorism is as a law enforcement matter. Barack Obama saluted this approach a couple of weeks ago, citing the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and its aftermath as a template for how to deal with terrorism. This is a remarkable position. Assume for a minute that the 1993 attack had succeeded, and that one tower had toppled into the other killing 50,000 people. Would the presence of a few Jihadists in jail cells really qualify the whole incident as a success? Let’s get back to Zakaria. In his piece, he states, “The neoconservative Weekly Standard finally recognizes that ‘the enemy,’ as it likes to say ominously, is much weaker now, but quickly notes that Bush deserves all the credit.” Personally, I don’t recall anyone in these pages insisting that “Bush deserves all the credit.” It’s a tad surprising that a careful writer like Zakaria either failed to provide a quote to support such a bold assertion or indulged in some distorting hyperbole. Speaking just for myself, I think the administration’s policy of treating Jihadist terror as a matter of war rather than a matter for the constable has contributed to our safety. Al Qaeda has not spontaneously “crumbled.” It has been gravely harmed by effective administration policies. I realize those are debatable assertions, and I mean debatable in its most literal sense. This entire matter is one that should be debated and argued over. We haven’t had a terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. The public’s concern about terror attacks is at its lowest point since 9/11. These are not developments that anyone foresaw in 9/11’s immediate aftermath. Not even Fareed Zakaria. How we got to this point is an important matter. The question of “Why have we been safe?” is worthy of serious debate and discussion. To give Zakaria his due, in his piece today he stakes out certain intellectual positions in this conversation. They may be intellectual positions that I find ahistorical and politically convenient, but at least he makes an argument and concedes the undeniable point that “the administration deserves some credit.” The following may be a rather banal assertion, but then again I’m the guy who thought saying the Bush administration deserves some credit for the lack of terror attacks on American soil since 9/11 was banal: The next administration ought to take a look at the things the Bush administration has done right. The next administration will want to emulate them. In other words, it will be a very bad thing if the next administration and its intellectual supporters start with the intellectual fantasy that the Bush administration has done literally everything completely wrong,
