I know who is to blame for 9/11.
It is not Republicans or Democrats or even Presidents Bush or Clinton. It is not our intelligence services, although information could have been better disseminated. Yes, each made mistakes. Yet ultimately, it was a myopic and almost universally shared outlook toward terrorism that was to blame.
Since the 9/11 Commission began, there has been a sort of witch-hunt to find someone to blame. Democrats blame Republicans, while Republicans blame Democrats. In the midst of this frenzy, The New York Times even devoted an entire section called "Fix the Blame" to reviewing books that analyze where the culpability lies. And with the release of the Aug. 6 President Daily Briefing memo on Al-Qaeda, the blame game continues.
Some democrats assert that the PDB proves that Bush had been warned and should have been prepared for the attacks. This criticism is hardly valid. After all, everyone was warned. As the memo highlights, Osama bin Laden appeared on U.S. television repeatedly in the '90s warning that he intended to "bring the fight to America." To think that such high-quality intelligence could be gathered from just watching the tube!
In addition, the memo most directly refers to an anonymous warning that, "a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives" [sic]. Yet no explosives were used on 9/11 and, had Bush focused on detecting them, 9/11 would still have happened.
As far as hijackings, the document suggests that since 1998 the FBI--under President Clinton's watch--observed "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks." Yet while bin Laden was making threats on television and blowing up the USS Cole, the most Clinton did was temporarily bomb Afghanistan, an act that failed to harm terror kingpin bin Laden and in fact ticked him off just enough that, in the words of the memo, "he wanted to retaliate in Washington."
The PDB also proves some of Richard Clarke's accusations false. After all, the memo was prepared in response to questions raised by Bush after reviewing intelligence reports about Al-Qaeda threats to targets abroad. The President wanted to know if any information pointed to attacks inside the United States, and the memo was the answer he got. So much for Clarke's notion that those in the White House had never heard of Al-Qaeda before 9/11! As the memo further notes, there were more than 70 follow-up FBI investigations taking place at the time. None of them yielded concrete evidence of the 9/11 plots.
Clarke is partially right, however: Republicans dropped the ball too. With the same information that President Clinton had, Republicans did little more in terms of immediate action. They too waited for more information. As the memo notes, "some of the more sensational reporting--such as warnings that Bin Laden wanted to hijack aircraft to win the release of fellow extremists" could not be corroborated.
The problem is that, when it comes to terrorism, it may not be possible to corroborate all evidence or complete investigations. Al-Qaeda does not wait around for FBI investigations to catch up.
It is likely that neither Bush nor Clinton knew about the 9/11 plot beforehand. As President Bush asserted in a moment of nonpartisan honesty, "Had I known about the attack, I would have acted. Had they known, the previous administration would have acted, too--that is our job." As far as stopping known plots, neither Bush nor Clinton deserves blame, because there is no evidence that plots were known. At the same time, both administrations clearly knew the intentions of Al-Qaeda and yet remained inactive. In this regard, both equally deserve the blame.
Clarke's outlook towards terrorism throughout the past decade was right. As Clarke insisted, when it comes to threats of terrorism, preemption is the only option: we must get them before they get us. Both Republicans and Democrats learned this lesson too late.
The Bush administration, to its credit, was quick to learn this lesson after the attack; preemption has been a central tenet of the Bush doctrine since 9/11. And, judging from the many Democrats rallying around Clarke, perhaps Democrats have finally embraced the doctrine of preemption, too.
Unfortunately, John Kerry has not learned from the lessons of 9/11. If elected, Kerry asserts the War on Terror "will primarily be an intelligence gathering, law enforcement operation." But law enforcement is reactive, not proactive. It seeks to find those who break the law and convict them. Yet, when it comes to terrorism, we cannot wait until the law is broken, nor can we wait until intelligence finds guilt beyond reasonable doubt. When it comes to terrorism, knowledge of the intent to commit terror--even in the absence of concrete information--is sufficient to justify action.
We must remember the lessons of 9/11. In the future, the blame will be on those who do not, lest we forget that preventing terrorism is not just a game.
Dennis Schmelzer is a Columbia College sophomore majoring in political science and economics. Thinking Right runs on alternate Wednesdays.