Sowell: 9-11 commission
collecting ammunition for Election Day
Thomas Sowell
SYNDICATED
COLUMNIST
The
so-called 9-11 commission is supposedly trying to find out
what happened, or failed to happen, that allowed the terrorist
attack of 9-11 to succeed. But there is a big difference
between trying to unearth facts about Sept. 11, 2001, and
trying to collect political ammunition for Nov. 2, 2004 --
Election Day.
It has become painfully
obvious from some commission members' grandstanding,
especially during their questioning of national security
adviser Condoleezza Rice, that they are more interested in
scoring political points during an election year than in
finding out what happened before the terrorist attacks in
2001.
Many of what were presented to
Rice as questions were really political speeches -- and the
fact that the questioners tried to keep her from replying to
their insinuations showed how little interest they had in
finding out facts.
After all,
Condoleezza Rice had already testified for hours before this
same commission in private, so calling her back to testify
again before television cameras was pure politics.
The underlying assumption that an
unprecedented surprise attack could succeed only if there was
an intelligence failure is one of the signs of the lack of
realism in our times. During World War II, the American
government knew that the Japanese were likely to attack us
somewhere, somehow, during the last months of 1941 -- but that
was wholly different from knowing that they were going to bomb
Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7.
To some today,
the fact that the Bush administration had warnings that
al-Qaida was up to something should have told them that
terrorists were going to fly planes into the World Trade
Center on Sept. 11.
We already know
from Osama bin Laden himself that not even all the terrorists
on the hijacked planes that flew into the World Trade Center
knew that this was what those in the cockpit were going to do.
If hijackers on board the planes didn't know, how could anyone
else know?
The same people who have
been criticizing our Homeland Security's generalized warnings
and alerts seem to think that generalized information before
Sept. 11 should have let the administration know what
specifically the terrorists were going to do and when and how
they were going to do it.
Commission
member and former Sen. Bob Kerrey argued that President Bush
had enough information on the terrorist networks before Sept.
11 to ask Congress for a declaration of war on them.
Put aside the fact that this commission
is supposed to be finding out what actually happened, not
drawing up plays like Monday morning quarterbacks. Can you
imagine what would have happened if President Bush had done
what Bob Kerrey suggested?
Suppose the
president had somehow managed to get the closely divided
Congress to issue a declaration of war against terrorist
networks prior to 9-11 and then 9-11 happened. You know and I
know that the president's declaration of war would have been
blamed for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.
Loud cries would be ringing
out across the land that this would never have happened except
for President Bush's declaration of war. You can just hear the
words and the music.
All this political
grandstanding is taking place in the shadow of the greatest
danger our nation has ever faced. North Korea is not only
rebuilding its nuclear capacity, it is a threat to sell
nuclear weapons to terrorist organizations, including those
who planned the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon.
Make no mistake about it. We
could wake up some morning and find American cities in
smoldering radioactive ruins.
Against
this background, partisan political grandstanding is obscene.
It is as if officers on the Titanic were spending their time
arguing among themselves about who should have seen the
iceberg, instead of getting people into lifeboats.
We already know that our enemies are
following American political bickering. Sen. John Kerry's
political statements are being reported extensively in North
Korea's government-controlled press. The North Korean regime
is no doubt among the foreign supporters who want him to win
this year's election.
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Creators Syndicate Inc.
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