That string of obscenities you may have heard was in response to thecommentary on NPR this morning trotting out the line that:
There was nothing Dubya could have done to prevent the attacks on 9/11 because there wouldn't have been public or Congressional support for bombing the hell out of Afghanistan, assassinating any and all members of al Qaeda, or deporting every vaguely swarthy-looking person who was living in the country illegally. And besides, even if we had done all that, the 9/11 plot was too far along to have been stopped by that point, and if Dubya had taken all those steps the country would have blamed the attack on his aggressive anti-terrorism measures.
I'm paraphrasing here, but not as much as you might think. The guy spouting this garbage was Clifford May, who apparently makes a living doing this kind of thing. Anyway, the argument is nuts. It's kind of like arguing that we can't do anything about combating organized crime in the U.S. without blowing Sicily off the map or deporting everyone from Tony Soprano to Chef Boyardee. We all know by now that the FBI and CIA had information in various pockets that weren't acted on for a whole bunch of reasons, but one of them was that anti-terrorism wasn't a priority. Move that up to the top of the list, and all of a sudden everyone's looking and asking for information, bringing in people to talk to them, connecting dots, etc.
Would that have prevented the attacks? Maybe, maybe not...but it would have had some impact. Peddling this notion that the only options available to combat terrorism are war, assassination, and mass deportation only serves to obscure other (possibly better) strategies available and to cover the administration's ass (and it's head up it) for being too complacent to see what was coming.
Posted by Jason at April 26, 2004 11:32 AM