PLAYING POLITICS WITH 9/11


I confess to not being as fully on top of the 9/11 Commission hearings as I'd like to be, but most of what I've read has been filtered through the lens of partisan inanity. The basic myths of each side have not really changed in the past two and half years. The GOP myth is that 8 years of the Clinton administrations passive, piecemeal approach to counterrorism opened the door to 9/11, and that when the Bushies came into power, they were able to turn the tide with a proactive, comprehensive approach. The Democratic myth is that the pragmatic Clinton Administration had counterterrorism as a high priority and well in hand until the Bushies came along, and that counterterror dropped from the radar screen because it wasn't accorded a high priority for the ideological Bush team.


It is through these lens that the Bush Administration and its opponents have reacted to Richard Clarke's new book and testiomy. Without a doubt, Clarke's version is the most comprehensive support for the Dem myth so far. Not surprisingly, he has been embraced a courageous whistleblower by Dems and exorciated as a bitter self-promoter by the Bushies. Lost in this mess is the fact that despite all the claims of Richard Clarke or Condeleeza Rice to the contrary, neither myth holds up very well under scrutiny - because of the glaring fact that both adminstrations dropped the ball on terror. Thus, the Bushies have no real answer to Clarke's searing indictment of the failure to act against al Qaeda in the first seven months of the Bush Administration. Any honest assesment of that period shows that China, Iraq and missle defense were clearly greater priorities coming in than counter-terror. The effort to go to Clarke's 2002 spin on behalf of the Bushies when he still worked for them is not a real defense, any more than quoting Dick Cheney would be today. Nor, despite the best spinning efforts of Sandy Berger, Madeleine Albright, can it be said that the Clinton Admiistration placed counterterrorism as its highest priority for national security and foreign policy. It was clear that for most of the Clinton years, prority one was shepherding the Olso agreement forward - which as interpreted by the Clintonites, was clearly inconsistent with a zero-tolerance policy towards terror.


The most important question, in my view that Clarke's testimony and the attention it has focused on the 9/11 Commission hopefully raises is how have the Bushies addressed the various flaws in American counterterrorism policy demonstrated by 9/11? The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have demonstrated a clear break with the passive, reactive approach abroad of the Clintonites, and despite howling by opponents of the Iraq war, on the whole have been a tremendous improvement. But what about the rest of counterrorism? the nuts and bolts of domestic security that were so badly overlooked by both administrations, such as visa tracking, port security, intelligence sharing? In the Iraq-centric debate on the terror issue, none of these things has gotten sufficient scrutiny. It look past time they did, and if the partisan sniping over what wasn't done before 9/11 leads to a greater examination of what has and has not been fixed since then, it will prove beneficial after all.