Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
One year ago, like you, I remember exactly where I was on the morning of Sept. 11, and I remember exactly how I felt. Though I grew up in New York City, I didn't know anyone who worked in the World Trade Center. And though there was great tragedy that day, and no one could help being inspired by the human stories and the enormous bravery and sacrifice of the firefighters and rescue workers who rose to the challenge that day, both as a professional who works in a world of death and destruction and as a citizen, I wasn't immobilized by fear or sadness, and I didn't feel overwhelmed by emotions.
Maybe just because of my own cynicism, I'll admit that my first instinct was not to wrap myself up in an American flag. Frankly, I felt angry -- angry with my government, angry with those who make careers of and who are supposed to be in charge of protecting American lives. I felt angry on Sept. 11 and still feel that way because people died because of personal and institutional failures perpetuated by arrogant politicians and career professionals who it seems to me have a history of weak decisions and poor visions and arrogant attitudes and comfortable routines.
Three thousand Americans died not just because of Osama bin Laden but because our national security leaders, in and out of uniform, couldn't see the world clearly, couldn't predict what our enemies would do, made frighteningly bad decisions, and had terrible judgment. They are why people went to work in New York City and the Pentagon that morning without a care in the world. And why wasn't there warning? We are told that the government couldn't have known. The bureaucracies and its leaders insist that the attacks couldn't have been predicted. We are told that the act was so diabolical and genius in its simplicity that it couldn't have been stopped. We are insulted in being told that we should accept for the sake of not playing the blame, for the sake of patriotism, because there is a "war" on, that there was simply a breakdown in procedures at all levels that day. We are asked to excuse those who we entrust with our security that the odds of 19 out of 20 hijackers, of three out of four airliners, succeeding was so great, how could anyone really be held responsible?
More than 30 billion of our tax dollars each year go towards government generated intelligence information. We had, and have, a CIA and an intelligence community that has a fantastic history of failure, that is mostly blind to what is going on in the world, that seems to know nothing and at the same time is so bombarded and overwhelmed with stimuli from its millions of receptors it can hardly sense what is happening, and even if it could, it can't read, it can't see the signs, it can't talk to other agencies. Hell, the FBI didn't even talk to itself. And worst of all, most insulting for us as Americans, is the theme that developed after Sept. 11, that it is our fault: That we, the American people, had grown too soft. It is somehow our fault that we were so naive about our safety. I want my money back, and I want some accountability.
On Sept. 11, a new administration was pursuing a foreign policy that was ABC - Anything but Clinton. Its vision of the future military and national security needs for America was literally in the stars and space and not on earth. On September 10th, our national security leaders were going through Mr. Magoo motions of foreign policy, traveling overseas in five different directions, riding in their limos, reading the newspapers feet up on desks, getting their phantasmagorical top secret briefings. No one was secretly monitoring something going on in some Hollywood-ike vision of government omniscience. Our government failed on Sept. 11, and I was sure a year ago, as I am now, that no one of any consequence will ever lose his or her jobs, and no one of any integrity will ever stand up and take responsibility for the failure.
What did I feel on Sept. 11? Angry. And the American people should be angry. Instead they are cowed by talk of war. They are made to remove their shoes and turn out their belt buckles and leave their nail clippers at home. That is a surrogate for security and it is fighting the last war.
You know the expression, "War is too important to be left to the generals"? These days, it is too important to be left to the national security professionals. Speaking at the West Point commencement this summer, President Bush told the graduating cadets that, like their predecessors before them who had helped to defeat Japan and Germany, like those who "saw the rise of a deadly new challenge -- the challenge of imperial communism" -- like those who fought and died from Korea to Vietnam or during the Cold War, again America was at war. "History has also issued its call to your generation," the president said. "In your last year, America was attacked by a ruthless and resourceful enemy. You graduate from this academy in a time of war, taking your place in an American military that is powerful and is honorable." Is this really a war that is equivalent to World War II or the Cold War? To the naval officers in this room, to their international counterparts, even to the good citizens of the Newport area, I say: I hope you are not so young and gung-ho and wet behind the ears that you accept this characterization. I hope you are old enough to remember the Cold War, and not so old that you forget that there was a time when our national survival was at stake, there was a time when there were enemies out there who could have destroyed our country and our way of life. I hope you remember the tens of thousands who perished in Vietnam and Korea and the hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of other who died in the Second World War. I hope you are alive and unsentimental enough to look honestly at yourselves as American citizens and say that it is insulting to you and your relatives and your fellow citizens to let Osama bin Laden so dazzle and possess our president and our government and our society that he and his war can so disrupt our economy and our way of life. The war against terrorism, if it is a war at all, is not World War II or the Cold War, and it is grasping at empty patriotism to claim that it is.
So, you may ask: Isn't my anger and criticism directed at the wrong party? Aren't I just another leftist, self-hating American? Isn't it easy for me to criticize when I don't have to face the responsibilities and complexity of governing? You know, last Sept. 11, what I knew about Osama bin Laden or the Taliban or Afghanistan for that matter, I could fit into a thimble. But I know my Constitution. I know the responsibility of the government to provide for the common defense. I know the military and the intelligence community inside and out. I'm angry because not only did they fail in their fundamental task, but they use fear and their personal declaration of war and their arrogance about being above it all to avoid and deflect any sort of accountability for their actions.
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