"How Bush Caused 9/11"

Another very sensible article by Orson Scott Card at The Ornery American, Apr. 11:

For the past two years, I could have sworn it was a bunch of fanatical Muslims under the leadership of Osama Bin Laden that hijacked four planes and crashed three of them into American buildings.

But now I learn that these events were actually caused by George W. Bush. I know this because I've heard noble patriots like Richard Clarke come forward and blame him for it.

It's time for a few doses of reality....

When George W. Bush and his national security team took office, they immediately began to make preparations to eliminate the threat of terrorism, instead of just slapping bandaids on the wounds.

They recognized that Saddam posed a continual threat, to his neighbors and to his own people. Something would have to be done about Iraq — they were firing on or targeting our planes several times a week, and thanks to greedy "allies" like France and Germany and "friends" like Russia, the so-called sanctions were giving Saddam plenty of money to keep his hideous regime alive.

Likewise, they knew that the Taliban in Afghanistan was harboring Al Qaeda; that Pakistan was also helping the Al-Qaeda cause; that Iran and Syria were actively funding and training anti-Western and anti-Israeli terrorists and sheltering them from international police efforts; and that other nations like Sudan, Libya, and Yemen were playing footsie with the terrorists and getting away with everything they thought they could.

The trouble was, war is not just a military action, it's a political one as well. There was no way, prior to 9/11, that the Bush administration could have got Congressional support for a preemptive attack on Afghanistan.

And Iraq always required exactly the solution that we have been imposing for the past year. This is why President Bush's father did not take out Saddam when he had the chance back in 1991: without Saddam's repressive regime, every would-be dictator in Iraq would have made his play for the top spot then, just as they're doing now.

So we couldn't get rid of Saddam until we had the national will to stick with the job until a strong government with popular support could fill the power vacuum.

It is not a "failure" of our policy that Iraq is suffering from attempted rebellions — the best hope for Iraq's future is for these warlords to make their play while our troops are still there to slap them down and clean them out.

Likewise, it's not a "failure" of our policy that now, absent the Taliban, opium production in Afghanistan is twenty times higher than it was under the Taliban. That sort of thing always happens in times of uncertainty and transition.

The question is never between a choice that is all good and a choice that is all bad. Every good choice has bad consequences, too, and every bad choice was made because it seemed to offer benefits.

Even though the Bush administration understood that the only way to eliminate terrorism was to transform the governments that sponsored it, they could not take action until they could marshal the political will.

In other words, the only way of preventing something like 9/11 was not possible, politically, until after something like 9/11 had galvanized the public into supporting drastic action....

RTWT.

The question is never between a choice that is all good and a choice that is all bad. Every good choice has bad consequences, too, and every bad choice was made because it seemed to offer benefits. Good heavens, Faithful Reader: what kind of world do we live in when it is actually necessary to come out and say something like that? And it is necessary. It really is.

See also "Humpty Dumpty Logic" and "The Campaign of Hate and Fear".

(Thanks, Charles.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Thu. 04/22/04 06:51:24 AM
Categorized as Political.