I am deeply distressed by the 9-11 hearings that are being held
in Washington.
This congressional hearing seems to be looking for someone to
blame the 9-11 terrorist attacks on. If they can't find legitimate fault with
some individual or agency then it would seem that the President will become
the scapegoat in the end.
I would guess that he already knows that. It happened on his
watch - he will be ultimately responsible.
I find great fault with this reasoning. It is human nature that
people always seek someone or something to blame for any crisis that enters
into their lives. This is the way our society thinks and acts both on a personal
level and on a collective or national level.
The friends and families of 9-11 victims want to know how could
this have happened, and who is to blame for allowing it to take place. They
want answers. Now the Congress wants those same answers. They want to hold
someone accountable.
Unfortunately the real, true answers are not the ones they want
to hear. George W. Bush is not to blame, Bill Clinton is not to blame, the
military is not to blame, the security and intelligence apparatus of the United
States is not to blame. Not one of the above would ever have allowed those
terrible terrorist attacks to take place if there had been any way to stop
them.
People say it was a failure of intelligence, a failure to act
upon clues that were available, a failure of resolve by those in charge. It
pains me to see the smug and condescending attitude of Senator Bob Kerrey
as he questions and at times belittles the members who are testifying before
him. Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you do that? It's so very easy to
see with perfect clarity, years after the fact. It is also easy to string
together events into successive links when you can compress time by looking
backwards at what has already taken place.
It is easier, perhaps to understand what happened when compared
to a sporting event like football. Both teams know what the strategy of the
other team is. You know what their tactics are, you even know who their key
players are. However, knowing all these things, you still can't stop the other
team from scoring. You can't be everywhere at once. You can't have an impenetrable
defense for every possible play. If you fumble the ball in the first quarter
you don't even know the gravity of that mistake until the game is over. But,
when you review the game on Monday everyone knows what went wrong, and you
can surely find someone to blame.
When you are in the middle of the game, on the field and in
the action, it's tough to have perfect clarity and the ability to make the
right decision. Hell, the clock is ticking and the plays are nonstop. You
do the best you can with the information you have at that moment and hope
the other guy hasn't outsmarted you.
I am not making light of the 9-11 attacks. This is not a Tom
Clancy Novel. Sometimes the bad guys win, and there's no way to take it back.
There is no hero in the end to make things right. We got clobbered.
Every seems to be saying our security apparatus should have
done this, or intelligence should have known that. Let's take a look at the
Israelis. They have the best up to the minute intelligence in the world, regarding
their enemies. They certainly don't lack for resolve. They know the attacks
are coming and they even know what the attack will be. And yet it seems, on
a weekly basis, suicide bombers are able to board buses and blow up innocent
civilians. And this is in the face of one of the strongest day to day military
presences of any free nation on earth.
The good thing is that the Israelis do catch a lot of the bombers
and they do foil a lot of attempts while they are still in the planning stages.
Well the truth is, we catch a lot of terrorists also. And we
do stop a lot of attacks before they take place. The problem is that the general
public is not made privy to most of these successes. There are generally three
reasons for this;
#1. We do not want to compromise our sources. You start giving
up your informants, you don't get any informants.
#2. We do not want to reveal the means, the technologies and
the capabilities of our intelligence gathering resources.
#3. We don't want to give the terrorists any more ideas on how
to go around our capabilities.
The down side of all this is that the bad guys still score once
in a while.
Ask the Brits about the IRA. Ask the Spanish about the Basque
Separatists. Ask the Japanese about the Aum Shinri Kyo. Ask the Germans about
Baader-Meinhof.
You have to realize that for every attack, there are hundreds
that never make it to completion. The problem is that there are hundreds if
not thousands of attacks in the planning process at any given point in time.
Some of these will succeed.
The only ones to blame are the terrorists. They are the ones
who are responsible for these terrible crimes - not the U.S. Military, our
agencies, our government, - our elected leaders.
Osama Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and all the divisions and subdivisions
of these militant fundamentalist Muslim groups are the ones to blame.
These terrorists will strike again and the attack will be a
big one. It can come at any time and anywhere on earth. There is no way to
protect everything, everywhere, all the time.
Hell, these jerks could drive a fertilizer bomb into the middle
of a High School homecoming game in Minnesota, or bring a backpack full of
dynamite into a high school basketball game in Indiana. The effect would be
devastating. Who would we try to blame then? What part of the system would
we try to find fault with?
What really bothers me about this apparent inquisition is that
there seems a large sector of the American public looking for someone on our
side to blame for 9-11.
What we need to do is focus on stopping these bastards and supporting
the efforts of those who are risking their lives to keep us safe.
What we can never do is follow the lead of the French and more
recently the Spanish governments. Giving in only fuels their cause.
Focus your blame and your anger where it belongs, on the terrorists
and the means by which they can further their actions.
They don't need to be appeased - they need to be eradicated.
Ernest Emerson - 3/25/04
