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a speech at Georgetown University, President Bill Clinton blamed,
in part, the United States for the terrorist attacks of September
11. Speaking to a group of about 1,000 students, the former president
said that our nation is "paying a price" for slavery and
for its treatment of the "significant number of native Americans"
who "were dispossessed and killed."
Osama bin Laden
certainly has given no indication that he was concerned about the
American sin of slavery — partially, perhaps, because Islam
provides some justification for the abuse. While Clinton cites the
Christian sins of the crusades as something for which "we are
still paying," bin Laden prefers to focus on more recent events
— the U.S. presence in Saudi Arabia, the sanctions on Iraq,
the existence of Israel.
The first two
of bin Laden's grievances, of course, are just over a decade old;
the last... well, it's been an issue since May, 1948. Bin Laden
has also cited the post-WWI breakup of the Ottoman Empire, but let's
not dwell on that.
We don't need
to turn to such (relatively) ancient history to understand some
of the reasons why September 11 happened. Let's look at some of
the policy failings of the Clinton administration that severely
hampered American efforts to curtail terrorism.
In 1995, the
CIA enacted a policy that forbids the recruitment of "dirty"
agents — foreign agents that have less than spotless human-rights
records. Despite the denials that any recruit was ever turned down,
this policy undoubtedly had a chilling effect on who was recruited
in the first place. One ex-CIA official told Franklin Foer of The
New Republic that under Clinton appointee John Deutsch, the
agency had "become very politically correct."
And just last
year, the National Commission on Terrorism — chaired by former
Reagan counterterrorism head Paul Bremer — issued a report
with the eerily foreboding image of the Twin Towers on its cover.
A bipartisan effort — led by Jon Kyl and Dianne Feinstein —
was made to attach the recommendations of the panel to an intelligence
authorization bill. But Sen. Patrick Leahy feared a threat to "civil
liberties" and torpedoed the effort. After the bombing of the
U.S.S. Cole, Kyl and Feinstein tried yet again. This time,
Leahy was content with emaciating the proposals instead of defeating
them outright. The weakened proposals died as the House realized
"it wasn't worth taking up." President Clinton certainly
could have encouraged Sen. Leahy to drop his opposition, but he
didn't.
In 1996, President
Clinton charged Al Gore with improving airline security. But the
commission he led "focused on civil liberties" and "not
effectiveness," according to the Boston Globe. The commission
concluded that "no profile [of passengers] should contain or
be based on... race, religion, or national origin." The FAA
also decided, in 1999, to seal its passenger screening system from
law-enforcement databases — thus preventing the FBI from notifying
airlines that suspected terrorists were on board.
When bin Laden
fled from the Sudan to Afghanistan in 1996, "some officials,"
according to the Washington Post, "raised the possibility
of shooting down his aircraft." But the plan was never pursued,
in part because "it was inconceivable" that President
Clinton would approve of it.
What President
Clinton did do, of course, is launch a series of cruise-missile
attacks on Afghanistan and the Sudan around the time of his grand-jury
testimony in August of 1998. Put aside any talk of "wagging
the dog." This low-risk, low-damage effort helped bin Laden
in the Muslim world. He looked strong, and we looked weak. We looked
(and, of course, were) averse to casualties. It fit a pattern of
tepid American responses to serious attacks on our interests —
the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center (which the Clinton administration
treated as a criminal matter and not an act of war), Khobar Towers,
embassy bombings. The Muslim world senses weakness and feeds on
it; they tremble only before resolution and strength. As one senior
Defense Department official put it, "I wish we'd recognized
[that we were at war] then and started the campaign then that we've
started now."
Russian President
Putin echoed the same sentiment when he told ABC News that he was
disappointed by the level of cooperation by the Clinton administration
in fighting terrorism: "We certainly were counting on a more
active cooperation in combating international terrorism."
And they're
not alone. Many former Clintonites read recent history, and their
part in it, differently than does their ex-boss. Jamie Gorelick,
former deputy attorney general, told the Boston Globe, "Clearly,
not enough was done." And Nancy Soderberg of the National Security
Council admitted, "In hindsight [the administration's effort]
wasn't enough, and anyone involved in policy would have to admit
that." And, most damning: Joe Klein quotes an unnamed senior
Clinton official, who reported that "Clinton spent less concentrated
attention on national defense than any other president in recent
memory."
Bill Clinton,
however is his same old self — content to pass the buck —
blaming the Founders, the crusaders, and anyone else in sight for
the attacks of September 11. He is entirely unwilling to accept
any responsibility for what occurred on his watch. Before, he has
pardoned the unpardonable; now he has justified the unjustifiable.
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