9-11

by Theron Dash

The issue currently being joined thanks to Richard Clarke and the 9-11 Commission hearings is the Bush administration's culpability for ignoring Clinton administration warnings about al Qaeda's determination to attack, and for diverting attention and resources to conquering Iraq, leaving America vulnerable again to terrorism.

The strength of these charges and the stakes for the Bush administration are clear in the ferocity of the Bush counterattack, using the reflexive strategy of character assassination, the rabid right's answer for everything.

But what should be starting to dawn on people who are hearing for the first time the extent of the Clinton administration's concerns and activities regarding al Qaeda and terrorism---for example, the concentrated attention on possible attacks during the millennium celebrations---is what was going on that prevented the Clinton administration from acting more aggressively.

The answer would seem to be the partisan, ferocious, psychotic and essentially frivolous attempt to impeach President Clinton and remove him from office. Officials who should have been concentrating on protecting the nation were instead obligated to talk to lawyers, search and prepare preposterous volumes of subpoenaed materials, and to testify. Many went into debt, some were threatened with prosecution themselves, and the White House was all but paralyzed. Meanwhile, anything that Clinton attempted to do was derided as trying to change the subject and distract attention from the Whitewater investigations and impeachment.

In a real sense, the culpability of the rabid right and the Republicans in Washington for the deaths on 9-11 began with their attempt to do by cynical misuse of constitutional institutions what they could not do in the election: take power from Clinton and the Democrats. They embroiled the nation for years in this insane exercise. A minor real estate scam (at worst) and a sex scandal. Think of all we've been through since, including Enron.

Then after the impeachment failed, they stole the election of 2000 by suppressing votes in Florida and through their instruments on the Supreme Court, in particular the Justice whose lack of ethics becomes more apparent each day, Antonio Scalia.

After 9-11 they paid much more attention to using that tragic event to consolidate power, further their ideological and political agenda, win elections, and to carry out their plan to conquer Iraq, than they did to addressing either the problem of terrorism or homeland security. Their hands are dripping with the blood let at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the fields of Pennsylvania, and the scorched landscape of Iraq. Whatever bureaucratic, policy and human failures there were in both administrations that contributed---included this much-vaunted lack of imagination---this is their inescapable responsibility.

How the Bushies may be influencing the Democratic VP choice


Now that the basic lines of Bushwhack attacks against John Kerry are becoming clearer, they could very well be influencing the selection of the proposed Democratic vice presidential candidate.

Bushies are going after Kerry on foreign policy as weak on defense, and on domestic issues as a tax and spend liberal, and as a flip flopper on both. So now a strong, mature voice on foreign affairs, proven strength on military issues will add to the ticket. Senator Bob Graham of Florida has done well for himself this week with his strong media presence and direct challenges to the Bushies on 9-11, Iraq and defense.

Another interesting development in the past week or so has been the Republican Senators defending Kerry on defense---John McCain and Chuck Nagel, who are both Vietnam war vets. It's not that either is a possible vp choice---it just underlines that Vietnam service transcends party politics, and can be seen to do so by independent voters. Kerry may be inclined to have another Vietnam vet on the ticket with him, not only for political reasons but because they are people he seems most comfortable with. Former Senator Bob Kerrey is raising his TV profile this week as a principal interrogator on the 9-11 commission. He may be increasing his chances to be named v.p., the controversies over his war record notwithstanding.

The logic of having either Graham or Kerrey, or another strong and mature presence on foreign affairs, such as Joseph Biden of Delaware, is to lead the charge on foreign policy while John Kerry concentrates on the Democrat's perceived political strength of domestic issues---jobs, health care, environment---and an all-embracing vision of his presidency. This scenario would trump the telegenic advantages of youthful candidates and those whose strength is domestic issues---in other words, John Edwards, but also less well known "future of the party" figures like Evan Bayh. Plus, Kerry may have more confidence in the readiness of Graham, Kerrey and Biden to take over as President if necessary.

Graham of course comes from Florida, an important swing state, and a real battleground on many levels. Vetting would have to show how vulnerable he might be on flip-flop and free-spending image issues, for he would have to be at least not a liability where he doesn't have perceived strength.

Richard Gephardt remains in the running, as a mature leader whose strength is jobs, and the Midwest battleground. But without doing any tiresome research, our recollection is that he may have some differences with Kerry on foreign policy. And he doesn't solve what may be a perceptible problem, of split focus. If Kerry can concentrate on domestic issues and overall vision, leaving the trench warfare on foreign policy to the v.p. candidate except when or if big issues arise from events, he can refine his message, and keep a strong focus.

Another, different consideration that might be emerging from state by state polls is the need to make significant progress in Pennsylvania, which is polling as even. Without PA, it's hard to see how Kerry wins. We're not sure selecting a relatively novice governor, Ed Rendell, will help win the state. Knowing Pennsylvanians, they may be more upset by losing another governor (they lost the popular Republican Tom Ridge to Homeland Security) than by the honor of having one on the ticket. Teresa Heinz will probably be more important in PA than Rendell would be.

Polls among Democrats still show John Edwards as the prohibitive favorite, but though he's favored by a wide margin over other possible candidates named, he's about equal with no preference. So it looks like as his image fades from the TV screens, he won't necessarily be missed.

The GOPers could switch campaign tactics and attack Kerry as an elitist "not like us" stuffy easterner. But so far they've chosen to attack Kerry as a leader, which eventually should play to Kerry's strength (on a platform with Bush, he will blow him away in stature), but at least until the convention and the debates, the rationale for a young, touchy feely v.p. like Edwards is lessened.

So this week we'd say the favorite is Bob Graham: from the south, from Florida, good credentials, strong on foreign policy. He at least looks healthy these days---that will certainly be a consideration. But a less than perfect ticker didn't stop Cheney so it can't exactly be raised as an issue.

the bad of days

Before his public testimony to the 9-11 commission this week, Richard Clarke, former White House anti-terrorism advisor to several presidents including G.W. Bush, started a media firestorm with his blunt critique of the Bushies fumbling the war on terrorism and detracting from it with their obsession to invade and occupy Iraq.

The Bushwhackers responded in their usual way, though with more desperation than usual: they attacked Clarke's judgment, veracity, memory, sanity, and of course his motives. Only their calm-voiced communications director was anywhere near effective. The rest were shrill and confused, with Condi Rice looking and sounding like a wounded animal, and some White House flack comparing parts of Clarke's book to the X-Files. At first they tried to deny that any meeting took place between G.W. "Bring me the head of Saddam" Bush and Clarke, in which Bush instructed Clarke to find a connection between Iraq and al Qeda on 9-12. But by the end of the day enough independent corroboration has surfaced that this wasn't tenable any longer.

Clarke's critique is devastating in its details beyond the soundbites, as his testimony will likely reveal. Apart from his credibility (also attested to by independent interviewees), his account is of a piece with the revelations of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and others, including President Clinton: The Bushies were out to invade Iraq from the moment they took over. Though her revelations have been mostly overlooked, former Pentagon officer and staunch conservative Karen Kwaitkowski offers three reasons for this neo-con Rabid Right obsession, two of them having to do with the likelihood that, once sanctions were lifted, Iraq would be making big oil deals with European companies rather than the U.S. companies who finance and employ them, and the other was the one we offered some months ago: because they wanted a U.S. military base in the region, and it was becoming more difficult to keep the one in Saudi Arabia. (She says because of problems with the Saudis, but we wonder whether it wasn't to support the Saudi royal family, who felt vulnerable to internal dissent galvanized by the presence of the American base.)

This was the biggest story in a day of bad news for the Bushies. (For instance, former President Jimmy Carter attacked their Iraq policies with unusual bluntness, and yet another Republican Senator claimed that the evidence doesn't support the White House claim that Senator John Kerry is weak on defense.) But it was an even worse news day for America.

That's because of the Israeli assassination of the founder of the Palestinian Hamas. Israelis were spinning it as the elimination of their equivalent of Osama bin Laden. The Palestinians saw it as the assassination of a revered spiritual and political leader. Much of the world may simply have seen it as a helicopter hovering to fire a missile and blow apart an old man in a wheel chair as he left morning services at a mosque.

The assassination was roundly condemned by the United Nations and individual nations including Japan and Great Britain. But not by the Bush administration. Condi Rice even parroted the Israeli line that Hamas is a terrorist organization, therefore... it goes without saying that according to the Bush doctrine of good v. evil, any act of violence is permitted by those the Bushies designate as Good against that which they call Evil.

This is the outcome of absolutism, and of any violence-including pre-emptive war against a state that might be a threat in the future---justified by that absolutism. Israel can get away with this because the Bush administration actions have made such warfare legitimate. Notwithstanding the terrible violence inflicted on innocent Israelis by suicide bombers and terrorist attacks, which may have been promoted by the man they assassinated, the logic of absolutism doesn't stop at killing the worst. And the logic of violence that this absolutism unleashes makes it nearly impossible for the Bushies to morally condemn this action.

Apart even from the morality, and even from the escalation of violence which breeds more and greater violence, the Israeli action was politically catastrophic. The anger and depth of outrage it unleashed will have consequences for years to come. Palestinians declared that Israel had opened the doors of hell, and there is every reason to believe them. Specific threats were made against the United States for the first time, and they had better be taken seriously. If al Qeda and similar terrorist networks haven't already been deeply involved in Palestinian causes, it is very likely they will be now, and their expertise and resources will be eagerly sought.

At best the Bush administration blew this one by not keeping closer tabs on the Israeli government, even apart from the tacit encouragement and essentially the permission their own policies provide. At worst they were actively complicit. Then again, for all we know, it's all part of the plan to hasten the end of days, so the righteous may be lifted up, as the second coming comes to Jerusalem (maybe in a movie theatre showing "The Passion"), which the Bushies must hope will be before election day.

But assuming that doesn't quite come to pass, we may have just seen the precipitating event of the next deadly terrorist attack on America.