The goal of the 9/11 panel's investigation is to determine what mistakes led to the nation's susceptibility to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and discover where to lay the blame. Did the Clinton administration neglect the impending threat of al Qaeda, thus allowing the attacks to occur with relative ease, or was the Bush administration simply ill-equipped to manage the evidence of threats given? While this is an important issue to resolve, it doesn't cover the situation entirely, and any results yeilded from these investigations will lack clarity and only explain the partial causes of 9/11.
To fully examine the events leading up to 9/11, two basic questions must be answered: Why and How. The question of why terrorist attacks aimed at the World Trade Center and Pentagon occurred relates to external factors, while the question of how they were executed and not prevented are of an internal nature. As such, the 9/11 panel is only aimed at discovering the internal reasons that the attacks were not prevented.
Based on the information I have encountered, it wouldn't be entirely wrong to blame the internal factors on everyone. We can view with 20/20 hindsight that not enough was done to prevent these attacks, but can we figure out why? The most likely reason the precautions were not adequate is complacency. There was a lack of emphasis on terrorism, especially the potential for attacks on American soil. Not only was the nation all too comfortable in its niche as the world's leader, the notion of impending terrorist attacks was not something readily addressed, as there seemed to be no need to worry about potential danger when we had been safe for so long, and had successfully thwarted several previous attacks.
[i]"In 1999, the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security in the 21st Century accurately warned that "Americans will likely die on American soil, possibly in large numbers," and that the U.S. government was not organized to meet the threat. yet when the commission's final report ws issued in March 2001, The New York Times did not cover it, nor did the White House embrace it."[/i]- Joseph S. Nye, Jr., from "Government's Challenge: Getting Serious About Terrorism"
George Tenet also testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee that Osama bin Laden's global network was the most immediate and serious threat to the U.S. in February of 2001. It's not that we lacked forsight; we lacked the means to protect the nation from terrorist infiltration. Not enough attention was paid to the numerous warnings by government officials and the like that bin Laden was going to attack. The typical response to such warnings were that if it was so likely that al Qaeda was planning attacks agains the US, why hadn't they happened yet?
With this understood, the most important thing to be understood from the 9/11 panel's investigation is not who is to blame for the neglect- no one is exempt from the blame- but how our handling of counter-terrorism has shifted in the aftermath. Naturally, there was the shift from the realm of law enforcement to national security, thus treating terrorism not as a crime with evidence and testimony, but by anticipating actions and dealing with them without the tight constraints of the law. The questions to be addressed in regard to the aftermath of the attacks are whether we are better equipped to deal with and prevent such attacks in the future, and whether President Bush's actions were appropriate in aiming the 'war on terror' at Iraq. We'll see what is decided on these matters; I have a feeling the answers to both will be, sadly no.
"Tragically, a nation that was created by intellectuals and visionaries has now been completely taken over by venal corporate gangsters, delusional Christian fruitcakes and hopelessly shallow Texas shit-kickers." -Tom Robbins
