WHO'S TO BLAME
by
It's all over the news: the 9-11
Committee is going to get to the bottom of things!
They want to know exactly how 19
Arab men get into this country and hijack four airplanes; subsequently burying
3,000 innocent Americans in rubble? They also want to know Who's
to blame (It certainly couldn't be the terrorists!) More importantly, they are
asking "how could this have been prevented?"
As it turns out, on August 6 of
2001, President Bush got a briefing vaguely describing suspicious activity by
some new club called al-Qaeda. Apparently, a tiny
handful of guys got together in mid-2001 and declared jihad. (At this point it would do the reader well to note my
often-present sense of sarcasm.)
Now before we all go out and buy
John Kerry lawn signs, let's review some modern-history which preceded the 2001
attacks, shall we?
In 1993 the twin towers were
bombed killing five Americans; in 1995 a car bomb in Saudi Arabia killed five
more Americans; in 1996, Air Force posts in Saudi Arabia were bombed; and in
October, 2000 the USS Cole was attacked. Anyone care to guess what two things
these attacks all have in common?
Yep, they were all carried out by
radical Muslims, and they were all done under Bill Clinton's watch.
Apparently this little al-Qaeda gang wasn't so new! In fact, they'd been kicking us
squarely in the pants for over eight years by the time 9-11 happened.
So how did they go un-noticed?
Well they didn't of course. They
simply went un-answered.
It reminds me of something Mr.
Harter, my junior-high basketball coach, told our team after a small squabble
at an away game:
If someone shoves you - step back and brush it off. If he shoves
you again, you swing at him until he's down on the ground, because he's not
going to settle for shoving you the third time.
Those are wise words, and they'll
help save your dignity, if not a few of your teeth.
Unfortunately, President Clinton
didn't share that belief.
We got shoved hard in '93, and we
got shoved again in '95 and '96. In October 2000, we got a black eye. By the
time September 2001 came around, we were just getting over some old bruises,
while the bully had only gotten stronger - emboldened by his prior successful
attacks.
Just like Mr. Harter said: he
didn't settle for a shove.
But al-Qaeda
- the bully - made one mistake. This country didn't have a wimp leading it
anymore. President Bush swung back and beat large portions of al-Qaeda into the ground, scattering the rest of it around
caves and into hillsides.
The job is not done, but it is
infinitely closer to completion than at any point during the
So yeah, let the 9-11 Committee
investigate.
If they're fair and objective,
they'll conclude that Presidential neglect did contribute to the events of
September 11.
Eight years of it in fact.
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