Laxity was the central cause of America’s sloppy security prior
to 9/11. Yet lax liberals, the ones who typically view heightened
security as an attack on civil liberties, are the loudest critics
of Condoleezza Rice and the Bush administration.
Had the Bush administration adopted ramped-up, hardheaded
security policies prior to 9/11, the Richard Ben-Venistes would
have been the first to cry foul. Let’s say George Bush during the
233 days before 9/11 had armed pilots, instructed airline officials
to profile Muslim males, and called for more domestic intelligence
on radical Muslims wandering through the U.S. Would the Democrats
have applauded his security vigilance? No, they would have
denounced him as a fascist and bigot.
Could the Bush administration have prevented 9/11? Perhaps, but
only if it had pursued the very policies the Democrats routinely
dismiss as draconian. The critics of the Bush administration say
they wanted better protection even as they were trying to knock the
shield out of Bush’s hands.
Ben-Veniste and company yesterday demanded an explanation for
the “structural” defects in the U.S. government, as if those
security structures weakened in the course of 233 days of the Bush
administration. They weakened over decades, due largely to liberal
distaste for strong security. Decades of ACLU-style propaganda
against the FBI and CIA had taken their toll. Did any of the
liberals now so puzzled at the lack of communication between CIA
and FBI ever call for beefing up those agencies before? Condoleezza
Rice mentioned “cultural” reasons for inertia in the agencies. A
less polite way of saying that is America’s liberal culture didn’t
mind an ineffectual CIA and FBI.
The 9/11 commission, for all its talk about “causes,” is more
interested in feckless fingerpointing than in critiquing the
liberal culture that softened America up for an attack. Bob Kerrey,
who throws “hell” into his questions as a pledge of his toughness
(“What the hell does that say to Al Qaeda?” etc.), alternates
between attacking the Bush administration for passivity and
attacking it for aggression. Apropos of nothing (related to the
commission’s actual task), he lectured Rice on the Iraqi operation,
saying that “I think the military operations are dangerously off
track. And it’s largely a U.S. Army — 125,000 out of 145,000 —
largely a Christian army in a Muslim nation.” So Kerrey is back to
saying that we are provoking the terrorists (though he wanted a
Christian army in Muslim Afghanistan before 9/11). This is the PC
mindset that paralyzed America’s security agencies before 9/11 and
still paralyzes it, as seen in the continuing opposition to
profiling at airports. Kerrey is displaying the very
anxiety-ridden, skittish attitudes the 9/11 commission is supposed
to undo.
THE ONLY PANELIST WHO seemed aware that political correctness had
made America a sitting duck for Al Qaeda was John Lehman. While
most of the other panelists attitudinized, he got down to brass
tacks. “Were you told that there were numerous young Arab males in
flight training, had taken flight training, were in flight
training?” he asked Rice. She wasn’t.
The questions continued: “Were you told that the U.S. Marshal
program had been changed to drop any U.S. marshals on domestic
flights?” “Were you aware that INS had been lobbying for years to
get the airlines to drop the transit without visa loophole that
enabled terrorists and illegals to simply buy a ticket through the
transit-without-visa-waiver and pay the airlines extra money and
come in?”
“Were you aware that the INS had quietly, internally, halved its
internal security enforcement budget?” “Were you aware that it was
the U.S. government established policy not to question or oppose
the sanctuary policies of New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago,
San Diego for political reasons, which policy in those cities
prohibited the local police from cooperating at all with federal
immigration authorities?” “Were you aware that it was the policy
and I believe remains the policy today to fine airlines if they
have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning
because that’s discriminatory?” “Were you aware of the extensive
activities of the Saudi government in supporting over 300 radical
teaching schools and mosques around the country, including right
here in the United States?”
Rice wasn’t aware of most of these problems . But the Democrats
won’t savage her for that, because they created them.
