L'éditorial du Monde
The American Inquest
LE MONDE | 23.07.04 | 12h42
It is to the credit of democracies, in this case of the American democracy, to recognize their errors and insufficiencies. The committee of inquiry- bipartisan- on september 11th 2001, which has submitted its report Thursday, the 22nd, after 19 months of work, is the best example. Objective, it discerns blame, and little satisfactory, in the administrations of Clinton and Bush, and recognizes, in the words of its chairman, that "the state failed to protect the American people". Lucid and farseeing, it furnishes guidelines for avoiding the repeat of such dramas.
One can dream of a day, in France, of commissions truly independent and entitled to demand all the documents and testimony pertinent to being able to discharge an examination of grave events from our history. But the powers- that - be have often more to lose than gain.
It is, in fact, under multiple pressures that President George Bush resigned himself to the creation of this commission, which submitted its report amidst an electoral campaign. No doubt each candidate will seek to draw maximum advantages. In particular, the Democrat John Kerry can make the argument that the Clinton Administration had a clearer vision of the risks posed by Al Qaeda, and that, contrary to the affirmations Mr. Bush, Saddam Hussein is exonerated of all ties to Ossama bin Laden.
But the most important thing is not that. The five Republican and five Democratic members f the commission of inquiry prefered to use the past to better foresee the future of the fight against Islamist terrorism--- they insist on the latter term--- rather than on settling accounts.
On this plan, the commission insists on the fact that Washington used the methods of the Cold War to fight against a peril of a wholly new type. And it launches a debate on the structure and methods needed to fight against the diffuse menace.
It is all the more pressing that the dysfunctions in the heart of the the American security apparatus erupt in rival agencies, and in which the Pentagon played the lion's share, apparently the most serious for half century, since the dawn of the Cold War. It is the very function of a democratic society which is at stake, with the delicate but fundamental equilibrium between liberty and constraint which can, and has recently produced, incitement to grave lapses.
It remains to know when and how these recommendation will be put into practice.And if, as the chairman of the commission exhorted,"Republicans and Democrats will unite for this cause: to make our country more secure". In any case, American officials have had their responsibilities placed before them. They can no longer say that they didn't know, or hide behind ideological responses. They should, to return to the terms of the report, prove their capacity for "imagination, policy, competance, and management."
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