Well, durn! Pardon my surprise -- I mostly agree with you.
I don't mind the term "war," though. It's supposed to imply a dedicated national effort with a common objective. I also disagree that 9-11 could have been prevented with the intel that was available in 2001. With today's massive intel apparatus it could be prevented, but not then. Congress had pulled the rug out from almost all humint, because "spies weren't nice people and they did mean stuff."
There was no way the response to 9-11 could be less than the American shock demanded. It was a "don't just stand there, DO something" situation. The trouble was, nobody really knew what to do. Short of a Stalinistic attack on the hijackers' families, there was no clear course of action like there was after Pearl harbor.
And there really still isn't a clear course of action. While it would be nice if Europe was as motivated as the US to go after terrorists, it is clear that they aren't. The seem to be more than willing to let us carry the load and then criticize whatever efforts we make. So, I don't know that it would be the best thing to do to simply crawl into our shell and protect ourselves without the wholehearted assistance of other countries -- which they weren't and still aren't prepared to give.
I doubt anyone is really pleased with the way things have turned out, but given the decisions that had to be made at the time, it would be hard to say if anything could have been done in a better way. Even if things could/should have been done differently, they weren't; it is pointless now to make those past decisions the center of any criticism. We are where we are, and what counts is to learn from mistakes, not use them as clubs, and to decide where to go from here. |
