Democracy's Revenge
washingtonpost.com
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Columnist
The Washington Post
Friday, March 26, 2004
Richard A. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism expert now best known for his new book, made the Bush administration look bad this week. He did so not by making new accusations but by offering a sentiment President Bush would have a lot of trouble expressing: I'm sorry.
"Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you," Clarke said on Wednesday in his testimony before the bipartisan commission investigating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out -- for your understanding and for your forgiveness."
It is now obvious why the Bush administration fought so hard in 2002 to prevent this commission from being created. Ever since Sept. 11, the administration has run a dazzlingly successful campaign to keep the nation's conversation about terrorism focused on how tough Bush is on the bad guys -- and, by implication, how weak his political adversaries would be.
The commission is encouraging the country to consider questions the administration has never wanted asked. Why did these attacks happen on its watch? Could the government have done more to prevent them? Were intelligence warnings given short shrift? What was the administration thinking about on Sept. 10, 2001, and in the months before? And, yes, might the president not usefully express some remorse over any of these failures?
What's important is that the country is being pushed away from an empty debate over who is "tough" and who is "soft" to a substantive discussion of what our government might practically have done -- and can now do -- to stop terrorism.
It's worth remembering that in the days after Sept. 11, this administration's supporters were ruthless toward anyone who said a word against Bush or even asked a challenging question. At the same time, they orchestrated an intense campaign to blame the attacks on Bill Clinton, who had been out of office for eight months.
Rush Limbaugh, for example, wrote an op-ed article in the Wall Street Journal on Oct. 4, 2001, headlined "Clinton didn't do enough to stop terrorists." The talkmeister wrote: "If we're serious about avoiding past mistakes and improving national security, we can't duck some serious questions about Mr. Clinton's presidency." Note: The questions should be asked not of the sitting president but of Clinton.
Just days after the attacks, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said Clinton restrictions on the CIA's recruitment of informants overseas harmed our intelligence capacities. "The Clinton curbs," Shelby said, "have hindered the work of our human intelligence agents around the world."
In the political blame game, charges are leveled, impressions are created and those who make accusations hope no one will ever go back to examine the basis for their partisan claims.
Well, the commission is going back, and it's learning things. Clarke by no means absolved the Clinton administration of failure. He was tough on Clinton, too, as was the commission's staff report. But at least by Clarke's account -- and the commission will judge it against other accounts -- the Clintonians were rather more engaged in the fight against terror than the Bushies.
"My impression was that fighting terrorism, in general, and fighting al Qaeda, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration -- certainly no higher priority," Clarke said.
The Bush administration, by contrast, "in the first eight months considered terrorism an important issue, but not an urgent issue."
"My view was that this administration, while it listened to me, didn't either believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem," Clarke said.
This does not close the case. It does require the Bush administration to explain itself -- and not simply trash Clarke. It also requires that those who resort to the political expedient of blaming Clinton for all that is wrong in the world be held to the same standards of accountability that they would impose on Bush's critics.
One great thing about democracies is that they make it very hard for secrets to be kept forever, for claims to go unchallenged indefinitely and for those in power to escape responsibility. The Sept. 11 commission is democracy's revenge on those who thought that a horrific event in our nation's history could be used for partisan ends, that serious questions about what happened would get pushed aside -- and that no one would ever have to say "I'm sorry." |
