I think it’s pointless to hold hearings focused on whether the Bush White House could have averted 9/11. The answer is: Of course not. Not because of breakdowns in communication between Intelligence gathering outfits. Not because they didn’t listen to Richard Clarke. Not because, if it was a high priority for Clinton, it automatically became a low priority for Bush.
They couldn’t have averted it because of what Rice said some time ago: “No one could imagine terrorists flying planes into buildings.” That’s not true. No one *in the Bush administration* could imagine it. Writers of fiction have imagined it. Information gatherers imagined it. The administration simply could not because they consistently display lack of imagination. Every job requires a proper tool. In this case, the tool–imagination–simply wasn’t in their toolbox. If a carpenter needs a Philips head screwdriver and all he’s got is flatheads, oh well. You’re screwed.
Nothing in their subsequent behavior has indicated imagination. Congressional hearings into the war in Iraq would simply uncover the same lapse: They didn’t imagine that we would get the reception we did. Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” a year ago because he couldn’t imagine that, a year later, they’d still be shooting at us and that there’d be talk of more, not less, troops going in. I don’t blame him entirely. I couldn’t imagine that a year later they’d be talking about sending in more troops. Then again, I wasn’t asking voters to trust the lives of their young men to me.
Then again, the one time we did see a display of imagination–the fantasy that Saddam had WMDs–that didn’t turn out so hot.
What may make or break John Kerry’s campaign is offering an alternative view to Iraq. If he says, “I hate that we’re in there, but we have no choice but to stay and even escalate force,” then Bush wins. If on the other hand he says, “We wanted to give Iraq self-determination. If that self-determination involves killing each other in civil war, oh well, that’s their choice, but we’re out of there,” I dunno. That might work. Me, I don’t want to see people die in Iraq in civil war, but the fact is that people *are* going to die there in civil war because they’re not a united country, they’re composed of various factions who want to kill each other. The question is, how many of those who are going to die are going to be Americans?
I can’t imagine.
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