In the battle of first ladies -- the former one and the current one -- Hillary Clinton won hands down. In a brief Senate speech the other day, she pointed out that she, better than most, knew something about "second-guessers and Monday morning quarterbacks." So she was not attempting "to blame the president," but merely to ask what went wrong before Sept. 11 and what can be done to ensure "that 9/11 never happens again." Laura Bush's response was to call people like her ghouls.
Before I am e-mailed to death, let me quickly stipulate that Mrs. Bush said nothing specifically about Hillary Clinton. The first lady was merely responding to all those who she thought were questioning how her husband's administration handled -- or mishandled -- the hints it got that Osama bin Laden was up to something big. "I think it is very sad that people would play upon the victims' families' emotions," she said.
Cheap shot, Laura.
Now let me stipulate something else. Democrats, both in Congress and elsewhere, did jump with a certain glee on the news that George Bush had been alerted back in August to the possibility of a terrorist attack by bin Laden. But let me also add that much of this criticism was not only warranted, it was healthy. The events of Sept. 11, which is to say the mass murder of about 3,000 Americans, represented a monumental intelligence failure. Neither the administration -- which has been more protective of the CIA and FBI than is warranted -- nor Congress has yet to get to the bottom of this.
Partisan wrangling is nearly always ugly. But it is not half as ugly as the suggestion that criticism is either unpatriotic or, just as bad, exploitative of grief. Consider Vice President Cheney, who characterized the criticism he was hearing as "thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in time of war."
If the uber-patriotic Cheney should, however, look over his shoulder he will find that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is his chief of staff. This is the same Libby who told the New Yorker recently how Sept. 11 happened.
"Let's stack it up," he said. He listed the U.S. retreat from Somalia, the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the discovery of the al Qaeda plot in the Philippines, the attempt to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush, the 1995 Riyadh bombing, the Khobar Towers bombing, the bombing of two embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole and the foiled Millennium attack.
"Did we respond in a way which discouraged people from supporting terrorist activities . . .?" he asked. He provided his own answer. The Clinton administration had acted in a way that made it "easier for someone like Osama bin Laden to rise up and say credibly, 'The Americans don't have the stomach to defend themselves. . . . They are morally weak.' "
So, you see, it is all right to blame the Clinton administration for what happened, but not the administration that happened to be in office on Sept. 11. And it is for some reason unpatriotic and in the worst taste to suggest that the Bush administration was not paying attention to the terrorist threat.
Let's stack it up. Sandy Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, told Condoleezza Rice that terrorism should be her No. 1 concern. At the Pentagon, Bill Cohen said the same thing to Donald Rumsfeld. Clinton had already authorized the assassination of bin Laden. Yet, under Bush, hints that an attack was being prepared by al Qaeda were ignored. The FBI wasn't talking to the CIA or, for that matter, to itself. The FAA and the INS were doing their own things. The whole government was chirping warnings like birds on a power line, and yet no one could make out the message.
Do I blame Bush? No. Not on the basis of what so far has come out. But do I think that all of this has to be looked into? Absolutely. This administration has not hesitated to suggest that Bill Clinton made the United States soft so that it got sucker-punched by bin Laden. Now, for obvious reasons, it thinks it's either downright unpatriotic or in the worst possible taste merely to ask what in the world was everyone doing when a bunch of terrorists were attending flight school.
Laura Bush misspoke. Hillary Clinton did not. We don't need a scapegoat. We need answers.
