Politicizing 9/11

Paula Zahn in shocked — shocked — at the attempt to make the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks an issue in next year's presidential election.

She's not upset with the Republican National Convention for plans to hold its big bash as close to the anniversary and as close to Ground Zero as they can. And she's not upset with President Bush, who has invoked this tragedy incessantly to raise millions for his campaign and to garner support for everything from tax cuts for the wealthy, to the elimination of civil service protections for federal workers, to more tax cuts for the wealthy.

None of that bothers Paula Zahn or her guest, Joe Klein.

What has them upset is this comment from Gen. Wesley Clark:

There is no way this administration can walk away from its responsibility for 9/11. You can't blame something like this on lower-level intelligence officers, however badly they communicated memos with each other. The buck rests with the commander-in-chief, right on George W. Bush's desk.

Before turning to Zahn and Klein's tag-team response, let's consider a question they don't address: Is what Clark said true?

Well, George W. Bush was president of the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. He was in charge, the Big Desk where the buck stops belonged to him and no one else. It was his watch, and 3,000 Americans got up, went to work, and were killed.

Does this mean Bush is "to blame"? Of course not. Responsibility and blame are two different things. Osama bin Laden is to blame for Sept. 11, not George W. Bush.

But Bush was in charge. This ghastly, unprecedented¹ event took place during his administration. And there's no way this massive failure of national security can be twisted into a badge of honor. The fact that he sees it as one, and that people like Zahn and Klein are eager to credit him for it, is baffling and perverse.

Wesley Clark simply noted what should be an obvious fact: Bush was president. The buck stops with him. This is unacceptable to Klein:

This was such an unimaginable act, that nobody could have predicted it in advance. And I think that Clark has been running his mouth about things like this. … You cannot expect to be elected president of the United States if you're as irresponsible as this. Sorry.

You read that right: talk of leaders taking responsibility is, to Joe Klein, irresponsible.

Zahn, of course, has two guests. Who else do you think is on her show? Who else might be worth talking to on the topic of the failures that led to Sept. 11?

Maybe Kristen Breitweiser² — the 9/11 widow who has for two years been demanding exactly the kind of accountability and responsibility that Clark is talking about?

Of course not. Zahn's other guest is Torri Clarke. Clarke is a former Pentagon spokeswoman who spent the previous two years doing professionally exactly what she and Klein and Zahn are condemning — politicizing 9/11.

"It's not about a blame game," Clarke says, thus proving that she — like Zahn and Bush — is also incapable of grasping the essential moral distinction between blame and responsibility.

Zahn concludes this Carroll-esque segment by saying, "Why don't we go back and take another look at some of the imagery that was so powerful shortly after the attacks of 9/11?"

She then shows a clip — not of the burning towers, not of the heroic firefighters and rescue personnel, not of the walls of photographs of the missing. She shows George W. Bush, a little man behind a big desk where the buck never stops, reading Michael Gerson's words off of a TelePrompTer: "These acts shatter steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve."

Powerful imagery indeed.

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1. I don't use the word "unprecedented" lightly. The only event that compares to 9/11 is Pearl Harbor, which struck a military target and which claimed fewer victims. The similarities between 9/11 and 12/7 are not as illustrative as the differences. Such as:

A. The attack on Pearl Harbor confirmed that Roosevelt's plans and priorities for national security had been right all along. He had argued for years that American isolationism was not an option in a world at war. Pearl Harbor proved him right. Sept. 11 exposed Bush's foreign policy and national security priorities as grossly misguided and irrelevant. He had spent the previous year arguing against peacekeeping and nation-building efforts, putting antiterror concerns far, far below missile defense on his To Do list.

B. Pearl Harbor was rightly seen as a massive failure of our national defense. It was, therefore, thoroughly and objectively investigated with the full cooperation of the White House. This happened because everyone acknowledged that we must learn from our failures if we hope to prevent similar catastrophes in the future. And because they knew the difference between responsibility and blame. The Bush White House, by contrast, has opposed every effort to investigate the massive failure of national security that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001. Whistleblowers are punished, subpoenas are ignored, and the families of victims just get angrier and more frustrated. To this very day, the Bush administration is stonewalling the commission led by Tom Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey. This determined refusal to investigate smells rotten — it stinks of corruption, complicity and an utter rejection of adult responsibility.

C. FDR responded in the months and years following Pearl Harbor with decisive, bold and sustained action — action that reshaped the world for the better. The key word here is "sustained." Bush responded to 9/11 with one bold gesture — the bombing of Afghanistan and the liberation of its largest city. Al-Qaida and its hosts, the Taliban, have been dispersed, but not defeated. The job in Afghanistan is far from finished, yet Bush has removed all but 12,000 U.S. troops from that region. The troops most vital to the work there — Special Forces and language experts — were pulled out of Afghanistan more than a year ago and sent to Iraq to prepare for a war that President Bush has admitted is unrelated to Sept. 11.

2. Here's my advice to Wesley Clark: listen to Kristen Breitweiser, join her campaign and let her campaign work with yours. Let's see if smug talking heads like Joe Klein are so condescendingly dismissive when the word's are coming out of her mouth. Presidential candidates have power and a platform to get noticed, but they carry the taint of ambition. The 9/11 widows have the integrity of a cause that wants nothing more than truth and justice, but they have little in the way of influence or a platform. Seems to me you could both would benefit from working together.