Redstate

By Ben Domenech Posted in War — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

It's hard to describe my initial reaction to the 9-11 Report as anything but frustration and anger. And that's just the first few chapters.

After reading some of the reactions from around the sphere, it's clear that the report really is a Mirror of Erised in pdf form - most people don't see the truth, but what their hearts desire (If your name is Michael Moore, and you desire to blame a neofascist Texas Cowboy pal of the Saudis, you already see goose-stepping oil-loving BusHitler everywhere). But a more balanced view actually shows that the conventional wisdom holds up: the Commission finds the greatest fault not with the big-name leaders, but with the agencies and bureaucrats who were ill-prepared and lax in their response.

Tacitus will have a comprehensive look at the first quarter of the report later today. But in the meantime, here are a few thoughts on my part.

1.

Anyone who has a conservative attitude towards the bureaucracy - namely, that every bureaucratic institution is inevitably bent on consolidating power and funding, and then misusing it - will have their blood curdle while reading this report. You can't help it. The idiocy is just too constant, and the lack of responsibility is too overwhelming. Lionel Trilling had something to say about this:

And when we approach liberalism in a critical spirit, we shall fail in critical completeness if we do not take into account the value and necessity of its organizational impulse. But at the same time we must understand that organization means delegation, and agencies, and bureaus, and technicians, and that the ideas that can survive delegation, that can be passed on to agencies and bureaus and technicians, incline to be ideas of a certain kind and a certain simplicity. They give up something of their largeness and modulation and complexity in order to survive.

2.

Of course this report was written by a vast assortment of staffers and lawyers. You can tell, in many portions, who wrote what. Several staffers buy the very politically correct notion that the Islamic world is mostly peaceful, which would obviously be news to Israel. And on many occasions, the report largely misses the forest for the trees.

There is an exception, however. In Chapter 12, the report speaks in unequivocal language about the broader threat we face, and basically get it right:

As we mentioned in chapter 2, Usama Bin Ladin and other Islamist terrorist leaders draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within one stream of Islam (a minority tradition), from at least Ibn Taimiyyah, through the founders of Wahhabism, through the Muslim Brotherhood, to Sayyid Qutb. That stream is motivated by religion and does not distinguish politics from religion, thus distorting both. It is further fed by grievances stressed by Bin Ladin and widely felt throughout the Muslim world—against the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, policies perceived as anti-Arab and anti-Muslim, and support of Israel. Bin Ladin and Islamist terrorists mean exactly what they say: to them America is the font of all evil, the “head of the snake,” and it must be converted or destroyed.

It is not a position with which Americans can bargain or negotiate. With it there is no common ground—not even respect for life—on which to begin a dialogue. It can only be destroyed or utterly isolated.

...

Our enemy is twofold: al Qaeda, a stateless network of terrorists that struck us on 9/11; and a radical ideological movement in the Islamic world, inspired in part by al Qaeda, which has spawned terrorist groups and violence across the globe.The first enemy is weakened, but continues to pose a grave threat. The second enemy is gathering, and will menace Americans and American interests long after Usama Bin Ladin and his cohorts are killed or captured.Thus our strategy must match our means to two ends: dismantling the al Qaeda network and prevailing in the longer term over the ideology that gives rise to Islamist terrorism.

3.

Michael Moore can't be happy with this thing - it undercuts his position almost as much as Dave Kopel's 56 Deceits. Remember how Moore claimed that he shouldn't be indicted by a preliminary report? Well, the final report devastates at least two of his chief straw men:

-Pages 329-330 on the Saudi flight conspiracy, with comprehensive footnotes: "We found no evidence that anyone at the WH above the level of Richard Clarke participated in a decision on the departure of Saudi nationals... The FBI interviewed all persons of interest on these flights prior to their departure... Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights."

-On Page 111, the Afghan pipeline turns out to be 1998 another failed Clinton-era diplomatic initiative: "While there was probably never much chance of the pipeline actually being built, the Afghan desk [of the State Department] hoped that the prospect of shared pipeline profits might lure faction leaders to a conference table."

4.

Jamie Gorelick and other friends of the commission are given a complete pass on the inaccuracy and negative ramifications of their pre-9/11 recommendations. But that's not surprising. What is surprising is footnote #11 on page 500 concerning an NSC memo from Richard Clarke to Sandy Berger: "In the margin next to Clarke's suggestion to attack al Qaeda facilities in the week before January 1, 2000, Berger wrote 'no.'"

5.

This is not an easy read, by any means. The recounting of what happened on American Flight 11 is particularly moving. We can debate the fundamental recommendations of the commission at length - I would take the Bob Kerrey position that it's going to be difficult to remove power from some very powerful agencies and further reorganize - but I feel this report is certainly much better than I expected. Clearly, the staff is more responsible than the group of failed politicians who make up the panel.