Never Forgetting 9/11 Means Learning Lessons 

The 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks has passed, marked by solemn remembrances and harrowing footage. Fond memories of President George W. Bush lifting America’s spirits atop the World Trade Center rubble through a bullhorn and with a World Series first pitch strike at Yankee Stadium leavened the commemoration’s sadness. The words “never forget” rang throughout the day. 

But we have forgotten the main strategic blunder by the Bush administration that left America vulnerable to a major terrorist attack. We have forgotten it because we never had much of an opportunity to remember it.  

For a few weeks in the spring of 2002, the public was stunned by the news that President Bush received a memo one month and five days before the attack titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.” The New York Post ran the sensationalist headline “Bush Knew” on its cover.  

But the public’s interest in the White House’s mishandling of counterterrorism before 9/11 quickly faded after Bush, hoping to move past the controversy, proposed the creation of a Department of Homeland Security to better prevent future terrorist attacks. This was a flip-flop, as Bush had publicly opposed the Democratic idea on the grounds it was unnecessary bureaucracy. His initial opposition was soon forgotten; in the November 2002 midterms, Republicans would soon attack Democrats who demanded labor protections for the new department’s workforce as soft on terrorism. 

Bush’s dismissive response to the briefer who provided the memo—“All right. You’ve covered your ass now”—was indicative of a deeper strategic failure: His administration did not believe counterterrorism was as important as national missile defense. In fact, during the 48 hours before Al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Bush administration was amid a coordinated campaign to convince the public and Congress that the federal government already spends enough on counterterrorism and not enough on national missile defense.  

The Bush administration first embarked on its wayward path on February 8, 2001, when it previewed for The New York Times plans for a comprehensive national security review, including a “commitment to building a defensive missile shield” which would necessitate withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Treaty with Russia. The president made this objective plain in a May 1 address: “We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today’s world. To do so, we must move beyond the constraints of the 30-year-old ABM Treaty.” 

The following week, Senator Fred Dalton Thompson, a Tennessee Republican and a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence, penned an op-ed in support of national missile defense that pushed back on Democratic critics:  

Opponents of NMD also cite the threat posed by “suitcase bombs” and other means as the ones requiring greater emphasis. We all agree that the United States should seek to counter the threat posed by terrorists armed with a weapon of mass destruction. This is why we spend more than $11 billion a year to deal with the threat of terrorist attacks. At the same time, though, the $2 billion we spend annually on missile defense is wholly inadequate for addressing the rapidly growing threat of a missile attack. 

The $11 billion talking point would become a favorite of the Bush administration, implying that a greater emphasis on counterterrorism was unnecessary because we already spent plenty on it, unlike missile defenses. 

By August, Democrats were sounding the alarm that the Bush administration’s priorities were backward. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat, in a foreign policy address, warned: 

The chief threat to America is not from big, lumbering ICBMs, launched with a clear return address. The chief threats today come from biological and chemical weapons and bombs that could be smuggled in a cargo container, bus, or backpack. They come from attacks to our economic infrastructure — the computer systems, communications networks and power grids on which America is dependent. They come from terrorists who do not have the infrastructure to launch ICBMs, and who leave no return address. National Missile Defense is the most expensive possible response to the least likely threat we face. 

Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat, echoed that argument on CNN: 

The issue is whether or not the unilateral ripping up a treaty which provides for some arms reductions will make us more secure or less secure. And if we unilaterally deploy that system, we could very well be at a greater danger. The greatest threat to us [is] the terrorist who could use a truck, who could use a ship, who could use a suitcase against us. That system does nothing for that. 

Then on Sunday, September 9, the debate escalated as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld took direct aim at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair, a guy named Joe Biden.  

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, the Delaware Democrat said: 

Missile defense would protect us from virtually nothing. It will not protect us from cruise missiles. It will not protect us from something being smuggled in. It will not protect us from an atom bomb in the rusty hull of a ship coming into a harbor. It will not protect us from anthrax … all of which the Defense Department says are much more likely, much more likely threats than somebody sending an ICBM with a return address on it, saying, we just struck you, knowing that’ll result in immediate annihilation. 

Rumsfeld shot back on CNN, leaning on the $11 billion talking point: 

Senator Biden is against missile defense. One might ask him, why did they have those metal detectors at the Senate Office Building? They don’t protect you from a truck bomb. They don’t protect you from a cruise missile, but why do you have them? Well, you have them because you’ve learned that there are a spectrum of threats that can damage the American people and damage our country. And what you need to do is try to deal with as many as you can. That’s why the United States spends so much money on the things he’s talking about on: terrorists. We spend $11 billion trying to deal with terrorism and force protection. 

The following day, Biden kept the argument going in an address to the National Press Club:

…even the Joint Chiefs says that a strategic nuclear attack is less likely than a regional conflict, a major theater war, terrorist attacks at home or abroad, or any number of other real issues. We’ll have diverted all that money to address the least likely threat, while the real threat comes to this country in the hold of a ship, the belly of a plane, or smuggled into a city in the middle of the night in a vial, in a backpack…  

Bush’s National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, was to further engage the debate in a September 11 address to the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Her prepared remarks extended the argument that counterterrorism work was already well funded, while we lacked investment in missile defenses. “We need to worry about the suitcase bomb, the car bomb and the vial of sarin released in the subway,” Rice was going to say, “[But] why put deadbolt locks on your doors and stock up on cans of mace and then decide to leave your windows open?” Upon discovering the remarks in 2004, The Washington Post reported, “Rice intended to point out that the United States had spent $11 billion on counterterrorism, about twice as much as it spent on missile defense, during the previous year, although the speech did not point out that that was when President Bill Clinton was still in office.” 

Rice never delivered the speech. Instead, she spent part of September 11 in a bunker.  

The terrorist attack masterminded by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network traumatized the nation. It led to a more aggressive counterterrorist surveillance operation, which—while not beginning on sound legal ground—has remained in place beyond the Bush administration with Congressional approval and has been proven effective. And, as noted above, Bush did create the Department of Homeland Security, but this is an agency that has largely lost the plot and, under Donald Trump, became grossly sidetracked with his mass deportation agenda. 

Otherwise, the 9/11 attacks did not prompt much rethinking of national security priorities from the Bush administration. The Bush administration launched a war on Al Qaeda’s home base of Afghanistan, but refrained from pursuing bin Laden when he fled to Pakistan. As noted in the recent Washington Monthly review of Peter Bergen’s All the Presidents’ Wars: Twenty-Five Years of America’s War on Terror, Rumsfeld told Bush administration officials soon after 9/11, “Don’t over-elevate the importance of Al Qaeda” and “there just aren’t enough targets in Afghanistan.”  

However, Bush had eyed Iraq for attack from the beginning of his administration, directing Rumsfeld to review military options. In contrast, Secretary of State Colin Powell reviewed options for sanctions at his first National Security Council meeting in late January. Six months later, Rumsfeld distributed a memo to Rice, Powell, and Vice President Dick Cheney, warning that “within a few years the U.S. will undoubtedly have to confront a Saddam [Hussein] armed with nuclear weapons” since “sanctions don’t work over extended periods” and suggested exploring whether “our moderate Arab friends … are willing to engage in a more robust policy.” Hours after the 9/11 attack, Rumsfeld instructed his aides to develop attack plans for Iraq, which was convenient since two weeks later Bush privately directed Rumsfeld, “I want you to develop a plan to invade Iraq.”  

That plan was executed, disastrously. The Bush administration’s claims that Iraq was behind 9/11 and possessed weapons of mass destruction were proven false after dismissing intelligence and inspection reports saying otherwise, laying waste to American credibility. Saddam Hussein was toppled, but Al Qaeda remnants poured in and, following Barack Obama’s withdrawal of troops, established a caliphate in part of the country for several years. The resulting Iraqi government was democratic yet sectarian, with Shia Muslim factions that are close to Iran’s theocratic authoritarian regime.  

Bush also stuck with his missile defense plans, unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty three months after 9/11. While not as visible a failure as the Iraq war, it is nevertheless a failure. After spending $280 billion, we have a national missile defense system with barely more than a 50 percent success rate in tests. Meanwhile, freed from the treaty, Russia has expanded its nuclear arsenal and sparked an arms race including China.  

Trump’s response is to pursue another fanciful missile defense plan, “Golden Dome,” estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years. A recent Brookings Institution analysis concludes, “such a massive system would not only verge on unaffordable; it could cause an arms race without providing the actual protection it promises.” Furthermore, “the laws of physics still dramatically challenge and constrain what a missile defense system might realistically achieve.”  

And with striking similarities to Bush’s ill-considered, strategically counterproductive war with Iraq, Trump barreled into war with Iran over fears of weapons of mass destruction, shunning diplomatic opportunities for containment involving aggressive inspections, and is now locked in a stalemate disrupting the global economy and weakening American influence.  

In other words, we’ve learned nothing because we forgot.  

The post Never Forgetting 9/11 Means Learning Lessons  appeared first on Washington Monthly.