THIS PAST weekend marked the third anniversary of Sept. 11. While time has mitigated our pain and grief, nothing will ever diminish our memories of that day of infamy. This was certainly true of the crowd flowing out of the University's Miller Center for Public Affairs last Friday, where Executive Director of the Miller Center Philip Zelikow discussed "The Road to 9/11."
Three years ago, we made a vow to "never forget" the worst terrorist attacks to ever strike American soil. Three years later, we should remember the outpouring of what was not even bipartisan, but nonpartisan unity that filled our country in the immediate aftermath. Zelikow's balanced discussion of his experience as executive director of the 9/11 Commission should serve as a reminder against the partisan sniping that has erupted ever since.
With a country that is still as deeply divided as it was in 2000, perhaps it was inevitable that both parties would useSept. 11 as a political football. Of course, just as the Civil War dominated the 1864 election, and World War II determined the 1944 race, the war on terror should be at the top of everyone's agenda this year. But the Monday-morning quarterbacking between many Democrats and Republicans about which side was to blame misses the point.
"Hindsight can be enormously dangerous," Zelikow contended. "It is so easy to lapse into the easy 'gotchas' and easy omniscience" that we are blinded of what did not happen, he said. While Bill Clinton failed to mount an effective response against al Qaeda after the 1998 U.S. embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, George W. Bush also failed before Sept. 11 to reverse Clinton's policy of inaction.
Recognizing the problem is more important than deciding whom to blame, especially when it is unclear if either party could have done a better job preventing the attacks. "We were a country and a government that was at war and did not know it," Zelikow said of the pre-Sept. 11 era.
The CIA had prepared detailed National Intelligence Estimates and guarded against surprise attacks from every country that could threaten the United States. At the same time, it never even considered that non-state actors like al Qaeda could have equal, if not greater, capabilities. Zelikow also faulted the lack of coordination between the disparate intelligence operations and the CIA director's impotence.
As Zelikow's lecture was a retrospective review, he did not address the prospective proposals in the 9/11 Commission's report, although he promised to do so in a future speech on "The Road From 9/11." In the meantime, we must continue to maintain a nonpartisan approach in how we evaluate and respond to a threat that, as President Bush conceded recently, may last throughout our lifetime. The danger is simply too great to let petty political squabbling cloud our judgment.
Do we vote for a candidate like John Kerry, who advocates rubber-stamping all of the Commission's recommendations, or should Congress and the president deliberate on the matter to make sure that we get things right? It's not a partisan question -- it's a serious one. After all, Washington is a town where once the cat is out of the bag, it is enormously hard to herd it back, even if it turns out it can't catch mice.
On the other hand, terrorists do not merely pose an imminent threat. Since the spate of devastating attacks around the world over the past decade, terrorists have been waging outright warfare. Every second the government delays fixing the grave problems the Commission identified American lives remain undefended.
For the record, Zelikow believes that reorganizing the government and intelligence service was a "secondary" recommendation; the most pressing need is to develop a "global strategy" to fight terrorism -- a point that has been all but lost in the media and political discourse.
Over the weekend, University Programs Council showed "Fahrenheit 9/11" as part of its Sept. 11 commemoration. While the film raises legitimate questions about the government's preparedness against terrorism and the administration's response, it does so with an intensely political tinge reflective of its producer, a darling of the Democratic left. Thus, the partisan bickering that broke out came as no surprise, with a panelist from the College Republicans weighing in, who in turn was rebutted by a University Democrat.
As we debate the issues this fall instead of toeing the party lines, let's follow Prof. Zelikow's example and approach it from a nonpartisan basis. Whatever John Kerry or George W. says, the other will try to say the opposite. Presidential politics pressures candidates to draw distinctions. What we must do is decide whether what either side says makes any sense at all. We owe it to ourselves, those who died and those who have given their lives to get it right.
Eric Wang's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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