Posted on 10/20/2015 8:47:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It is a simple and undeniable fact that the American national-security apparatus failed on September 11, 2001. How do we know? Because al-Qaeda succeeded in carrying out the bloodiest, most devastating attack on American soil in our nation’s history. The military, law enforcement, and intelligence assets tasked with preventing just such an attack failed. The political leaders who ultimately determine our national defense priorities failed. To state this rather obvious fact doesn’t make one a “truther.” It does not in any way imply that George W. Bush or any other American politician was complicit in the attacks or didn’t do the best he could with the information at hand. A leader can care deeply, seek with his whole heart to protect Americans, and still fail. After all, the enemy always gets a vote.
On September 11, George W. Bush failed. But the failure, of course, was not his alone. Two successive administrations failed to treat al-Qaeda as an enemy capable of inflicting catastrophic damage in America’s cities. Two successive administrations initiated and maintained policies that, quite obviously, failed to deter al-Qaeda, detect its specific plans, or locate its individual terrorists. Yes, there were ample warnings that al-Qaeda was a deadly foe — the 1998 embassy bombings and the 2000 near-sinking of the U.S.S. Cole raised alarm bells throughout the national-security establishment — but when the extent of the damage on September 11 surprised even Osama bin Laden, it’s safe to say that American leaders did not comprehend our true peril.
So when Donald Trump disputes Jeb Bush’s characterization that his brother “kept us safe,” he’s simply stating facts. The American civilian death toll to terrorism was higher under George W. Bush than for any American president before or since. George W. Bush no more “kept us safe” than Franklin Roosevelt kept America secure on December 7, 1941, when we suffered arguably our most catastrophic military defeat, losing most of the surface striking power of the U.S. Pacific fleet in one devastating surprise attack.
But it’s one thing for Trump to state facts, it’s another thing entirely for him to claim that he would have prevented the 9/11 attacks. On Fox News Sunday, he declared, “I believe that if I were running things, I doubt those families would have — I doubt that those people would have been in the country.” Oh, really?
This statement is simply stunning. He’s asking Americans to believe that he would have brought a post–September 11 mindset to a nation that had not suffered a catastrophic foreign attack on the mainland since the War of 1812 and that he would have been able to draft, pass through Congress, and fully enforce a comprehensive new approach to immigration by the summer of 2001. He’s asking us to believe that he would have then caught the terrorists who had already been let in the country under the old immigration regime. He’s asking us to believe that his mere presence alone would have caused the State Department bureaucracy to suddenly become competent.
After all, in 2002, National Review obtained 15 of the 19 hijackers’ visa applications and discovered that none of them had been completed properly. None of them should have been approved. In other words, existing systems should have prevented the hijackers’ entry into the United States. They failed because people failed — people living in a pre–September 11 world who never imagined lower Manhattan shrouded in smoke and flames, with thousands of their fellow citizens dying in the ruin and the rubble.
The tragedy isn’t that Donald Trump wasn’t in charge in 2001 — the tragedy is that we still haven’t learned from defeat, that we still don’t adequately track visa overstays, that we still don’t enforce our immigration laws, and that our border is still absurdly porous. The truly damaging critique of George W. Bush — indeed, of both parties — is that not only did our national-security establishment fail to protect us on September 11 but that it still hasn’t learned the right lessons about immigration policy.
After September 11, President Bush did, in fact, keep us safe — in part by pursuing an aggressive military strategy that put our troops front and center in the Middle East, striking terrorists where they live. He also implemented surveillance measures of extraordinary breadth and depth — measures President Obama continued and expanded. But if we pull back from the Middle East, if we roll back our electronic surveillance, and if our border remains laughably insecure, then how will we defend our nation? Through magical thinking, happy thoughts, and festive Ramadan meals at the White House?
Yes, the Bush administration failed on September 11. No, there’s no real evidence a President Trump would have fared any better. And neither of those statements should be the least bit controversial or relevant for the 2016 election. The real issue is far more practical: Which candidate is best equipped to drag the entire national-defense apparatus — including (but not limited to) our immigration system — into the post–September 11, post-ISIS reality? Which candidate is best equipped to learn from the undeniable mistakes of the past and change the unjustifiable foolishness of the present?
Trump’s best argument is that he’s learned from the past, but the past also teaches us that hubris can be just as deadly as incompetence. Let’s change course, but let’s not pretend that any leader can guarantee American security.
— David French is an attorney, a staff writer at National Review, and a veteran of the Iraq War.
NRO is in the same believability status as the Murdoch’s WSJ and its polls.
Between the Clintons, and Obama’s thugs, I’m surprised we still have a country left.
Yeah, my favorite was always American Spectator, but it lost a lot during the “Troopergate” story when it put all its eggs into getting Clinton out with their story, sort of like Rathergate.
Trump is friends with everybody it seems.
Buy his book, The American Dream, on Kindle and read it.
If you read it and still claim that, you have a serious reading or honesty problem.
“Trump’s friend Bill Clinton”
Buy his book, The American Dream, on Kindle and read it.
If you read it and still claim that, you have a serious reading or honesty problem.
The Bushes are a LOT more chummy with the Clintons than Trump will ever be.
NJLiberalDestroyer
Since Oct 18, 2015
Trolling in FR?
As long as there’s one American left, we still have a Country.
And there’s a HELL of a lot more than one left, my brother.
Between the Clintons, and Obama’s thugs, I’m surprised we still have a country left.
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O still has 13 or so months.
Rush is talking about this right now. Trump wrote in one of his books he had published in the year 2000, 19 months BEFORE 9/11 that he thought a major terrorist attack in the U.S. would be “inevitable”. He wrote extensively in his book “The America We Deserve” about this. And that it was time to get down to the hard business of preparing for such an attack.
In other words, Trump, if he had been President then, would have taken steps in this country to prepare for potential terrorist attacks, and thus tighten up our security system. So, Trump is not talking out of his hat when he says things may have been different before 9/11 that may have helped to or even prevented a 9/11 if he had been President.
As illegal immigration is Trump’s big bugaboo, he most likely would have been looking at visa issues and tightening up requirements for foreigners getting visas. Trump was warning about loose security prior to 9/11 and George Bush at that time was doing nothing to tighten up security systems despite warnings from the intelligence community and other security experts about potential terrorist attacks. Once again Trump is right.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/03/30/ted-kennedys-real-legacy-50-years-of-ruinous-immigration-law/
George W Bush has a minor culpability. The Clinton administration that Hillary was an integral and defacto co president has the vast majority of responsibility for 9/11. Along with Ted Kennedy.
Bottom line is the illegals that committed 9/11 would not have been here if they had been deported after their visas ran out. In addition with proper vetting they would have never been given a visa to come to the United States.
Good link to Brietbart article on immigration:
“The Bushes are a LOT more chummy with the Clintons than Trump will ever be.”
Careful don’t screw up the insane Trump Haters with that reality.
If security was Bush’s Top Priority, 9 months was plenty.
No he isn't. He's saying that he wouldn't have been open immigration, open visa, open your training program, open your driver licenses, open you social services, open your flight schools to any swinging mohammed who happened to walk through the door.
Obama is now bringing in boatloads of Islamic terrorist 'immigrants', and the GOP-E is STILL on board (Jeb and Paul Ryan) -- and they STILL don't have this vaunted 'post 9/11' mindset.
I heard everyone from Jason Riley to Brett Baier mush-mouthing this nonsense last night. They're always attacking Trump for what he didn't say.
Right, I’m listening to Rush also and thanks to Governor JOHN ELLIS BUSH of Florida, the hijackers got FL Driver’s Licences and ID cards even though they had OVER STAYED their VISAS.
They were ILLEGAL ALIENS and merited DEPORTATION!
If “Bush failed on 9/11” (an attack that was years in the planning & set up) after just 9 months in office and having kept most of Clinton’s top intelligence picks in place, then Clinton failed even worse after eight years in office, numerous Al Queda attacks on U.S. interests and leaving an intelligence community that had no more than “warnings” and little to no actionable intelligence about what was “warned”.
A mere “warning” is not in and of itself actionable intelligence that identifies who, when, where and how. At most it provides a tracer to the party that left the warning, but little more.
Clinton loaded the bases, Bush let them score.
“thanks to Governor JOHN ELLIS BUSH of Florida, the hijackers got FL Driver’s Licences and ID cards even though they had OVER STAYED their VISAS”
BINGO, right you are.
Ignoring Able Danger, Bojinka files, Ramzi Yousef’s computer found in the Phillippines, and maybe much more.
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