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.
I bet he wouldn’t have. He’s operating with post 9/11 thinking. His statements in his book tell us he would have entered office acting on that, but there’s zero change it would have chanced what happened on 9/11. Government doesn’t move that fast. A change on his first day in office in January 2001 would not have made any difference in a plot already years in the making. It’s ridiculous to even claim that. If 9/11 happened three years later it would be a valid point. Hell, presidents don’t get their first budget in place until year 2 and any policy they push in congress takes months to years to put in place. It’s government, it moves slow by it’s very nature.
Trump's obviously wiser than you. He has proof of his claim.
He wrote about it in his book, The America We Deserve, published in 2000.
Need to work on those reading skills.;-)
When Trump talks about the fact that if he had been president 9/11 would not have happened.
So, is someone who was capable of running and capable of saving our country but did not and only talked about another attack better or worse than someone who did become president? Just wondering.
Trump talked about running in the past.
“Trump quit the Republican Party for the Reform Party ahead of the 2000 election. If he ran for president that year, he said media mogul Oprah Winfrey would be a great running mate. Trump said he could be president because, as a casino mogul, he understood the bad times and the better times.
During this same election cycle, Trump proposed a huge one-time tax levied on the wealthy that he said would instantly erase the nation’s debt.”
http://mashable.com/2015/06/16/donald-trump-president-fake/#LZVr_f4OVaqf
So. Trump better be preparing now for the attacks that will occur once the Muslims are out of our government.
A half-truth is not the same as the whole truth.
Yes they had approved visas, but "National Review’s Joel Mowbray acquired the visa applications of 15 of the 19 hijackers and exposed how every single one of their applications should have been flatly rejected" - based solely on the answers and/or lack of answers to the questions on their applications. See Link1, Link2, Link3.
For a President who made homeland security his priority in January 2001, it would have taken only simple Presidential directives to restore such immigration policies to the pre-Clinton standards of "enforce the law." GWB was too busy with his priorities of Open-Border (with Vicente Fox) and "No Child Left Behind"(with Ted Kennedy) to be that President.
As Trump stated, Bush did not cause 9/11 but he did nothing in his 9 months in office before 9/11 to make America safer than under Clinton - and Jeb should have been called out on his claim.
“It’s government, it moves slow by it’s very nature.”
Trump as President then, wouldn’t have had to go through Congress to institute changes in hirings/firings, procedures, rules and regulations, immigration, etc. in the intelligence communities that would fall under his presidential purview, and not that of the houses of Congress; so yes, he could have acted fast and with immediacy, contrary to what you are saying.
Yes, 9/11 happened on GW Bush’s watch but given the covered up terrorist activity against the US during Bill Clinton’s time in the WH, (the mystery middle eastern man involved in the OKC bombing, TWA Flight 800, the USS Cole attacked) to be accurate, Bill Clinton is not without fault regarding 9/11.
All this is Trumps attempt to get under Jeb’s skin....and it is working!!!
“I don’t know where you can get a copy of the doc...”
It should be on display at the Smithsonian.
French failed to mention the responsibility of the third Bush leader who could have prevented 9/11: Jeb. Fourteen of the 18 terrorists had Florida drivers licenses or ID cards, all issued by Jeb. Had Jeb not been so tolerant of illegal aliens getting the identification necessary to buy their tickets, the hijackings could not have happened.
“It should be on display at the Smithsonian.”
I hope it is some day when all this is over.
I’ve got a copy of the doc but I don’t know where anyone else can go and get a copy now if they want it.
Rush read the comment from OBL and chortled like a ruptured rooster.
Mister “everyone but me is a low information voter” didn’t have the slightest clue what he was holding in his hand.
It’s simply not possible for terrorist to plan an attack like 9/11 then wait for a news story to pop up so they can achieve their objective of the attack.
To achieve the objective with a terrorist attack like 9/11 the news has to be coordinated and orchestrated for the attack then the correct spin put on the news after the attack.
The terrorist simply don’t have the ability to do it nor does anyone on the right have the ability to do it.
It’s only the left that has the ability to orchestrate the news for weeks and months on end and even with that it’s very few people on the left can do it.
For over 8 years it was clearly the Clintons who were controlling the content of the news.
I remember reading on an Intel site (open) that Osama had boasted at a wedding celebration that there would be an attack in the near future on the US. The base near us was on heightened security much of the summer before Sept 2011. We should have known. I’m sick of the Bushes and their arrogance. The Sr. was OK, but turned me off the way he ended the Gulf War, with the abandonment of the people who were counting on us to finish the job.
More NR BS.
Trump is on the record as being concerned about exactly the situation well before it happened.
Good management therefore could have addressed “people making mistakes” to allow 15 of the 19 terrorists through on visas when they shouldn’t have.
Do you mean the guy W calls his brother?
Remember... you Trump backers tell us he only says things tactically... y’know... for the sake of “good business.” So why would any rumination about Clinton in his book be anything other than fodder for book sales?
Now.. if you deny the call between Trump and Bubba two weeks before Trump launched his candidacy had nothing to do with it, you have a serious naivete problem.
Yep.
Jamie Gorelick... Miss “Wall Of Separation “ right?
Bush not only did nothing about illegal immigration after 9-11, he tried to amnesty all the illegals which led to even more coming here. Bush either learned nothing for 9-11 or did not care.
Here is a scary thought for Halloween...
Bush41-——gave us——BJ Clinton
Bush43-——gave us——Buraq Hussein Obama
Bush,Jeb-——what will he give us——????
Eight more years of indigestion at the very least.
I’ll get back to you when I can think of someone worse than Obama.
There is no half truth. There is one truth. All had approved visas. Bureaucratic incompetence has no bearing on that truth. You are the guy half truthing. 9/11 happened under Bush but the failure was the Intel communities along with the bureaucracy and if you don’t understand that there is nothing I can do to help you.
And for the record it will happen again because they only have to succeed once. Statistics are not our friend here. Trump or no Trump.
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