All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
Oh, and for those who might be wondering, Alfred Joyce Kilmer is a former Philolexian who wrote what may well be the world’s worst poem.
When that first plane came screaming out of the sky and into the World Trade Center tower, we were so unprepared that we didn’t even recognize it as terrorism. Not until the second plane hit did Americans realize that we were under attack. Terrorism was simply not on our collective national radar, which is why the events of 9/11 were so thoroughly bewildering. And because we were all so surprised, it seemed unreasonable to attack the Bush Administration for being surprised too. Who could possibly have expected such a thing?
As the story of 9/11 and its aftermath has unfolded, however, that initial free pass has begun to seem untenable. If America was unprepared for a terrorist attack, that wasn’t because we had no warning. Already the Twin Towers had been bombed in 1993, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000. In 1996, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia were bombed, killing 19 Americans. The U.S. Embassy attacks in 1998 killed 291 people in Nairobi, Kenya, and 10 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The USS Cole, an American warship, was attacked in Aden, Yemen, killing 17. And let’s not forget our homegrown terrorists, either: the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 killed 168 people, many of them children. And I suppose we should throw the Unabomer and the 1996 Atlanta Olympic attack on the pile for good measure. And that’s just the 1990s. As far back as 1979, radical Islamic Iranians held 52 Americans hostage for months, and in 1983 they killed 241 Marines in Lebanon.
Considering this unsavory history, it’s strange that Americans were so surprised by the attacks of September 11. But the American people, perhaps exhausted by the decades-long fear of global annihilation that was the Cold War, seem to have decided to pay no mind to the gathering threat of terrorism. We were so deeply in the dark that when President Clinton, mid-impeachment, fired a couple of cruise missiles at what he hoped would be Osama Bin Laden, he was roundly accused of wagging the dog — of waging a small war to distract people from a domestic crisis. With hindsight, that speculation seems grossly misplaced, and our priorities seem wildly perverse.
Neither Bill Clinton nor pre-9/11 George Bush II showed any inclination to alert the American people to the growing danger of terrorism. This should be counted as a failure, though an understandable one: alarmist rhetoric about impending military doom can be dangerous, and in the absence of a major attack on U.S. soil, such rhetoric would certainly have been attacked as jingoistic twaddle. Less forgivable is the failure of quiet action by diplomats, intelligence services and the military. But at least the Clinton Administration was trying. When Bush II came into office, terrorism became a low priority — as Richard Clarke has noted in recent days.
Republicans have been quick to attack Clarke, of course, and claim that he has no idea what he’s talking about. But According to America Unbound, a new book by Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay:
[Outgoing Deputy National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Donald L. Kerrick], who stayed through the first four months of the Bush administration, said, “candidly speaking, I didn’t detect” a strong focus on terrorism. “That’s not being derogatory. It’s just a fact. I didn’t detect any activity but what Dick Clarke and the CSG [the Counterterrorism Strategy Group he chaired] were doing.” General Hugh Shelton, whose term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff began under Clinton and ended under Bush, concurred. In his view, the Bush administration moved terrorism “farther to the back burner.”
Before 9/11, and even after, there are plausible reasons for deciding that terrorism is not the most pressing threat to U.S. security. But the Bush Administration wants to have it both ways: they want us to believe that they did everything they could because they knew Al Qaeda was a threat, yet they want us to believe that they deserve no blame for 9/11 because they didn’t see it coming.
So which is it?
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Richard Clarke at the 9/11 Commission hearings:
To the loved ones of the victims of 9/11 … To them who are here in the room, to those who are watching on television: your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn’t matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask — once all the facts are out — for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
Thank you, Mr. Clarke.
Which is why it’s heartening to read Senator John McCain’s prescription for dealing with the Holy Terrors of 9/11:
Get on the damn elevator! Fly on the damn plane! Calculate the odds of being harmed by a terrorist! It’s still about as likely as being swept out to sea by a tidal wave. Suck it up, for crying out loud. You’re almost certainly going to be okay. And in the unlikely event you’re not, do you really want to spend your last days cowering behind plastic sheets and duct tape? That’s not a life worth living, is it?
Once again, the Senator’s got it right. For all the talk of the world having turned upside down on 9/11, and for all the future danger we face, it’s worth remembering that in that same year, over 8,000 Americans died in workplace accidents, and over 50,000 from gun wounds, and yet somehow we manage to keep going to work every day, even in armed-to-the-teeth states like Texas and Idaho.
And the Europeans have understood this too. Spain suffered a terrible blow on March 11, but they’ve been through so much worse, and so has the rest of Europe. The threat that Al Qaeda poses to our civilization is paltry compared to the threat of total nuclear annihilation that hung over our heads for the latter half of the 20th century, or the plague of fascist domination, destruction and mass murder that swept the continent at midcentury. All of the casualties inflicted by Al Qaeda to date amount to something like an afternoon’s work at the Battle of the Marne. If anything, we should be grateful that the major powers on the planet have learned, for the moment, to play well with each other, so that our major conflicts (excluding the chaos of sub-Saharan Africa) are asymmetrical, low-casualty compared to state-on-state warfare, and heavily symbolic instead of just as bludgeoningly destructive as possible. In fact, if you exclude the Iraq war, which we started without needing to, we’ve managed to reduce conflict to the levels of the Pax Romana and the Pax Britannica.
Now all we need are leaders who can see the current situation for what it is. In much darker times, President Roosevelt reassured us that “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” His words remain a warning to us in these paranoid but peaceful times.
The Traveler, which just a week ago or so was Between the Lines, is changing names again. But this time It’ll actually have its very own shiny URL. Are you ready, kids?
The new name is …
The Palaverist
Whew! That was exciting. The new URL will be http://www.palaverist.com, or just http://palaverist.com. I’m just waiting for the link to go active, and then I’ll pull the ol’ switcheroo.
Hopefully this exciting development (I can hear the vast collective heart-thumping already) will be followed in the next few weeks by a behind-the-scenes move to a new web server that will give me a lot more flexibility. Oh, the joys! If you’re too ecstatic now, go read the news; that’ll bring you back down.
Oh, and I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that anyone who bankrolls me through the Columbia School of Journalism will get a personalized haiku by yours truly.
Working is too hard
I prefer sugardaddies
Oops! I mean patrons
See? (Offer not valid if your name has more than seven syllables. That means you, Mr. Ramakrishnavannamalai.)
The geographic center of New York City is about 200 feet east of the intersection of Greene Avenue and Malcom X Boulevard in Brooklyn.