8/30/2006

Outside the Box

Safer, but not safe?
By Don Klein

Do not look now but in less than two weeks we will mark the fifth anniversary of one of the blackest days in American history. Mass murder was committed on U.S. territory and the mastermind of September 11, 2001 has not yet been brought to justice. It was a day as evil as December 7, 1941, but the last page in this piece of history is yet to be written.

It took the Japanese 1,347 days after Pearl Harbor to run their string out and surrender. By comparison it will be 1,826 days when September 11, 2006 arrives and Osama bin Laden is still on the loose. The current conflict with al Qaeda has lasted 479 days longer than World War II. That is more than a year longer and there is no end in sight.

Of course there are a lot of differences between WWII and the current war, which is often referred to as a War Against Terror even though most of the military action is taking place in Iraq, away from the center of terror. During WWII about 16 million Americans were in the forces and 400,000 died in service. Today we have a force of less than three million with more than 2,600 killed in the combat zone so far.

Statistics in of themselves do not necessarily tell the whole story. But five years of unresolved conflict is hardly a good record. It is a bad one that has to be told and retold many times. What needs to be faced these days is why the electorate in this country still gives credence to the war.

The president keeps saying "We are safer, but still not safe." We certainly are not safe. The airline plot broken by the British in London recently proves that. There are many who do not think we are even "safer" than before. There is still too much to be done to even make that simple claim.

"We knew about liquid bombs back in 1993," said former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean, "but nothing has been done about detecting it since then." Gov. Kean knows what he is talking about. He and former Congressman Lee H. Hamilton, were co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission.

Mr. Hamilton said they made 41 recommendations to thwart terrorism in the U.S. after their study of the 9/11 tragedy and most are still mired in governmental gridlock.  Many recommendations have not been touched they said on a recent interview program on public television.

Mr. Kean, a Republican who embraces bipartisanship, made two critical observations. "Congress is broken," he said, they get some things done "but when there are big things to do, they put it off." He also declared emphatically that the commission's study proved "in no way that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9-11."

Asserting that "there is nothing more important" than the safety of its citizens, both men felt that the sense of urgency is gone. The government is distracted by partisan domestic issues and they have not put security at the top of the list, the men insisted.

On the subject of winning the war in Iraq, both men reflected back on the intelligence briefing Presidents Clinton and Bush received everyday. "It took us forever to get the information from the White House," Mr. Hamilton recalled. After reading them all, he concluded "both presidents were ill-served and ill-advised by the intelligence community."

Both commission heads were disturbed by the politicalization of intelligence. Making intelligence fit political aims.  "Intelligence heads should not have anything to do with politics," Mr. Kean declared.

Bickering is not helping the war effort. After WWII, Europe and Asia were concerned with rebuilding and the U.S. entered an era of extremely good economic times. There was a strong sense of teamwork at home and abroad as the world mended itself after a disastrous war.

It is hard to visualize anything like that happening now even in the unlikely possibility that the conflict in the Middle East were to end tomorrow. Our society is so polarized that it seems certain that Democrats will continue to harp on the Bush Administration's incompetence and the Republicans will continue to claim that the Democrats are soft on security.

This is what distinguishes the 1,347-day WWII from the 1,826-day (and still counting) current battle in Iraq. In 1945 we were basically pulling together as a unified nation. Today we are so polarized that failure is almost guaranteed. And that is why we remain unsafe.             

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