Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

No terrorists attacks since 9/11? I don’t blame Barnet since now even Bush is pushing that line, yet you can read it right on whitehouse.gov:

George Bush’s November 3, 2001 Radio Address:

THE PRESIDENT:  “Good morning.  As all Americans know, recent weeks have brought a second wave of terrorist attacks upon our country:  deadly anthrax spores sent through the U.S. Mail.  There’s no precedent for this type of biological attack, and I’m proud of the way our law enforcement officers, our health care and postal workers and the American people are responding in the face of this new threat.”

Cite: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011103.html

Of course, we just a paid some poor sap 5.8 million and we don’t even have a name to not catch for that “wave of terrorist attacks” so down the memory hole it goes.

Come on Professor Bainbridge, I do not think it completely fair to use the time period between the first WTC bombing (which was not done BTW by al Qaeda) and the 9/11 attacks.  It was al Qaeda’s stated goal to take the U.S. on and defeat it and (at least so far) there have been no further attacks on the USA itself (while there have been attacks in Europe and elsewhere). 

You have to give at least some credit to Bush for stoping further attacks.  There have been a few attacks by “lone wolf” Muslims acting on their own, but no coordinated attacks in the USA.  Now I recognize that al Qaeda might be laying back, realizing that goading the USA is counter productive.  But assuming that is the case, isn’t that due to the USA taking an agressive stance after 9/11?

"doesn’t Clinton deserve credit for the absence of attacks up to 9/11?”

THANK YOU!!!  I’ve been saying this for years

Joe, Al Qaeda by and large did not pretend it was going to “defeat” the U.S. in the sense of destroying our country or even our whole army. The goal was to defeat the U.S. in its role (as Al Qaeda sees it) as an empire in Moslem lands, and particularly to deny us hegemony over oil. They have done pretty well at that: we tied down our army in Iraq to the point where we cannot effectively project power over oil shipment and pipeline development in the Caucasus, or oil development in Iran, and we obligingly cleared out of Saudi Arabia. We even cleared out the secularist Ba’ath party in Iraq for them, discrediting secularism even further in the Middle East.

So, yes, Al Qaeda may have realized that further attacks on our mainland would be counterproductive, since we were already doing more than they could have hoped for. In that sense, I guess you can credit Bush’s aggressive policy. But I don’t think that’s exactly what you had in mind.

Joe notes that George Bush has been able to “stop further attacks on the USA”...without a wall on either border, or any thorough inspection in our ports.  Almost as important, the Bush Administration has been able to spare us the worries caused by the silly color coded, terrorists warning levels...which became obsolete shortly after being re-elected in 2006.

If torture, warrantless wiretaps and data-mining were so critical to our safety, why weren’t their fruits able to spare Spain, England, Malaysia and others the grief of an Islamic terrorist’s attack?  It only works when American soil is the target?  Seriously?

Joe writes:

“Come on Professor Bainbridge, I do not think it completely fair to use the time period between the first WTC bombing (which was not done BTW by al Qaeda) and the 9/11 attacks.”

The 1993 WTC attack was planned by a group of conspirators including Ramzi Yousef, and received financing from Khaled Shaikh Mohammed, Yousef’s uncle. Please tell the Bush administration that Khaled Shaikh Mohammed has nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

Thanks for pointing this out, Stephen. It’s even better for Clinton--and worse for Bush--than you may realize: One of the things Bush did in 2002, one of the only things he’s done that I agree with, was to support a provision that made it a lot harder for terrorist groups to funnel money through international banks. Strangely enough, Clinton had actually tried to do this with the 1996 Anti-terrorism bill, but that provision of the bill was stripped by Republican Senator Phil Gramm (now McCain’s finance chairman), saying it was unfair to banks.

http://www.truthout.org/article/clinton-911-and-facts

More: “ Specifically, Clinton wanted to attack the financial underpinnings of the al-Qaeda network by banning American companies and individuals from dealing with foreign banks and financial institutions that al-Qaeda was using for its money-laundering operations. Texas Senator Phil Gramm, chairman of the Banking Committee, gutted the portions of Clinton’s bill dealing with this matter, calling them “totalitarian.”

In fact, Gramm was compelled to kill the bill because his most devoted patrons, the Enron Corporation and its criminal executives in Houston, were using those same terrorist financial networks to launder their own dirty money and rip off the Enron stockholders. It should also be noted that Gramm’s wife, Wendy, sat on the Enron Board of Directors.

Just before departing office, Clinton managed to make a deal with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to have some twenty nations close tax havens used by al-Qaeda. His term ended before the deal was sealed, and the incoming Bush administration acted immediately to destroy the agreement.”

On the narrow point of attacks on the contiguous US you are right - but - let’s remember the following: A series of attacks on US sovereign assets: USS Cole, African Embassies (two), Khobar Towers that yielded no serious response from Pres. Clinton “convinced” Osama of a feckless US “weak horse” that could be cowed by the “strong horse” of Jihadi ists.  So, the 9/11 planning and proceeded to it’s tragic end.

We have bad actors aplenty that have been dipatched/gathered up under Pres. Bush and many plots broken up.  So there is evidence of the robust Bush Administrations anti-terror efforts. 

What is the evidence of Pres. Clinton blocking and getting ists? Heck, he couldn’t even keep the Blind Sheik from communicating with his minions while he was in custody (thank you Lynne Stewart).

Absence of an attack by itself is not proof of efforts of prevention and I’m a little embarassed for the good Professor that he would make that assertion.

If you really unpack the argument you’ll see that the terrorists have done much more damage to the US by not attacking. They’re not stupid. They got us to put an occupying army onto some of the most sacred Islamic sites, thereby radicalizing large numbers of Muslims, who heretofore had no animus towards the US (take a look at polls in the 3 most populous Muslim countries:Indonesia, Pakistan and India). This also cost us half a trillion dollars and will certainly top a trillion before we’re done. Iran is well on their way to controlling Iraq through Maliki. so their reach will extend to the Mediterranean by way of Syria and Hezbollah controlled Lebanon. Could they have attained such influence absent our stupidity? We’ve worn down our military (the failure to maintain readiness, pay reset costs and grow the services to meet the mission are near criminal) to the point that it’s not at all clear that the Army is simply not broken (take a hard look at the criminals and mentally impaired we’re now willing to enroll). And who can forget the re-establishment of the worst of the worst on the Afghan-Pakistan boarder; with, let’s remember, a nuclear arsenal & means to deliver it. Why would they attack and possibly create sympathy for the US when Bush is working so hard on their behalf?

For anyone who thinks Bush has kept us safe, answer one question: Is it possible that one of al Qaeda’s goals was to take away our civil liberties? If that is the case, then the reason they have not attacked is that they have largely gotten what they wanted, and another attack would do more harm than good.

Well, if you’re going to count the anthrax mailings as an incidence of another terrorist attack on the Bush watch, to be fair, you probably ought to count the McVeigh bombing in 1995 - which then cuts two years off Clinton’s “streak.”

Clinton also lucked out when an observant border guard in Port Angeles helped to thwart the Millennium bombing plot in 1999 - no thanks to any intel from the CIA or FBI.  I imagine the USS Cole bombing, African embassy bombings, and the Khobar Towers bombings which all struck US personnel and property would simply be equated to the ongoing bombings in the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones - but I find that a disingenuous comparison.

Clinton was simply out to lunch on terrorism...it was still regarded as a law enforcement issue the day he left office.

Why aren’t the continuing attacks against US Soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan part of this analysis?  Is it that they don’t happen on US soil? Taking Bush at his word, these war efforts are part of the war on terror.  Remember, we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here.  Under Bush’s watch we’ve lost more than 7,500 American lives (9/11 plus A & I wars).  Whenever I hear “there hasn’t been another attack since 9/11” I can’t help but think of the thousands of lives lost and tens of thousands severely injured and wonder don’t they count?

In December 1999, a terrorist tried to sneak explosives across the Canadian border with the intention of blowing up a New Year’s celebration in Seattle.  The death toll might have been in the hundreds, but US customs intercepted him.

In September 2001, four commercial jet liners were hijacked for an hour and a half and our trillion dollar a year military failed to intercept them. 

When do we finally Go There and acknowledge that the reason 9/11 was so successful is because George W. Bush is incompetent?  It wasn’t because we weren’t spending enough money on national defense, and it wasn’t because we had too many civil rights.  It was because George W. Bush is incompetent.

And it’s not as if he’s ever given us reason since then to think that he’s incompetent, is it?

As noticed by Mr JohnH, the so-called millenium bombing of LAX was deterred by an alert border security agent.  It was part of a multiple-bombing plan, typical of AlQaida.  Bombings in Jordan and in Yeman were also foiled.  The reason is simple.  Our Bill--for all his faults--put the entire security apparatus of the US Gov’t on high alert.  The destroyer USN SULLIVANS was spared the fate of the USN COLE.  LAX was spared the fate of Manhattan.  Jordan was spared the fate of Tanzania. 

How amazing!!!  A bunch of blow-job loving liberals actually foiled AlQaida!!! 

Conservatives (who HATE blow-jobs of course) never could figure out how to do that.  But of course, they never figured out how to get blow-jobs either.....even while Richard Clarke was running around ‘like a man with his hair on fire’
trying to tell simple. low-ranking officials like Colin Powell and Condi Rice that there was gonna be another AlQaida attack.  Nah--who was he fooling?  Just another liberal thinking of blow-jobs.  (No wonder his hair was on fire!!!)

” It was al Qaeda’s stated goal to take the U.S. on and defeat it and (at least so far) there have been no further attacks on the USA itself (while there have been attacks in Europe and elsewhere).

You have to give at least some credit to Bush for stoping further attacks.”

Actually, that’s a big fat no.  One of al Qaeda’s major gripes about the U.S. was our military bases on Saudi soil.  This makes the often-ignored information that zero 9/11 hijackers were Iraqi while 14 were Saudi much more pertient. 

Those bases, by the way, were quietly closed by a compliant Bush Administration just over a year after the attacks, ostensibly to shore up Iraqi operations.  Conservative accusations of appeasement ring brittle and hollow in the wake of such an act of naked cowardice.

And terrorist attacks as recorded by our own intelligence agencies have gone from hundreds a year to tens of thousands a year since the beginning of the War on Terror.

It’s the most awesomely failing war on anything anywhere ever.  As only the fail-prone Bush Administration could do.

"without waging a preemptive war on Iraq, restricting civil liberties, torture, creating an American Gulag (Guantanamo, Baghram, renditions, etc....) and so on”

The pre-emptive war on Iraq is valid, though when a dictator is deposed because he did something we didn’t like, I suspect other dictators inclined to support terrorists - the target audience for that event - are primarily concerned with the fact that he was deposed, not whatever mess may have ensued afterwards.  I’m encouraged by news reports this week that perhaps we’ve decided spending $400M (yes, I know it’s probably far more) on wet work is a wiser use of resources than full scale invasion.

As for the rest of the list, many would disagree about whether Clinton restricted civil liberties, and/or whether those restrictions killed more Americans than FISA or other acts promoted by Bush and enacted by Congress have.  You have no idea whether there were any “American Gulags” in the sense you mean; as a minimum, the Clinton administration certainly engaged in extraordinary rendition, which of course includes torture.

By all means, give President Clinton his due, even say he did things cheaper and more discreetly, but spare us this nonsense that Bush has done things he (or any other President) didn’t or wouldn’t do.

“When do we finally Go There and acknowledge that the reason 9/11 was so successful is because George W. Bush is incompetent?”

9/11 was successful because of an outdated FAA strategy that failed to identify attacks on airline crews as hijackings.  We had at least three suicide attacks on airliners in this country prior to 9/11 that I know of, one successful, another nearly identical to the 9/11 scenario, the third stopped by passengers who beat the hijacker to death, yet crews were still instructed to cooperate with hijackers.

You guys remember the Cole?  So do I.

Remember what Bush did about it?  I don’t either. 

Maybe Dubya figured “What the hell.  It was one of _Clinton’s_ ships, so why should I bother?” Maybe he was waiting for Cheney to gin up evidence that Saddam did it.  Whatever the reason, Dubya spent the first 9 months of his presidency doing nothing about the Cole.

“Slick Willie did nothing about the Cole in the last 3 months of _his_ presidency,” the Bushies may be tempted to reply.  I hope one of them does.  Go ahead Bushies:  make my day

-- TP

The problem starts at this phrase:

“But even with the all the Bushie missteps, can we not acknowledge one accomplishment that is far from “entirely malignant?” Since 9/11, there has not been a terrorist attack on American soil.”

The problem of course is the 9/11 attacks themselves. Bush gets a free pass o the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor. Why?  That has never been explained to my satisfaction. 

I’ve heard the line that he can’t be held responsible for the actions of Bin Laden.  I agree—George W Bush was not responsible for Bin Laden’s attack on the twin towers.

But he was responsible for making sure those attacks didn’t succeed. And had he followed the defense protocols put in place by Clinton/Gore for the 1996 Olympics and the 2000 New Year festivities, those attacks may have been foiled.

It’s impossible to know that with any surety of course.  But it’s possible to know that the same efforts were not made from one administration to the next when warnings of an attack came.

Why haven’t we held anyone responsible for that again?  Oh yeah—we haven’t held anyone responsible for anything over the last 8 years.

It’s probably worth noting that calling Dean Barnett “erroneous” is like calling water “wet”. He has a history of being wrong that runs from projecting the 2006 election (gains by the Republicans) to stating that Romney would be the 2008 nominee because Romney is “smarter than the average bear.”

If Barnett was any wronger he’d be.. well, he’d be his boss, Bill Kristol.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Ben Franklin

Say what you will, but these were the pricipals that created our nation. Our freedopms make us who we are, but we are losing them by the day.
These terrorist a-holes are destroying the very fabric of our counrty while we stand by and wait in torror.

The only way to defeat terror is to not be afraid.

If the President’s policies deserve all the credit for the peace between major attacks, he also deserves the blame for the attacks themselves.

Of course, what the good professor’s analysis misses is this; Unlike Clinton, Bush prosecuted a military policy to battle t the terrorists in two countries they considered to be an important part os their religion, namely Afghanistan and Iraq. Those two military actions have left the terrorists little opportunity to cook up mischief elsewhere.

Clinton on the other hand pursued a criminal prosecution of the terrorists that turned out to be highly ineffective and allowed them to continue their operations elsewhere.

I’m sure those folks killed in the Anthrax attack take comfort in knowing there hasn’t been a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11.

The whole purpose of 9/11 was to draw the U.S. into Afghanistan for a protracted war that would drain us, just like they did to the Russians (read Coll and Bergen). Once we were bankrupt we could no longer project military force into the ME. Our invading Iraq was a real bonus. It put Iran into play.

I am not surprised there has not been another attack. They do not need one. The smaller individual attempts have not ben well organized.

Having said all that, Bush should get credit for improving security. We are clearly safer, especially against the amateurs. However we are still such an open society that if the only goal was just to kill Americans we are easy targets. Any shopping mall or crowded movie theater is an easy target. Most athletic events, school graduations, cruise ships, etc. are pretty easy pickings if you just want to kill.

Steve

1.  No, Clinton didn’t create an American gulag.  He outsourced the gulag to Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc., using extraordinary rendition.

2.  The infamous “wall of separation” that prevented the FBI from making effective use of information about the 9-11 plot was a Clinton Administration policy.

But go ahead, back to 1993:  no preventive detention on American soil, no taking the war to the leaders, reerect the “wall” between intelligence and law enforcement in ordewr to prevent civil-liberties-violating preventive action against suspected terrorists. 

Feel safer now?

Wow, it is amazing what a link to the Daily Dish can do for Professor Bainbridge’s comment board! 

Thanks for all your comments.  I agree in part with some of the points you have raised, but the fact is the Bush agressive stance in Afghanistan and Iraq has caused al Qaeda to rethink attacking the USA directly.  Zawahiri in particular has been critical not only of further attacking the USA (which only focuses more attention and military pressure on al Qaeda) but excesses from zealots and murdering sadists like Zaraqawi (who did more to set back al Qaeda’s goals than anyone else in the organization). 

Bin Laden really thought an attack on NYC and the WTC would make us retreat in panic.  The opposite occurred.  Right now, while the USA may not be the most popular country in the world, al Qaeda’s stock is in the toilet.  I am not giving total credit to Bush for that, but the agressive stance helped that to occur. 

Yes KSM was involved in the 1993 WTC attacks from a financial standpoint, but al Qaeda was created after that and incorporated KSM. 

When al Qaeda attacked in Spain, it got the result it wanted.  A more pacificist government elected which pulled out of Iraq. 

I do not think the Bush Team has a lot to crow about (and neither does Bill Clinton when it came to dealing with Islamic terrorism), but agressively taking on al Qaeda was and remains a good thing.  I think we made terrible mistakes such as the Rumsfeld-Cheney Doctrine of “taking the gloves off” and floundering during the Iraqi occupation for several years.  Taking on al Qaeda and Islamic fascists such as the Iranian leadership in a more effective manner is what I expect from the next President.

Stan said… We have bad actors aplenty that have been dipatched/gathered up under Pres. Bush and many plots broken up.  So there is evidence of the robust Bush Administrations anti-terror efforts.

Prove it.  I’ve heard this prattle over and over again, but when reality rears its ugly head, we see ridiculously simple plots like Jose Padilla and the “dirty bomb” that wasn’t, or the idiots who wanted to attack Ft. Dix.  Nothing beyond desire to attack.  Certainly nothing like the 9/11 attack.

Please provide a list of actual plots that were real threats that were broken up.  Since they are “aplenty”, I figure a list of 10 should be easy, right?

"Prove it.  I’ve heard this prattle over and over again, but when reality rears its ugly head, we see ridiculously simple plots”

The Bush administration’s detention of Mohammed Atta and his friends is absurd and clearly racist.  Does anybody seriously believe any “terrorist” organization is going to find 19 people who will simultaneously commit suicide?  By flying airplanes they hijacked - with “weapons” the FAA permits anyone to bring aboard - into buildings in NYC?  Only someone as stupid as Bush could believe the public would buy the idea of such a ridiculously simple plot.

Joe, your interpretation of why Bin Laden attacked us is at odds with what I have seen from the best Bin Laden analysts. He predicted, and wanted, that we would come to Afghanistan. He knows we love to fight. He misjudged how long we would be able to sustain the fight.

Steve

steve, really?  Given our rather lame responses to the the 93 WTC attacks, Kobar Towers, the African embassy bombing, and the Cole--we encouraged bin Laden by not reacting.

I don’t know whether Bush deserves credit for stopping any additional “9/11’s”. And I agree that he has made a large number of political mistakes driving his party into the ground. On the other hand I think folks are too glibly dismissing the role Bush played in moderating the nation’s response following the attacks. He minimized the clash-of-civilizations meme (how many times did we hear that we weren’t at war with Islam?). This stands in stark contrast to the last time US soil was attacked.

Can you imagine what would have happened if there was a second attack by an Islamist in the months following 9/11? Imagine what would have happened to the civil rights of Arab and muslim americans.

Bush has made a lot of mistakes, but I think people are grossly exaggerating how bad he has been.