{"id":1203,"date":"2007-09-09T06:31:01","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T06:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/911-truth\/911-blame-game-goes-on\/1203\/"},"modified":"2007-09-09T06:31:01","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T06:31:01","slug":"911-blame-game-goes-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/911-truth\/911-blame-game-goes-on\/","title":{"rendered":"9\/11 blame game goes on"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Charles V Pena<\/a><\/p>\n

CIA Director Michael Hayden\u2019s release of an internal report on the agency\u2019s performance prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks has triggered a predictable result: more of the blame game.<\/p>\n

While not claiming the CIA could have prevented September 11 \u2013 the report says only that if intelligence officers \u201chad been able to view and analyse the full range of information before 11 September 2001, they could have developed a more informed context in which to assess the threat reporting of the spring and summer of that year\u201d \u2013 the report contends that then CIA director George Tenet \u201cwas either unwilling or unable to marshal the full range of IC (intelligence community) necessary to combat the growing terrorist threat to the US.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be sure, the CIA and others made mistakes. For example, an FBI memo warning of the activities of Middle Eastern men at US flight schools never went beyond the desk of a midlevel unit chief in the bureau\u2019s counterterrorism division, though it arrived at headquarters two months before Septemvber 11.<\/p>\n

If such mistakes had not happened, perhaps the attacks could have been prevented.
\nBut \u201ccould have\u201d is not the same thing as \u201cwould have\u201d. Those who believe the latter assume that intelligence is a perfect science, but it is as much art as science.<\/p>\n

It is easy with 20\u201420 hindsight to connect the dots, because you can trace backward from a known event. But that\u2019s not the same thing as trying to connect dots to an event that\u2019s still a work in progress, where, even if the dots were clearly visible beforehand (a big assumption), they could have been connected in different ways to paint very different pictures.
\nAlthough the CIA inspector general\u2019s report focuses solely on CIA accountability, it identifies a larger problem which extends far beyond the CIA: \u201cNeither the US government nor the IC had a comprehensive strategy for combating Al Qaeda.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before September 11, for example, President Bush didn\u2019t mention Al Qaeda at all in discussing US national security. His focus was on rogue states, weapons of mass destruction, and ballistic missile defence.<\/p>\n

And to be fair, the Clinton administration didn\u2019t have bin Laden and Al Qaeda squarely in its sights either.<\/p>\n

Trying to understand how September 11 might have been averted requires more than a postmortem on CIA procedures and a second look at the government\u2019s nonexistent strategy for dealing with Al Qaeda. Ultimately, the September 11 terrorist attacks are inextricably linked to US foreign policy.<\/p>\n

The September 11 Commission concluded that the rising tide of anti-American Muslim hatred, which draws Muslims to the radical cause, is fuelled more by what we do \u2013 that is, by US policies \u2013 than by who we are. Our values, culture, and way of life are not the problem; our actions are the problem.<\/p>\n

Yet, while the September 11 Commission understood that point, it did not prescribe any real change in America\u2019s post-Cold War foreign policy.<\/p>\n

If we are unable to admit that some of our policy choices are wrong, how can we hope to correct them? Certainly, Al Qaeda \u2013 not Americans or American society \u2013 is solely responsible for the death and destruction of those attacks.<\/p>\n

But the US government \u2013 under Republican and Democratic administrations alike \u2013 must be held accountable for ill-conceived policies that have helped motivate terrorism against the US.
\nUS foreign policy that results in unnecessary military intervention \u2013 the Balkans under President Clinton and Iraq under George W Bush \u2013 is one of the main causes of the virulent anti-American sentiment fuelling terrorism.<\/p>\n

To understand what the US government could have done better to prevent September 11, and, more importantly, to understand how we might prevent future terrorist attacks, we need to adopt a more humble foreign policy, as candidate Bush advocated in 2000.<\/p>\n

That responsibility rests squarely in the Oval office, not at CIA headquarters in Virginia. \u2014 MCT
\n* Charles V Pena is a senior fellow at The Independent Institute (www.independent.org), 100 Swan Way, Oakland, California 94621, and author of Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for Winning the War on Terrorism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Charles V Pena CIA Director Michael Hayden\u2019s release of an internal report on the agency\u2019s performance prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks has triggered a predictable result: more of the blame game. While not claiming the CIA could have prevented September 11 \u2013 the report says only that if intelligence officers \u201chad been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-911-truth","7":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1203\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}