The View from Here: Could 9-11 have been prevented?
Did our government fail to act upon specific information in the days before the biggest terrorist attack in American history? That’s the message implied this week after President Bush was forced to defend himself regarding what he knew, and when. But do we really believe the implication?
The inquiries about what terrorist threats were known before they became reality on Sept. 11 certainly raise interesting questions, but at the same time, I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would have had specific information and not acted.
It seems too bizarre to imagine such a scenario.
But just for the sake of going there, if one considers a possible motivation for lack of action, it’s easy to see how security failures could lead to the return of a security-minded agenda.
The Cold War over, many thought we were safe. One needs to look not much further than the dwindling military, a lack of urgency about defense and foreign policy issues or a decreasing focus upon security in general before Sept. 11 to realize that.
All that was changed in the days that followed. Suddenly, we relied upon messages from the government to assuage our own fears in a time of great national stress.
Wasn’t government good in the days after the attacks when someone decided the military should help out at the airports to calm fears of flying or when it was encouraged homeland security should exist in every place possible? Government suddenly united people, not divided them.
Those ideas of a pro-security agenda may be crazy and a person acting with it in mind would have to be insane, and that’s the point. I don’t want to believe all that.
With regard to the Bush Administration, we elected this man, by most accounts, after all. The last time I checked, we were in the middle of a war and we were not being led by a crazed lunatic.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued 15 warnings last year in the months before the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Released late this week on the foothills of the “advance warning” stories making big news, there were numerous general threats released to airlines to warn them something could come up.
In January, according to the Associated Press reports, airlines were warned of violence against Americans and interests due to continuing Middle East violence. March brought forth more warnings about threats to airlines in the Middle East by suspected terrorists.
Advisories were given in April that encouraged a “high degree of awareness” and more information about terrorism threats, possible terrorism plots, extremist groups and problems in Israel was given throughout the summer.
By those reports, there appears to have been plenty of warning about terrorism. It’s a good exercise in democracy to ask our leaders specifically what they knew based on the factual information. And while it’s clear they knew something, based on the immediate assumption the attack came straight from Afghanistan, it’s a leap to think there was enough specific information.
Of course anything is possible. Certainly more answers will come with time. Perhaps more could have been done, but to suggest that leaders knew concretely Sept. 11 or something like it was going to happen seems far-fetched, because the alternative is that leaders we’ve elected stood by and did nothing.
The assumption would be they were either crazy or made many mistakes. If mistakes really occurred, they should own up to it now. If not, I’m still not ready to accept at this point that my leaders are crazy.
(Amy Satterwhite is a reporter for the Standard. She can be reached at 473-2191.)