Andrew Hagen

In an unbelievable, shocking outrage, the design of the 9/11 Flight 93 Memorial is revealed to be a gigantic red crescent, a common symbol of Islam, plastered over the field where the commercial passenger airplane crashed. (*)

The wickedness and evil of this desecration is unspeakable. They have painted the symbol of their murderers over the graves of our fallen heroes.

There is no alternative except to overturn this “memorial” and start over with a new designer.

Update: To protest, send a fax to the Superintendent of the National Flight 93 Memorial, National Park Service, (814) 443-2180.

The September 11 Digital Archive is an effort to preserve forever the memory of the mass murder perpetrated on American soil four years ago. (*)

On MSNBC today, Donald Trump excoriated the Freedom Tower, the design of the building meant to replace the twin World Trade Center towers. (*) We should either rebuild the towers one story higher or build a monumental park, he said. Just don’t build the Freedom Tower.

I agree completely. The Freedom Tower is a plastic pile of postmodern garbage that should never be built. The WTC site deserves better.

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) is investigating the destruction of the World Trade Center towers during the 9/11 unwarned massacre of civilians. (*)

The findings include an explanation for the time delay between the collapses of the two towers. (The south tower, Two WTC, survived for 56 minutes; the north tower, One WTC, for 103 minutes). NIST says the difference was primarily due to five items: the asymmetrical structural damage of the aircraft impact to Two WTC compared to the aircraft damage to One WTC; the time it took for heat to soften, buckle and shorten core columns that had fireproofing dislodged by debris impact; the structure’s ability to redistribute loads as the core columns shortened; the time it took for fires to traverse from their initial location to the face of the towers where perimeter columns were bowing inward (as seen only minutes before the collapse of each tower); and the time it took for heat to soften and buckle those columns.

The full NIST report will be released in the coming months. (†)

Never again.

“[T]he President of the United States did nothing for 18 minutes,” according to William Manchester, a historian describing President Franklin Roosevelt’s immediate reaction to the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941.

Columnist Diana West dug out that historical nugget. (*)

And so ends the canard about how George W Bush is somehow blameworthy for being stunned for a few minutes when he first heard of the 9/11 attacks in a schoolroom in Florida.

Onward to the real issues.

The United States has been terribly served by the inadequate and misleading work of the 9/11 Commission. Its report was just released. (*)

The Commission does some good in the report. The Commission avoids casting blame on individuals, and it gives an excellent summary of the 9/11 attacks, in the process debunking many or most of the conspiracy theories that have developed. I take no small joy in seeing the pet theories of the establishment Left punctured. Conspiracy theorists can now be dealt with quickly. Simply ask them whether they have read the report.

Those successes should not cause us to overlook the stark deficiencies of this unfortunate blunder in report form.

The mandate of the Commission was to

make a full and complete accounting of the circumstances surrounding the attacks, and the extent of the United States’ preparedness for, and immediate response to, the attacks.…

(† PL 107-36, Section 602(4)) This mandate was not fulfilled by the Commission. The Commission has given only a partial and incomplete accounting, and a highly misleading, slanted, and politically correct one at that. This report is, for the most part, unacceptable.

I have seen enough of the report to know that it does not recommend that the open doors immigration policy be curbed. (”Oh, no. Whatever we do in this war, we must keep the barn doors open.”) Open doors combined with border screening is no guarantee of safety, and it curtails liberty. Repulsively, the report effectively encourages the shredding of the Bill of Rights so that the open doors immigration policy can be maintained while we are in wartime.

The Commission’s report is almost exclusively focused on the bureaucratic activity of various governmental agencies and on the particulars of the attacks. These matters are important to know. The problem is that the report is almost exclusively about them.

A few pages are devoted to diagnosing the actual threat. These pages repeat the standard sayings we have about Islamist terrorism. By now we can all recite them like rote knowledge. These sections could have been written by anyone with a pulse and a modem. In no way are they insightful. In no way do they add to what we know. In no way do they challenge the complacency of people with regard to false and unexamined assumptions.

The problem we are having is one of vision, one of imagination. We are not imagining ourselves, as we should, in the shoes of Muslims, or of terrorists. We are not trying to see the world as they see it. (At least not often enough.) We are not able to grasp what this war is about, or how to decisively win it. The Commission does little to nothing to remedy these ills we suffer from.

Fred Kaplan of Slate manages to draw exactly the wrong conclusion from the report. He notes that the modus operandi of the attacks—planes flying into buildings—was conceptualized before 9/11.

So, the problem is not imagination, thankfully. If that were the main shortcoming, reform would be nearly impossible. How do you go about ordering bureaucrats to be “more imaginative” or to “think outside the box”? [sic]

(‡) That is execrable. No, Mr Kaplan, it is a failure of imagination. It is exactly that. No, bureaucrats can’t by themselves react to such a fundamental failure in a useful way, and that is what is so chilling about the whole thing.

How do we get the message to people when they shut their ears to it, and especially now, when the 9/11 Commission is further reinforcing their false ideas?

Here is what the 9/11 report should have said: The attacks signal much more than a need for bureaucratic reform or a cabinet-level chief of intelligence. The attacks signal the end of the existence of the nation-state, the state form that is the basis for the constitutional republic we know as the United States of America. To persevere into the future, the United States must adapt itself to a radically changing world. This will require a complete rethinking of how government is run in this country. It will require radical changes in our governmental structure. These changes might not require any changes to the Constitution itself, but these changes will certainly affect every layer of government and every citizen’s daily life. As we saw on 9/11, even our country’s bustling transportation infrastructure can now be turned into a deadly weapon against us. Protecting ourselves fully is impossible unless and until the Enemy is defeated and a new state form replaces the nation-state and preserves the peace. Speaking of the enemy, this report will now devote 400 out of its 500 pages to the Enemy’s point of view and outlook so that Americans can better understand what we’re up against….

Sadly, that is not what the Commission did. They devote a few non-probing paragraphs to the perspective and outlook of the Enemy and call it a day.

It’s like they treat Al Qaeda as a weather pattern, not a human organization composed of human actors with human goals.

The Commission treats the Enemy as it would Christian Americans with a handful of curious beliefs. The reality is that Islam is a different way of life, not just a handful of curious beliefs. Islam and Christianity do not even agree as to what religion is. Understanding the Enemy must begin with an understanding of Islam.

The inward-directed nature of the report undermines the recommendations for government reform. Since we don’t know whom we’re fighting, we don’t really know how to stop them. Some of the recommendations may have value, but none of them are developed with stopping Islamic terrorism specifically in mind, and none of them are designed specifically to win the war.

Then there is counterintelligence. This is a sensitive subject. It surely factors into 9/11, however, and the report all but ignores it.

Allow me a swift digression. Prior to the Ottoman Turks taking Constaninople in 1453—after which they renamed the great city Istanbul (”The City” in Turkish)—the Christians inside the walls had been too busy discussing an important and puzzling question to bother putting up an effective defense against the ongoing siege. They were concerned with whether there are both male and female angels, or if there is just one kind of angel. It was quite the theological debate. It engrossed the city, even in their moment of supreme peril. The city was violently sacked in a horrific way we cannot even relate to in modern American life, and the Eastern Roman Empire was no more, thanks largely to the obsessively inwards-directed thinking of the Constanipolitans. I know we can learn from their mistake, but will we?

We Americans are obsessed with ourselves and our lives and our problems and our government and our politics. We don’t pay enough attention to the rest of the world. I’m as guilty of this as anyone.

People of other countries are just as self-obsessed as we are. They have their own lives, and they dwell primarily on them. That, though, is the problem. We Americans must become less self-obsessed than are the people of other countries, or we Americans will have no advantage over the great numbers of this world who wish our country the worst, and our cherished prosperity and freedoms will be at the mercy of terrorists, dictators, and thugs, not all of them emanating from abroad. We need to rise above our imporverished current level of inquiry. Awareness is imperative of us.

We need to deeply focus on Islam, and be willing to consider both its good and not-so-good aspects. We need to take a long, hard look at Islam’s dark underbelly. The 9/11 Commission report states: “Islam is not the enemy. It is not synonymous with terror. Nor does Islam teach terror.” (p. 363) Absolutely no evidence for that is given. It’s just a bromide that we hear too often. I happen to agree with the Commission’s statement on this matter, but it is important to know that the Enemy (Al Qaeda, for example) considers itself to be the embodiment of Islam, and its actions to be required by Islam. That is a basic fact that we need to deal with. As long as we retain our self-obsession, though, we deftly avoid such uncomfortable facts.

We need to focus on terrorists and how they look at life. We need to reach a consensus in our country as to whom the Enemy is and what is the nature of this war. We need to have a consensus on our victory conditions in the Global War on Terrorism, and we need to ponder the terrorist victory conditions. The 9/11 Commission is no real help in these critical regards.

It gets worse.

The 9/11 Commission reports that the Global War on Terrorism cannot be won.

A president should tell the American people: No president can promise that a catastrophic attack like that of 9/11 will not happen again.

(p. 365) That is premised on a lie. A president could promise that an Islamic terrorist attack like that of 9/11 will not happen again. That promise would be fulfilled once we win the war against radical Islam (if we do).

The Commission treats the war like an endless march through an unpleasant swamp. Better to stay home and drink a donut shake.

Yet, while this war looks different than other wars, it is still a war, and it will end some day with one side the victor, the other side the loser. The winner will dictate terms to the loser. The 9/11 Commission’s refusal to face this basic reality is childish.

The Commission says: “We [America] should offer an example of moral leadership in the world.” (p. 376) That is totally ignorant of how Muslims, especially of the devout variety, consider any non-Muslim to automatically not have the quality of moral leadership. Hence, this recommendation if followed could only backfire on us.

I could go through the report line by line and trash a lot of it, but what purpose would that serve?

In summary, the 9/11 Commission report is dreadfully wrong and misleading because it is America-centric, not Enemy-centric as it should have been.

If I were grading the work of the Commission, I would be forced to give their disgraceful work an F.

I hold the members of the Commission personally responsible for the failure. Although most all of America, including Congress, is America-centric, that is no excuse. The Commission was supposed to be an opinion leader, not an opinion sheep.

If I were Congress, I would take the report’s recommendations and consider them highly suspect. Implement policies to fill emergency needs, but don’t start rearranging things too much. Then I would charter a new, second commission that will have as its explicit direction the creation of a politically incorrect, non-deferential report on the nature and the point of view of the Enemy. Once that report is complete we will have better insight on how to reform and rearrange the agencies.

Then, having chartered the second commission, I would tell the American people that we can win this war, but only if we again look beyond America and observe with deep interest the rest of the world, especially the Islamic world and the Islamic terrorists.

Know thine Enemy. Let us arm ourselves with the truth and a greater understanding of the rest of the world while we retain our optimistic vigor and determination.

Since the no-fly zones in Iraq were established after the Gulf War of 1990–91 and until Operation Iraqi Freedom began in March 2003, US and British aircraft were shot at in peacetime by Iraq many times. A few drones were shot down. No manned aircraft were shot down.

On 10 August 2001, Iraqi forces used new technology to fire at a U-2 spyplane monitoring Saddam’s Iraq regime in the southern no-fly zone. CNN reported at the time that a U-2 was almost shot down. In retaliation, “a communications fiber-optic node was struck, a radar site was struck, a surface-to-air missile site was struck as well.” (*) Prior to to this incident, Iraq was not known to have the capability to shoot down a U-2.

Iraq claimed to have shot down a US drone plane the morning of 11 September 2001, before the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon occurred. (†) Iraq time is several hours ahead of US time.

It appears that the proximity in time of these incidents to the 9/11 attacks was a coincidence.

Nineteen terrorists carried out the 9/11 attacks. Prior reports had Zacharias Moussaoui, arrested in Minnesota prior to 9/11, as the 20th hijacker. That now appears wrong.

Initially appearing in Newsweek, a report suggests that one “al-Qahtani” tried to enter the US prior to 9/11 at an airport. (*) At that very moment, at that very airport, 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta was loitering and eventually placed a telephone call. Al-Qahtani did not get entry and was sent home. Later, someone called “al-Qahtani” was on a battlefield in Afghanistan, where he was captured by coalition forces.

Suspicion inevitably grows that al-Qahtani was nearly the 20th hijacker.

Sheila O’Malley makes a good case for refraining from metaphors when writing about 9/11. (*)

Update: 4 April 2004. Phrasing.

Many people around the world believe the statements by John Ashcroft, Donald Rumsfeld, and the media that the hijackers used box cutters to take the planes on 9/11.

Beyond the assertions of a few, however, there is no evidence that the 9/11 terrorists used box cutters. (*) Edward Jay Epstein speculates that the terrorists may have used hand-held bombs to intimidate passengers, chemical sprays (perhaps in perfume bottles) to disable passengers, or other weapons, including guns and knives.

Our airport security is so porous that we cannot rule out any kind of weapon. We just don’t know.

For news media organizations, it would be appropriate to say: “The 9/11 attackers hijacked the four airplanes using unknown weapons. Though some have suggested box cutters as their weapons, there is no evidence for that. No one knows what weapons they used.”

A picture of a box cutter could be useful. (†)

Update: 12 December 2003. Phrasing.

It is a report not yet confirmed. I don’t like to put unconfirmed reports on this site, but the media has been burying important facts, and thus I feel this needs extra attention. In particular, it is not well known that Al Qaeda did exist on Iraqi soil prior to the invasion. The Ansar Al-Islam branch of Al Qaeda maintained an open and notorious base in Iraq. Saddam allowed the base to exist on Iraqi territory, thus making Iraq a haven for Al Qaeda.

This report makes allegations beyond that. (*) First reported in the newly free Iraqi press, the report states that Saddam Hussein personally ordered about 100 Al Qaeda operatives trained in terrorist methods in Iraq by Iraqis. The training took place about two months prior to 9/11. At least some operatives were trained in the hijacking of airplanes. At least some left Iraq after their training was complete.

The report does not say when their training was complete. It does not say whether the primary source for the report, an Iraqi, could visually identify any of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers from their photographs. The report could tie Saddam directly to 9/11.

It does say that many of these Al Qaeda operatives stayed in Iraq and fought US and allied forces during the invasion under orders of Saddam Hussein. Therefore, according to this report, there was an additional Saddam–Al Qaeda link prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Finally, the report is unconfirmed. The excerpt of the report translated by MEMRI is full of details, lending the article some credibility. We will have to wait to be sure, however.

Updated 8 March 2004 for clarity.

Walid Phares makes a good case for what Osama Bin Laden must have wanted in ordering the 9/11 attacks. (*) War is what he was after, Phares writes. War is also what he got, but, contrary to his expectations, it was not the kind of war that would benefit the would-be Caliph.

I have long been suspicious of Iraq’s possible role in 9/11, but for lack of supporting facts, have been resigned to presume the regime innocent. The evidence for an Iraqi role is patchy, but the stink is strong. Regardless of whether Iraq had any role, the current war is justified for reasons independent of the 9/11 attacks, I’ve argued. (*)

The quickly closing door on the Saddam regime now allows US investigators to go to specific places in Iraq and look for evidence that may or may not conclusively determine the issue. In an interesting article on the subject in National Review, Deroy Murdock reviews that patchy evidence. (†) Furthermore, Edward Jay Epstein (‡) and Daniel Benjamin have a debate on the subject going on in Slate. (§)

Henry Kissinger has stepped down from the commission designated by Congress to investigate intelligence failures prior to 9/11. (*) He cited potential conflicts of interest between his private business and the work of the commission. As I wrote earlier, there is reason to believe that these potential conflicts would have been very real. (†) This is a victory for everyone who wants to see a strong and truly independent commission undertake this important work. It should not be seen in any way as a disgrace to the former diplomat. Dr. Kissinger has his business interests, and as it turns out potential conflicts arising from those would inhibit the credibility of the commission. He has done the right thing. He also has significant questions about his past to answer. Those should have nothing to do with 9/11. Thankfully, they won’t distract the commission’s work any longer.

Earlier, I stated that appointing Kissinger was the worst political mistake of President Bush’s life. (‡) Regardless of the propriety of Bush’s mistake in naming Kissinger in the first place, Bush finds himself in a much more favorable political position today. It’s likely that Bush or an aide urged Kissinger to step down, or even pressured him to do so. This just shows how incredibly deft, nimble, and savvy George W. Bush is when it comes to politics. He has a way of recovering from setbacks.

Bush’s next step is to quickly find a truly independent figure to replace Kissinger. There are many qualifications for the job, but chief among them is impeccable integrity. The Democrats have their own challenge as well. Earlier in the week, George Mitchell stepped down, also citing conflicts. Two good names that come to mind are Republican Warren Rudman and Democrat Gary Hart.

Is Henry Kissinger now working only for his reputation, or is he conflicted in his new role? Recently, President Bush named Kissinger to be the chairman of the commission charged to investigate intelligence breakdowns before 9/11. (*) It is an oft-repeated argument, such as by William Safire, that Dr. Kissinger can be trusted, now, because at his age he could only be concerned with his historical reputation. (†) With his legacy at stake, we can be assured that this accused war criminal will do nothing but mine for nuggets of truth.

To that end, Kissinger has announced that he will drop all clients of his firm, Kissinger Associates—which does business with Gulf oil concerns—that may present any conflict of interest with the business of the commission. (‡) Of course, he is not aware that any of them would conflict. Furthermore, he is not at liberty to disclose the client list of his firm. Therefore we must take him at his word. In any case, Kissinger will remain at the helm of Kissinger Associates, which without question will remain open for business as usual.

It would appear, at any rate, that Dr. Kissinger is not solely concerned with his historical reputation as it concerns the commission’s business. He also has his own business to run.

See the Agonist for additional analysis, sterling as always. (§)

Update: 3 December 2002. The New York Times editorial page calls for Kissinger to sever all ties with Kissinger Associates for the duration of the commission’s work. (**) The New Republic charges into the fray as well. (††) Finally, in Slate, Timothy Noah makes the unintentionally self-deflating point that because Kissinger wants revenge against Rumsfeld, he can be trusted to do a good job. (‡‡) Noah forgets that the objective of the commission is directly opposed to casting blame and gaining revenge. It is supposed to be an independent commission that will discover what went wrong. Henry Kissinger is not the man to head this supposedly independent commission.

Update: 10 December 2002. John Prados critiques the choice of Kissinger in the American Prospect. (§§) Additionally, the Congressional Research Service has issued an opinion that Kissinger must disclose his client list. (***)

Atrios of Eschaton, a web log, writes that Christopher Hitchens’s head is “exploding” now that Henry Kissinger, his nemesis, is working for President Bush on the 9/11 investigative commission. (*) Yet, is this not the same Henry Kissinger that the establishment Left, and Atrios, incidentally, so shamelessly embraced a few scant weeks ago when Kissinger had public words of caution to Bush on Iraq policy? (†)

The question is Henry Kissinger’s credibility. If he were credible, the fact that he spoke up against some aspect of Bush’s Iraq policy a few months ago would be worthwhile taking note of. If Kissinger is credible, furthermore, the case against him as chairman of the 9/11 commission would be deeply undercut. On the other hand, if he is not credible, then his words of caution on Iraq carry no special significance simply for being spoken by the Henry A. Kissinger.

Leftists, like everyone else, must choose one position or another. While it is conceivable that Kissinger is right sometimes and not others, the point is that the Left cannot treat Kissinger as credible one day but not the next. He is either credible or not. Otherwise, an explanation is in order. Notably, no explanation is forthcoming.

Again the establishment Left has dived into inconstancy and capriciousness. It supports Kissinger and cites him when it suits their interests, but when it is not any longer convenient, the establishment Left uses the same man to bash their perceived enemies. It is all of a piece.

According to the analysis of Atrios and the establishment Left, Christopher Hitchens is now on the right-wing. They say he switched. Yet, Hitchens’s Slate article shows that he is able to maintain a critical posture against the Bush Administration even as he gives voice to his genuinely progressive conscience on the pressing issue of Iraq policy. (‡)

Hitchens is part of the independent Left. So are many of us. We independents are slowly taking back the Left, and there is nothing that the establishment Left can do about it anymore. The days of the establishment Left’s political correctness run amok, its unending support for Soviet agents like Hiss and the Rosenbergs, its whitewash of Stalin’s crimes (in particular, the disgraceful argument that Hitler was worse than Stalin), and its unending capriciousness are all soon coming to a close. The establishment Left is fading.

The Left is not a monolith. A person like Hitchens is perfectly consistent in supporting some key aspects of Bush’s Iraq policy while criticizing Bush severely on other issues. That is not inconsistency; it is complexity. It is important that we on the Left rededicate ourselves to our core values, and eschew arguments on the basis of convenience.

Adapted from a comment made on Eschaton. (§)

Update: 9 December 2003. Jay Reding comments. (**)

George W. Bush has made one of the worst political mistakes of his life in naming Henry Kissinger as chairman of the national commission to investigate the government failures that preceded and failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The announcement was made Wednesday. (*) Earlier, it looked like a commission to investigate 9/11 would not be created, due to excessive partisanship. (†) Fortunately, Congress finally authorized an investigation. It did so in Title VI of the recent intelligence budget authorization bill, HR 4628. Regardless of its formal name, there can be little doubt that it will usually be referred to as the “Kissinger Commission.”

Even as Dr. Kissinger, Nobel Peace Prize winner, continues to evade the war crimes tribunal that wants him as a witness, and as possibly a suspect in the investigation of thousands of murders and crimes against humanity perpetrated against the people of Chile in the 1970s at the behest of the US government, when he was President Nixon’s personal vassal, now he is named to serve on the commission that will investigate the worst crime against humanity committed in the 21st century.

The purpose of the commission is to answer why the federal government failed to protect its citizens from the attacks of 9/11. In particular, the commission will produce a report bolstered by evidence that ought to be decisive against those who hold conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks. Who believes in those conpsiracy theories? Predominantly, and unfortunately, it is the Left.

Kissinger’s long record of lying to the public and covering up secrets does not bode well for the commission’s credibility. He has made a career of dissembling about the US’s unfortunate role in propping up dictatorial client regimes around the world, from that of Chile’s Pinochet to that of Indonesia’s Suharto. Kissinger starts his work with no credibility with the Left, even when it is certain parts of the Left that the commission most needs to persuade.

I have never flirted with the notion that 9/11 was anything but an unexpected attack by foreign terrorists. With the appointment of Kissinger, the case of the conspiracy theorists is strengthened. Even though it does not provide any positive evidence of any conspiracy, Kissinger’s appointment makes Bush look calculating, cynical, and Machiavellian. It makes people suspicious of him, particularly with regard to Bush’s potential negligence in the months preceding the attacks.

The work has not yet begun. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that the Kissinger Commission will produce a report of outstanding value. There is no doubt in my mind, however, that regardless of the quality of the work, the fact that the commission’s chairman will be Henry Kissinger will irremediably taint it with suspicion. If the commission finds that Bush and his administration did all they could to prevent 9/11, that conclusion will be questioned on the basis that Kissinger, the chairman, is biased and untrustworthy. If the commission finds that Bush or his administration failed in some germane way, that, too, will be questioned perhaps as trying to provide cover for some even worse failure.

My own pet theory is that Bush knows of Kissinger’s bad name among the left-wing, and he just wanted to rub the Left’s face in the fact of the conservative victory at the polls this election cycle. Indeed, there is nothing that progressives can do now to stop Kissinger from taking the helm.

This is a terribly rash decision by President Bush that he will eventually regret. With the formation of this commission, Bush had a chance to put all the ceaseless, vile rumors to rest. Instead, he chooses to put Henry Kissinger in charge of the thing, just to show how powerful he is. Instead of being able to rely on an independent commission to investigate all the evidence fairly, now we as alert, patriotic citizens must have a high degree of concern that we are being lied to. With the appointment of Kissinger, we must now not decrease, but increase the level of scrutiny that we put on Bush and his administration.

Christopher Hitchens vents spleen upon Henry Kissinger in Slate. (‡) Hitchens notes that Kissinger is currently being sued for the murder of Rene Schneider of Chile. Another particularly important charge against him is that under his business concern Kissinger Associates, Henry Kissinger may have ongoing, secret business dealings with Gulf oil oligarchies. Can there be any doubt that Kissinger is a business partner with the Saudis? This is the man that is supposed to investigate 9/11? Kissinger’s conflicts of interest gape like an open maw.

The New York Times finds that Kissinger’s supposed biggest strength—being an insider—is in fact his biggest drawback. The Times editorializes that it is

tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed.

It seems improbable to expect Mr. Kissinger to report unflinchingly on the conduct of the government, including that of Mr. Bush. He would have to challenge the established order and risk sundering old friendships and business relationships.

(§) While the Times may delve too deeply into the probability of expectations, it makes the important point that even if all the evidence of Kissinger’s crimes is rejected, with his insider relationships, Kissinger is the right man for the wrong job.

David Corn surprises me with a useful article in the post-Hitchens Nation. “Asking Henry Kissinger to investigate government malfeasance or nonfeasance is akin to asking Slobodan Milosevic to investigate war crimes.” (**) Corn goes on from there to make a strong, detailed case about why Kissinger cannot be trusted, especially in this role.

Finally, the Guardian sums it all up. (††)

There has been a long-standing need for an independent commission to investigate what the government did wrong when it failed to prevent the 9/11 attacks. With the creation of the Kissinger Commission, there is still a need for such an independent commission.

There is more delay in setting up a special commission to investigate what went wrong with national defense and security on 9/11. Some members of Congress are accusing the Bush Administration of secretly nixing any deal to create the commission. The Bush Administration denies obstructionism. Some consider it possible that the Bush Administration is attempting to fend off any blame that might attach to it, but the commission should not be set up to blame anyone. It should be designed to plug the holes and fix the problem. (*) All the while politicians squabble, the day when new attacks are set to strike the US and our allies draws nearer. For many years now, the bipartisan approach to basic foreign policy and national security decisions has been undermined. Highlights have included accusations by many, including myself, that Bill Clinton was “wagging the dog” when he fired missiles at the Sudan and Afghanistan during a tense moment in the Lewinsky scandal. As we now know, those missiles were meant for Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. Had they successfully struck their targets, we might not have had 9/11 in the first place, and we could continue our pointless partisan bickering in peace. It is not only stupid political fights that have undermined our nation’s defense against external threats, however. It is also neglect. Our defense and security infrastructure is in desperate need of attention, repair, and refurbishment.

No one really knows what we could have done to prevent 9/11, and that is the problem. Without that information, we are in a poor position to stop the next attack. Considering the current level of Al Qaeda chatter and broadcasted threats, that next attack may already be very near. (†)

So can we hurry up and create an investigative commission and get back to the business of fighting the War on Terrorism, please?

In Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s book, A Thousand Days, Daniel Patrick Moynihan is quoted recalling a conversation with the columnist Mary McGrory after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Moynihan said. “Mary McGrory said to me that we’ll never laugh again. And I said, `Heavens, Mary. We’ll laugh again. It’s just that we’ll never be young again.’” Perhaps that is the best summary of the perspective of those who are able only to watch from a distance as their country is wounded. As I look back upon that day more than a year ago, I feel old when I never did before.