Enough Already!

Will people please stop trying to make political points off of 9/11, please? In my quest to avoid hypocrisy, I do not hold anyone blameworthy for failing to prevent 9/11. Prior to the infamous date, terrorists hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings was something that might happen. Just as much as an attack on our military and commercial computer systems might happen, or that China might invade Taiwan. In those late 90 and very early 2000 days, any law enforcement agency would have seen an inquest into charges of racial profiling as more likely than an actual terrorist attack on American soil.I did not blame anyone, but trying to pin blame on someone will bias any findings and will prevent the report from actually fixing the mistakes that allowed the event to happen.

Examinations of President Clinton's last national security report show that terrorism was not the top on his administration's list of concerns. So what? It certainly wasn't on mine. Perhaps I am naive, but can people just stop thinking about politics and start getting on with the one thing that the federal government is supposed to do, which is protecting its populace? If mistakes were made, then learn from them, make changes and move on.

Update: Here is what a White House press release regarding the report cited above and about what the Clinton Administration's priorities were:

The report previews the President's national security agenda for the coming year, including: forging a lasting peace in the Middle East; securing the peace in the Balkans and Northern Ireland; helping Russia strengthen its economy and fight corruption as it heads toward its first democratic transfer of power; furthering arms control through discussions with Russia on the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and deeper reductions in strategic nuclear weapons; implementing China's entry into the WTO and other global institutions while promoting freedom and human rights there; easing tensions between India and Pakistan; building on hopeful developments between Greece and Turkey to make progress in the Aegean, particularly on Cyprus; securing new energy routes from the Caspian Sea that will allow newly independent states in the Caucasus to prosper; supporting democratic transitions from Nigeria to Indonesia; helping Colombia defeat the drug traffickers who threaten its democracy; fighting weapons proliferation, terrorism and the nexus between them; restraining North Korea's and Iran's missile programs; maintaining vigilance against Iraq and working to bring about a change in regime; consolidating reforms to the world's financial architecture as the basis for sustained economic growth; advancing global trade; enacting legislation to promote trade with Africa and the Caribbean; pressing ahead with debt relief for countries fighting poverty and embracing good government; reversing global climate change.

Two things strike me as necessary to say about this: First, it is a tour-de-force in the use of semicolons; and Second, the US had a shitload of stuff on its foreign relations plate. There was a lot to get done, and if non-state sponsored terrorism wasn't on the top of that list, it might be because it still didn't have the urgency that killing 3,000 people can give an issue.

Link via Robert Tagorda