One Man’s Prescience
I confess to enjoying this week’s dustup over ABC’s docudrama “The Path to 9/11.” Practically every newspaper in the country weighed in on it, mostly to complain about the portrayal of Clinton administration officials as soft on terror. Some of them called on ABC to pull the plug all together. The producers did bow to pressure to delete some scenes but nobody was satisfied. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer bunch. These are the people who thought “Fahrenheit 911” was good clean fun.
Of course they were soft on terror. In fact I can think of only one senior official from either party who took the rising threat seriously before 9/11. That was George Shultz. Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State was giving speeches in 1984 warning of the danger. That was nine years before the first attack on the World Trade Center, and seventeen years before the second. At the time Shultz was widely dismissed as an alarmist by many of the same folks complaining the loudest now. He’s still at it, still calling a spade a spade, and still being ignored.
He shouldn’t be. If anyone has earned the right to a respectful ear he has. He is no fire breathing radical who thinks we should turn ourselves into a police state or who thinks the solution to every problem is a military one. On the contrary, he believes the fight can be won without unduly compromising civil rights or abandoning diplomacy. He does advocate a stance based on moral clarity and dismisses out of hand the idea that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Terrorism has no place in civilized society. It cannot be condoned as a legitimate means to redress even the most egregious grievances. We all know what a terrorist is. We should call them that and stamp them out whether they operate in Palestine, Kashmir, Singapore, or Madrid. We should insist that our friends do that as well and know that those who refuse are not our friends. They are apologists for the unspeakable. This is not something on which reasonable men and women can afford to disagree.
Shultz points to the Great Seal of our republic for the appropriate metaphor. “The eagle faces the olive branches to show that the United States always seeks peace but holds onto the arrows to show that we in the United States understand that, if we are to be effective in seeking peace, we must be strong.” Shultz believes peace is possible even in those parts of the world where violence is at its worst, but first the process must be wrenched from the hands of terrorists. No progress can be made until you have two parties who can say yes. As long as terrorists control the agenda they can always set off a bomb somewhere and disrupt any positive change.
As we argue today about who was or was not soft on terrorism in the 1990s, it’s worth remembering Shultz’s words in 1984. “We cannot allow ourselves to become the Hamlet of nations, worrying endlessly over whether and how to respond.” But we did become the Hamlet of nations and in our current bickering we are in danger of reverting to form. For whatever reasons, whoever was at fault, we did not respond effectively in the two decades leading up to 9/11. For a time we did respond forcefully after 9/11. There are those among us who would now undo that. If they are allowed to succeed there will be other catastrophes. We really ought to be listening to George Shultz.
Of course they were soft on terror. In fact I can think of only one senior official from either party who took the rising threat seriously before 9/11. That was George Shultz. Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of State was giving speeches in 1984 warning of the danger. That was nine years before the first attack on the World Trade Center, and seventeen years before the second. At the time Shultz was widely dismissed as an alarmist by many of the same folks complaining the loudest now. He’s still at it, still calling a spade a spade, and still being ignored.
He shouldn’t be. If anyone has earned the right to a respectful ear he has. He is no fire breathing radical who thinks we should turn ourselves into a police state or who thinks the solution to every problem is a military one. On the contrary, he believes the fight can be won without unduly compromising civil rights or abandoning diplomacy. He does advocate a stance based on moral clarity and dismisses out of hand the idea that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Terrorism has no place in civilized society. It cannot be condoned as a legitimate means to redress even the most egregious grievances. We all know what a terrorist is. We should call them that and stamp them out whether they operate in Palestine, Kashmir, Singapore, or Madrid. We should insist that our friends do that as well and know that those who refuse are not our friends. They are apologists for the unspeakable. This is not something on which reasonable men and women can afford to disagree.
Shultz points to the Great Seal of our republic for the appropriate metaphor. “The eagle faces the olive branches to show that the United States always seeks peace but holds onto the arrows to show that we in the United States understand that, if we are to be effective in seeking peace, we must be strong.” Shultz believes peace is possible even in those parts of the world where violence is at its worst, but first the process must be wrenched from the hands of terrorists. No progress can be made until you have two parties who can say yes. As long as terrorists control the agenda they can always set off a bomb somewhere and disrupt any positive change.
As we argue today about who was or was not soft on terrorism in the 1990s, it’s worth remembering Shultz’s words in 1984. “We cannot allow ourselves to become the Hamlet of nations, worrying endlessly over whether and how to respond.” But we did become the Hamlet of nations and in our current bickering we are in danger of reverting to form. For whatever reasons, whoever was at fault, we did not respond effectively in the two decades leading up to 9/11. For a time we did respond forcefully after 9/11. There are those among us who would now undo that. If they are allowed to succeed there will be other catastrophes. We really ought to be listening to George Shultz.
posted by Onfoot at 10:05 AM
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