11 September 2012

Today's New York Times had its annual op-ed piece that Bush, Jr had ample warning of the 9/11 attacks but did nothing because he was incompetent. So I have to post my reply (the Times didn't allow any comments on that op-ed piece).

It is true that there was word that there were some people who considered the US a neocolonial power responsible for all of global poverty (I've spoken to some of them in Dubai, and, after hearing them, I always back away very carefully). It is also true that some of those people had sworn vengeance against the US. So the loony left says that Bush, Jr should not have complacently followed obsolete 20^th century laws with their quaint, completely out-of-date ideas such as 'innocent until proven guilty.' No, in the 21^st century, it's 'guilty unless proven innocent'.

Many of the hijackers had been identified by the Bush, Jr administration, but the security authorities had the antiquated thought that it would be impossible to hijack an airplane without any weapons, and illegal to arrest a person who had committed no crime just on suspicion. As the identified hijackers tried to board, they were stopped, carefully searched, found to be without any weapons, and allowed to board. At the time, the security authorities were too stupid to realise that the requisite tools for a hijacking--the box cutters used by the cabin crew to unpack the airline meals--were already on the airplane. Just because this had never been done, just because those box cutters had never been seen as weapons was no excuse.

If only Bush, Jr had been proactive and bundled every potential hijacker off to Guantánamo before 9/11, as a responsible president would have done. Not to mention banning all liquids, shoes, and belts, to keep America safe.

Instead, Bush, Jr followed established procedures to the letter. The most likely targets were identified, and every possible precaution taken to prevent an attack (and I know this because I was very nearly shot by a very nervous embassy guard in August, 2001). But the loony left thinks that doing things exactly as the top experts said they should have be done was irresponsible in the extreme, since it allowed the 9/11 hijackings.

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Of course, while Bush, Jr has my sympathy that the loony left blame him for 9/11, what he did after 9/11 (for which he is idolised) is what I condemn him for.

Right after the hijacking, the hijackers were identified as (mostly) young Gulf Arab men, and the hijackers' itinerary was identified as starting in Dubai, then going to Germany, then to London, and finally to the US.

Since then, the historians had to call the booking agents and get that itinerary modified.

Now, the hijackers started in Osama's cave in Afghanistan where he gave them the outline of the plot and some of the money they needed. From there, they went to Pakistan where Khalid Sheikh Mohammed taught them almost everything they needed to know to hijack airplanes and gave them more money. From Pakistan, they flew to Baghdad where Saddam gave them the last bits of information and the money they needed, and sent several of his top Republican Guard agents along with fake Gulf Arab passports (this is in Ken Coughlin's book about Saddam and his evil plots).

The fact that none of this modified itinerary actually happened hasn't kept it from the history books, since the New York Times now reports it as absolute fact, except for the Saddam bit, since the Times (a Democratic newspaper) still objects to the Iraq War now that it has been repudiated by the Democratic Party, but the Times still supports the war on Afghanistan and the drone war on Pakistan, since those are supported by the Democratic Party. And the passports of the hijackers now have Afghanistan and Pakistan posthumously stamped in them as the hijackers' only stops before the US.

And this allowed the US to march into Afghanistan and Iraq and subject people to proactive imprisonment and 'enhanced interrogation' and carpet bombing of civilian neighbourhoods that might house terrorists and, and, and...

Real life is much too messy. The improved version is much neater and has a better ending that makes a perfect circle starting with Osama's initiating the plot and ending when the Seals serve him Justice.

And everyone much prefers the neater version, so that's the one that will go in the history books.