Like most other Americans, I won't forget where I was or what I was doing when I first saw the news about the 9-11 attacks. I had just arrived at work when a couple of co-workers wheeled a portable television into the employee workroom where there was a cable connection and we started watching the coverage about a half an hour after the first attack. The room soon filled up with horrified people watching as the second plane hit the tower, the Pentagon in flames and the crash in the open field in Pennsylvania.
There was a surge of emotion, an unusual mix of feelings that I can't really remember ever having before. I had never been to New York City, but the first time I ever visited there I felt compelled to go to the WTC site. The memorial was complete, but it was one week before it opened so I didn't get to see inside. But standing there, looking at those holes in the ground where the towers once stood, I got the same feeling that I had when I was watching the news coverage.
The Pentagon Memorial was complete by the first time I visited there. I walked around, planning to spend an hour, but I felt compelled to read every name and the information on the memorial about all of them. And I got that same feeling there, and at the memorial in the field in Pennsylvania when I visited there. When I go to museums or memorials, I like to get the feel of the place by looking at the information that is displayed, but at these 9-11 memorials, I had to read everything.
There were lots of references to 9-11 being the "Pearl Harbor Moment" for the current generation. It's the kind of event that only happens once in a generation. I heard a lot about Pearl Harbor from my parents, who were in their early 20's then. I was too young to remember much about the Kennedy Assassination. So 9-11 was that "once in a generation" experience for me, too.
The Comparison to Pearl Harbor
When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it unified a country that was divided over isolationism versus getting into the European war on Britain's side. All the attention was focused on Japan. War was declared, giving Roosevelt what he needed in terms of support when Germany and Italy decided to line up with their Japanese allies and declare war on the United States. All of the American energy and attention, though was focused on Japan, though with most of the Pacific navy sunk or damaged at Pearl, there was little the US could do to avenge the attack right away.
In order to keep the country unified and moving ahead, the "Doolittle Raid" was a stunt by the air force with two purposes in mind. One was to boost morale at home with an air strike against the Japanese mainland. The other was to convince the Japanese to make a strategic military decision to commit its navy and air force resources in the Pacific, aimed at the keeping the United States at bay, rather than securing the Chinese coast and their conquests in Southeast Asia.
The raid itself was very small, 16 B-25 bombers took off from aircraft carriers and headed for Tokyo. Though it was a small raid that did little damage, setting some fires, hitting a few war-production facilities and killing about 50 Japanese, with about 400 injured, it was a tremendous shock to Japan's military leaders, raising doubts about the ability to defend Japan from air attack. It was also a tremendous boost to the home front in the United States. The war aims were clear, the US was defending its own territory and protecting its people from the aggressive military dictatorship in Japan, and also from the spread of Nazi domination as a result of Germany's declaration of war.
Where It Went Wrong
After 9-11, Bush had a window of opportunity open that included support from a previously fractured Congress, to avenge the attack and to make an effort to end the kind of terrorism it represented. The strongest influence in the White House was Vice President Dick Cheney, a leftover from the previous Bush administration, a war monger and heavily invested in defense contracting. Cheney saw the same window of opportunity. It was the might of the US military going after a terrorist organization that had planted itself in remote, rugged, primitive Afghanistan.
The US vented its frustration and anger over the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center in the brief war that resulted in toppling the Islamic Emirate government of the Taliban, and sending Bin Laden and what was left of Al Qaida into neighboring Pakistan. That raised some big, and still unanswered questions about US aims. Pakistan is a full military ally of the United States. Why didn't the Bush administration exhert some pressure to get them to either hand over Bin Laden, or let military forces go in after him? Eventually, the US did get him, under President Obama's leadership.
But what happens in Afghanistan, where the Taliban government had been deposed? It does not appear that the Bush administration gave much consideration to the past history of the country when it decided that it would remain in the country, rebuild it, and establish a democratic constitutional government. There are plenty of theories and opinions about what should have happened, most concluding that a short occupation to restore order, allowing the various tribal and provincial groups to set up a provisional government and then getting our military out completely being the best course.
The problem was that after the terror of 9-11 that included the devastation to the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and the four hijacked planes, Afghanistan was an anti-climactic military operation. Americans wanted revenge and they wanted to do some damage so that no terrorist organization would ever dare try something like that again. Most people couldn't separate Al Qaida from all other Muslims in the Middle East. In order to claim success and satisfy the anger and frustration of Americans, Bush would have to get Bin Laden. Short of that, they needed to find someplace where they could drop some bombs, vent some of the frustration and anger and declare success.
And one of the Middle Eastern dictators attracted enough attention to make his country the target.
Shock and Awe in Iraq
Saddam had taunted the US following the 9-11 attacks, made a lot of noise and helped fuel the anti-Islamic sentiment in the US by siding with Al Qaida and saying that the US had deserved what it got. That opened the door for the "big lie." The Bush administration claimed that Iraq was harboring "weapons of mass destruction" and was also giving safe haven to some Al Qaida leadership who had fled there instead of to Pakistan. Cheney was one of the war hawks from the First Gulf War who had advocated for taking out Saddam as an objective and was held back by George H. W. Bush. As it turned out, there were never any "weapons of mass destruction" found, in fact, Iraq's war capacity was extremely weak.
Nor were there any members of Al Qaida anywhere near Iraq. Iraq itself is not a traditional Arab or Muslim province. It is a state created mainly by British influence following the first World War based on their economic interests and ability to control the region when the Ottoman Empire was dissolved. Saddam Hussein's ability to remain in power depended on a shaky coalition made up of majority Shiite Muslim population and Sunni and Kurdish minorities. It would have been suicidal for his regime to harbor a terrorist group like Al Qaida, though he couldn't resist taunting Bush when the attack happened.
The record shows that Bush and Cheney knew there were no weapons of mass destruction and likely knew that there were no Al Qaida members being harbored in Iraq, but they couldn't resist taking advantage of the war fervor and the anger and frustration that the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center had created to do what Cheney had wanted to do in Iraq during the First Gulf War. He wanted to overthrow Saddam and make Iraq an American military outpost in the Middle East.
And so the United States invaded Iraq, bombing Baghdad in a night called "shock and awe" by Bush, toppling Saddam and wrecking one of the more modern, progressive countries in the Middle East. Instead of eliminating terrorism, as was the supposed aim of US military action in the region, it incited more insurrections and launched more terrorist activity than existed before. The whole reason groups like Al Qaida form in the first place is to resist the presence of foreigners in their own countries whom they see as a threat and who deny them the full benefit of the natural resources their countries produce, specifically oil. In fact, the Bush administration originally planned to call the invasion "Operation Iraqi Liberation", but backed away when it was pointed out that the acronym was OIL. So it became Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Remembering Why Americans Loath Dick Cheney
Most Americans couldn't tell the difference between any sect of Islam, and were ignorant about the difference between the 1% of Muslims who were "radicalized" and the 99% who were not. Iraq was already on the "Bad Arab" list because of its invasion and occupation of Kuwait and the war that followed. Hussein was a brutal dictator, but no worse than any Saudi or other Middle Eastern Emirate who were close allies and business associates of the Bush family's oil business. Iraq was a balance of a Shiite Islamic majority, and minority populations of Sunni, Kurds and Christians.
The US invasion toppled the balance and made Iraq an unstable mess. The US created "democratically elected government" was a Shiite majority that existed only inside the "green zone" of US military security in Baghdad. A brutal Sunni insurgency formed, engaging in an alliance with a rebel group in Syria and morphing into ISIS. The Kurds pushed the American occupation for more autonomy, and the Christian minority was placed in mortal danger, with many of them either fleeing the country or being slaughtered. Instead of preventing Iraq from being a place that "harbored terrorists," the US invasion turned Iraq into a cluster of terrorist regimes.
That is the political legacy of the Presidential administration of George W. Bush. His successors were all forced to clean up the mess.
We're Out and That's Where We Need To Remain
The United States spent $8 trillion on the Afghan and Iraq wars, and sacrificed the lives of 7,000 American servicemen and women. We did not achieve the goal of preventing either country from serving as a base for terrorists, nor did we establish self-sustaining democratic governments in either country. Terrorism is the only weapon that has worked for the people of this region against the domination and influence of foreign powers, and so as long as they sense oppression and manipulation from "the big countries" terrorist insurgencies will form.
And where did all that money go? Much of it made its way into the pockets of those who had a vested interest in our invasion and occupation of both countries. The oil business buddies of Bush had their eyes on Iraq's vast oil reserves. Defense contractors, including Cheney himself, made vast fortunes in Afghanistan. The fact that it was as much about making money as anything else is evident in the number of expatriate Americans that had to be evacuated from Afghanistan prior to the withdrawal.
Nothing can change the fact that it was President Obama, trusting his military advisors, who made the decision to take out Osama Bin Laden when the opportunity presented itself. It was politically risky, especially if it had failed, but he took the risk and made the decision. Getting out of Iraq was an even bigger mess than anticipated, requiring a series of difficult decisions, but it had to be done and that decision stands in contrast with the one made on false pretenses by Bush and Cheney that got us in there.
The decision to end the military presence in Afghanistan, made by President Biden, was also courageous because of its political implications, but necessary because it had a high cost and wasn't achieving its ends. It was the right thing to do and when the time came, hastened by the collapse of the Afghan government and army, he made it without hesitation achieving the evacuation of over 120,000 people ahead of it, a remarkable logistical and military achievement. Anyone calling it a "botch" just doesn't know the truth.
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