Seeing things our way:

Readers of this weblog know our view is that al Qaeda is a menace, not a state power, and that Bush should have rounded these guys up in Tora Bora when the political and tactical opportunities existed (roughly from September 2001 - March 2002). Instead, the Bush administration has played defense (PATRIOT Act, airline security, Orange Alerts, fingerprinting visitors) in addition to using the terror threat to boost the military budget. It's almost as if an arsonist and his cronies were on the loose, and the response is to put more fire extinquishers in the house. But that's silly. You go and capture the arsonist.

In any event, we are beginning to see opinions expressed that Bush's reaction to 9/11 was a missed opportinity, and a way to further other policy goals (most notably invading Iraq). We suspect that this (slowly growing) consensus is the result of time. Where are these al Qaeda guys? Where are the weapons caches? How come there hasn't been anything other than truck and car bombs - and in far away places?

The answer might be that al Qaeda - dispite admiration from a segment of the Islamic world - is effectively 2,000 folks with a millionaire sugar daddy. (We hasten to point out that we could be wrong in this assessment, but our view at least deserves consideration in the debate since all evidence to date points to a less-than-impressive al Qaeda.) WIth that said, here are some excerpts from commentators about Bush's overall response to 9/11:

James Carroll writing in the Boston Globe (via Random Walks)

George W. Bush obscenely exploits war for his own purposes. He sponsors a paranoid assessment of what threatens America now and draws political advantage from the resulting fear. The news media propagate that fear. Pundits continue the false opposition between "realist" and "idealist" visions, marginalizing anyone who dares question Garrison America.

Paul Krugman (get it before it becomes a pay-to-view-article)

Most Democrats feel, with justification, that we're facing a national crisis — that the right, ruthlessly exploiting 9/11, is making a grab for total political dominance.

George Soros, writing in The Atlantic (mostly about foreign/military policy

The terrorist attack on the United States could have been treated as a crime against humanity rather than an act of war. Treating it as a crime would have been more appropriate. ...

Declaring war on terrorism better suited the purposes of the Bush Administration, because it invoked military might; ....

The war on terrorism as pursued by the Bush Administration cannot be won. On the contrary, it may bring about a permanent state of war. Terrorists will never disappear. They will continue to provide a pretext for the pursuit of American supremacy.

posted by Quiddity at 1/06/2004 03:21:00 PM