Leadership, bureaucracy and Risk

Reading the 9/11 report is revealing. It is obvious that we suffered a lack of leadership and an overly bureaucratic system. Both of these sicknesses doom a free people. The question is: "why was leadership so weak and why was congressional oversight so deadly for us?" It might suprise you to hear that I have the answer: Risk

After Vietnam and Watergate, the press and the intellegencia became very critical of executive action. The heads of Justice, CIA and the president were too risk averse. They were unwilling to take the bold action
that the country needed. Worse, Congress worked to weaken the CIA and Janet Reno and Jamie Gorelick crerated the infamous wall. This culture of weakness invaded even lower levels of the white house. The report says, "even officials who acknowledge a vital threat intellectually may not be ready to act on such beliefs at great costs or at high risk." Pg. 119.

This high risk was identified by the report on page 114. The CIA had developed a plan in May 1998 to capture Bin Ladin. However, they abandoned it, worried about failure: "millions of dollars down the drain; a shoot-out that could be seen as an assasination; and, if there were repercussions in Pakistan, a coup." You will remember that 70 days later Bin Ladin bombed U.S. embassies Kenya and Tanzania killing hundreds, wounding thousands and costing America at least $46 million dollars. http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive_Index/U.S._Gives_Kenya_Tanzania_46_Million_in_Bombing_Aftermath.html

I want to believe that 9/11 has forced Americans to grow up and realize that the threats are real and deadly. After all the first unalienable right is the right to Life, upon which Liberty depends. We have to secure our actual safety in order to secure our freedom. I am not suggesting that we trade the former for the latter, rather that we simply order them so as to secure both. Justice Goldberg wrote in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez (1963), "[W]hile the Constitution protects against invasions of individual rights, it is not a suicide pact."

We cannot afford the sophomoric, reactionary, culture of the Left. When I hear Kerry, Dean, Moore and the rest of the childish hippe crowd and I think, "Dudes, the president is not your dad. Grow up and help him be commander-in-chief. There is adult work to be done."