First Response: Hand Wringing

This comes from an article regarding the trial of Salim Hamdan. The point has been argued before, but not really as an admission from a member or al Qaeda:

In advance of attacks, Mr. [Ali] Soufan [a top counterterrorism investigator] said, Mr. Hamdan would often be alerted to prepare vehicles for a rapid move, in case of an American retaliation. He added that Mr. Hamdan came to believe that Washington’s failure to launch massive retaliations after the 1998 attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa and the 2000 Cole bombing emboldened Mr. bin Laden. The al Qaeda leader believed the U.S. would never send ground troops to pursue him in Afghanistan, Mr. Soufan said.

Thanks, Clinton administration! Bin Laden said it himself, people follow a strong horse over a weak horse. And, in the late 1990s leading up to 9-11-2001, Bin Laden clearly saw himself as the strong horse, especially because of the lack of a strong response by the US government again and again during a series of brazen attacks throughout the 1990s.

After the 2000 USS Cole bombing, key Clinton figures met to discuss a response to the attack. The meeting included Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, CIA Director George Tenet, Richard Clarke, who was basically the counterterrorism czar, and Attorney General Janet Reno. Richard Clarke was the only Clinton official in that meeting who urged a strong military response. The others demanded more “proof,” which is difficult when the perpetrator incinerated himself in the attack, or fretted over our image as strongman before the Muslim community, or, in Janet Reno’s case, argued that a military response against Bin Laden’s Afghanistan camps might violate international law — as though a country has no right to bomb the training camps in another country (Afghanistan) ruled by an internationally-unrecognized autocracy (The Taliban) that produce terrorists (Bin Laden) who openly brag about attacking that country.

Indeed, in Richard Miniter’s book “Losing Bin Laden,” he related an exasperated CIA official, Michael Sheehan, asking of Clarke: “What’s it going to take to get them [the Clinton administration] to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?”

Apparently so. One can argue Bush’s incompetence prior to Gen. Petraeus (historical note — it took Abraham Lincoln eight tries with seven generals to find his savior general: Irvin McDowell, George McClellan, John Pope, McClellan again, Ambrose Burnside, Joe Hooker, George Meade, Ulysses S. Grant), but one cannot argue with facts. Everyone thought the US would certainly be struck again by terrorists after 9-11. Nobody would have predicted 7 years straight without it. Beyond our technological advantages finally being utilized (what the far left mistakenly terms “domestic spying”) it’s hard to argue that our strong military responses in Afghanistan and Iraq have not given al Qaeda second thought about their tactics, even as they commit brazen acts of violence against Europe, which never replies with a military response.

And so, one wonders should a President Obama take control, will the foolish over-lawyered hand-wringing on our international image, dealing with terrorism strictly as a law enforcement issue but never as an issue of national defense, etc., simply bring us back to the Clinton era, when we hamstrung our own intelligence and investigative personnel to the point that terrorists struck us at home with ease?