By David Green
It hasn’t been a good time for Bush administration attorneys general.
In addition to Alberto Gonzales’ current travails, John Ashcroft brought some upon himself in his visit to Hofstra last week.
Mr. Ashcroft’s appearance didn’t manage to upset Congress, but neither did he acquit himself well, and I don’t refer merely to the tepid audience response to his presentation.
Like all the president’s speeches, Mr. Ashcroft’s talk was all 9/11, all the time. Some New Yorkers might take offense at having a Missourian come lecture us about 9/11. And many Americans are tired of Bushistas continually exploiting this tragedy to justify their policies and their positions.
What I found much more bothersome was that, like other current and former members of the Bush administration, Mr. Ashcroft has a rather strained relationship with truth.
Ashcroft came to Hofstra to deliver a lecture on leadership, but spent most of his time at the podium discussing the events of 9/11 and the administration’s commitment to preventing terrorism.
But the story he told is a fantasy.
The real story is that when the administration came to office, they were warned during the transition that al Qaeda and terrorism were serious threats. But since that warning came from the hated Clinton team, they ignored it and began instead obsessing (as then-Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill confirms) about Iraq from the very beginning.
The real story is that the president’s terrorism honcho, Richard Clarke, tried in vain to get a meeting of the administration’s top officials to talk about terrorism. Eight months later they finally met. By this time it was one week before 9/11, and, worse, the meeting got ‘hijacked’ into a discussion of Iraq instead.
The real story is that the intelligence circuits were humming with imminent threat during the summer of 2001, including a highly specific warning in July, but the Bush administration couldn’t be bothered to address the issue.
The real story is that George Bush famously received his August 6th briefing entitled “”Bin Laden Determined to Strike In the U.S.” His response to the CIA official who presented it to him? “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”
The real story is that, even after that warning, Mr. Bush – who would later fly across the country just to sign legislation intervening in the Terri Schiavo family’s personal medical tragedy – remained in Crawford on vacation during the rest of August 2001.
Compounding this folly, Mr. Clarke reports how immediately after 9/11 Don Rumsfeld insisted on bombing Iraq – even though it had nothing to do with the attack – because there were “lots of good targets” there, and few in Afghanistan where al Qaeda was. A couple of days later, the president dragged Clarke and others into a side room and tried to intimidate him into finding an Iraq link to 9/11.
Given these real events – as opposed to the fairytale version told by Ashcroft – it’s no surprise that Clarke (a Republican who had served Reagan, Bush I and Clinton, and who had voted for Bush in 2000) would say in 2004, “I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he’s done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11.”
Mr. Ashcroft’s lecture was supposed to be on “Leadership In Challenging Times”. Instead we got a false recounting of history, and very little in the way of principles or lessons learned.
Perhaps I can suggest one. I would argue that one of the fundamental principles of leadership is that good leaders model the behavior they want from followers, and certainly avoid asking of others that which they wouldn’t do themselves. In this light, I found it further offensive for Ashcroft to suggest that the Bush team represents great leadership in providing for America’s security.
Mr. Ashcroft didn’t rush to the jungles of Vietnam to defend his country when it was his turn. Instead, he sought and accepted seven draft deferments. Mr. Bush didn’t make sure he got himself there, either, instead having his congressman father pull strings to get him a safe gig at home. A young Dick Cheney wangled no less than five deferments, and never made it overseas either. Asked about this later, our super-hawkish vice-president actually said, “I had other priorities in the 60’s than military service.”
In fact, among the Bush inner circle, the only person who had done combat duty was Colin Powell, the one person they didn’t listen to as they made their plans for Iraq. It’s worth noting, by comparison, that both Al Gore and John Kerry were sons of high governmental officials and could have easily avoided service too. Instead they made sure they got to Vietnam to serve their country.
The truth is that Americans have been sold the most astonishing set of lies by the likes of John Ashcroft these last six years, resulting in the most disastrous results for our country and others. Lies about history, lies about war, lies about dismantling the Bill of Rights, and lies about patriotism.
At Hofstra, Mr. Ashcroft repeated several times the admonition given to him by the president in the days following 9/11: “Don’t ever let this happen again.”
Given the truth about what had happened prior to that fateful day, one wonders why Ashcroft didn’t reply, “Mr. President, why did you let it happen the first time?”
David Green is an associate professor ofpolitical science at Hofstra. He teachescourses on American, comparative andinternational politics. You can e-mail himat [email protected]