Nine days later bin Laden hammered the Pentagon and the Trade Towers.
9/11 Deception
The violence of September 11 was not a surprise to the Bush Administration. That is beyond dispute. The Administration was planning to attack Afghanistan and Iraq, but lacked Congressional authorization; that is beyond dispute. Three times in the previous nine months the Administration had rejected custody or the assassination of Osama bin Laden, and that is beyond dispute.
These facts may explain why the President misled the nation in his evening speech on September 11. He characterized bin Laden's criminal act of terrorism as malevolent warfare, something equivalent to the attack on Pearl Harbor. "Today our way of life, our very freedom came under attack...These acts...were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat."
Criminal acts of terrorism are typically handled by police action, international police action if necessary, to bring criminals to justice. And this was an act of terrorism, not a new Pearl Harbor. The hijacked airliners were not the vanguard of a naval armada, an air force, and a standing army committed to full scale war, which Pearl Harbor represented in 1941.
Police action was called for, but police action was not on George Bush's mind.
To secure Afghan pipelines and Iraqi oilfields, he needed military might--armed invasion and occupation--and in his evening speech he laid out his ingenious subterfuge. "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them," he said. In the chaos of the day's events the President's clever conflation was overlooked, but by its logic the U.S. could obliterate Italy for harboring the Mafia. Mr. Bush continued, "...America and our allies...stand together to win the war against terrorism." (9) (Italics added.)
The Bush Administration's "Global War on Terrorism" had been declared. In one dazzling sentence in a speech to the nation President Bush transformed into a noble cause his long-intended invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Now he needed the Congressional authority to proceed, and he wasted no time seeking it. The next morning, September 12, the White House submitted to Congress a draft Joint Resolution to authorize military action. It asked the Congress to resolve(10):
That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, harbored, committed, or aided in the planning or commission of the attacks against the United States that occurred on September 11, 2001...
That would authorize an attack on Afghanistan, putting the pipelines within reach. But what about the "...capture of new and existing oil and gas fields" in Iraq? There was nothing to suggest Iraq's complicity, so the final clause of the Administration's draft asked for carte blanche. The President would be authorized also "...to deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." (Italics added.) Mr. Bush could target any "aggressive" nation at will. That would suffice.
President Bush lobbied hard for the package. In a speech that day he said, "They were acts of war...freedom and democracy are under attack...[we will use] all of our resources to conquer this enemy."(11)
With the nation in shock Congress passed P.L. 107-40, the Authorization for the Use of Military Force--but wisely struck the carte blanche clause. The Bush Administration could use military force in Afghanistan, but pre-emptive war elsewhere was denied. That problem would be addressed later.
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