We look to our presidents to lead the nation. With the 2016 election upon us, it is important to reflect on the meaning of leadership. Media personalities and political pundits are obviously not students of history, and offer little to enable us to truly assess the merits of candidates. It is important to research the facts and ignore unqualified opinions in the media. A case in point is the media reaction to Trump's "outrageous" comment about President GW Bush being responsible for 9/11.
Leadership involves insight and judgement, something President GW Bush failed to demonstrate in anticipation of 9/11. We seem to have trouble understanding the concept of leadership. For example, the media tells us about Hillary Clinton's "experience" to lead. This despite a Mid East foreign policy that in 2013 was described by the Russian Foreign Minister as "like watching a monkey holding a grenade". A colorful depiction indeed! And as Secretary of State, she ignored repeated requests for increased security by the US Ambassador to Libya. Where was the leadership?
In the most recent Republican Debate, Jeb Bush proudly defended his brother, President George W Bush by saying "my brother kept us safe". Donald Trump, no stranger to controversy, recently drew the ire of Jeb Bush and the media, when he said 9/11 happened on GW's watch! CNN and the rest of the media lemmings quickly latched onto the comment and tried to make it another example of Trump audacity. The reality is Trump was 100% correct, and here's why.
When President GW Bush took office in January 2000, it was his responsibility to assess the state of the nation and craft a strategy to immediately assess critical risks. He failed to do this, and failed to recognize the severity of the terrorist threats clearly identified between 1995 and 2000. If this was a corporation, the board would have fired Bush and his entire cabinet after 9/11 for failure to recognize a well documented threat pattern. Once again, a monumental failure to implement a strategy and lead!
The United States was like a sleeping giant relying on the common perception that no nation dared to attack US soil. Only eleven years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and historic defeat of the Soviet Union, Congress perceived that there was no significant enemy, and under Clinton leadership, dismantled a significant portion of the US intelligence gathering apparatus. Yet, the United States experienced embassy bombings overseas, and citizens lost their lives in dutiful service to our Nation. Those embassy attacks were the early rumblings of a new enemy on the horizon. But the distant nature of those attacks failed to elicit clear policy direction from the White House and Congress. Congress and the White House relegated those attacks to a poorly understood "bucket" called terrorism. And the country was left with the illusion that the homeland was secure. That grand illusion was shattered permanently on September 11th 2001. The Clinton and Bush administrations would like us to think we were all caught by surprise, but our intelligence community and the executive branch were well aware of the threats.
The world’s most powerful nation was attacked, and we the citizenry were all introduced to a new name, Al Qaida. Neither the White House nor Congress were prepared with a cogent strategy to deal with, let alone thwart the attack. Where was the Central Intelligence Agency? Didn’t they have the responsibility to understand these issues? The reality is they did, and they asked both Clinton and Bush administrations for budget to address the threat, BEFORE 9/11. The CIA had knowledge of transnational terrorist threats, including Bin Laden and many others, but under both Clinton and Bush lacked resources to comprehensively protect the Nation’s interests. Resources were being split across numerous initiatives. The mindset at the CIA was still transitioning from the Soviet era to monitoring state sponsored terrorism a la North Korea and Iran, as well as anti-nuclear proliferation.
Despite George Tenets repeated warnings, Bush failed to recognize the severity of the threat. GW Bush should have demonstrated insight, seeing a well publicized weakening of the intelligence infrastructure by Clinton as a policy failure. From the early 1990’s, Congress and the White House significantly leveraged this perception and reduced the budgets and reach of the CIA. Intelligence gathering suffered. Bush offered no change to that strategy. Contrast that to Trump's policy to strengthen a weakened military "so no one messes with us".
In March 2004 George Tenet, the Director of Central intelligence wrote “After the US embassies in Africa were bombed, we knew that neither surging our resources nor internal realignments were sufficient to fund a war on terrorism. Consequently, in the fall of 1998, I asked the Administration to increase intelligence funding by more than $2.0 billion annually for fiscal years 2000-2005 and I made similar requests for FY 2001-2006 and FY 2002-2007. Only small portions of these requests were approved.” Could you imagine Trump not addressing such a policy weakness? It's highly likely he would have made Tenet's budget requests a priority. That is a major contrast in leadership.
In March 2004 George Tenet, the Director of Central intelligence wrote “After the US embassies in Africa were bombed, we knew that neither surging our resources nor internal realignments were sufficient to fund a war on terrorism. Consequently, in the fall of 1998, I asked the Administration to increase intelligence funding by more than $2.0 billion annually for fiscal years 2000-2005 and I made similar requests for FY 2001-2006 and FY 2002-2007. Only small portions of these requests were approved.” Could you imagine Trump not addressing such a policy weakness? It's highly likely he would have made Tenet's budget requests a priority. That is a major contrast in leadership.
If the well reported Iraq WMD fiasco doesn’t tell everything about the status of the CIA between 1999 and 2003, a look at the emphasis on terrorism in the DCI testimony to Congress in 1999 and 2001 shows the CIA had detailed knowledge of terror threats, but measuring the amount of testimony given to transnational terrorism vs. more traditional state sponsored threats and nuclear proliferation, you get a sense for where the true focus and prioritization of the agency was. And that probably explains a lot about the reactionary response to the 9/11 attacks. With knowledge of transnational threats in hand, the White House failed to lead. And the reaction was a cataclysmic policy blunder when the White House went down the WMD path. Clearly by 2004, the emphasis in CIA reports had clearly shifted to Al Qaida, Bin Laden and other Islamic fundamentalist terror threats. But it took 9/11 to catalyze that shift.
Tragically, the response, the Iraq war, was a major cluster, initially costing the US $400,000,000 per month, cumulatively $1.4 Trillion over the last 10 years. Put in another perspective, the cost of the two wars (Iraq & Afghanistan) contributed over 10% to the US National Debt. Had Tenet’s budget requests been granted as far back as 2000, and had the CIA been properly funded and unleashed to launch surveillance programs and gather intelligence in a comprehensive manner, the Bush White House would most likely have been properly advised, and preparatory policies and strategies defined.
So in the final analysis Trump was correct. Any incoming president has a duty to analyze the prior administrations policies and identify weaknesses. It's hard to imagine President GW Bush did not have the opportunity to be briefed by CIA Director George Tenet and to rectify a clear Clinton policy failure. Any new CEO knows that all you hear when taking the job is what was wrong with the old CEO's policies. Listening analyzing and correcting is a hallmark of leadership. You can bet Donald Trump will not make the same mistake!
So in the final analysis Trump was correct. Any incoming president has a duty to analyze the prior administrations policies and identify weaknesses. It's hard to imagine President GW Bush did not have the opportunity to be briefed by CIA Director George Tenet and to rectify a clear Clinton policy failure. Any new CEO knows that all you hear when taking the job is what was wrong with the old CEO's policies. Listening analyzing and correcting is a hallmark of leadership. You can bet Donald Trump will not make the same mistake!
