More than a hundred years ago, the philosopher George Santayana famously said “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Had he been able to peer into the distant future, Santayana would undoubtedly have used 9/11 as a case study to make his point. Three years earlier, on August 7, 1998, al-Qaeda destroyed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Two weeks later, the U.S. responded by bombing an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan. Clinton’s statement on the military strikes, as well as commentaries on terrorism and the American reaction, were remarkably similar to President Bush’s and pundits’ words in 9/11’s immediate aftermath. During the years that separated the two attacks, very little was learned. History repeated itself, to devastating effect.

In his autobiography, Clinton doesn’t mention his August 21 statement explaining his decision to employ military force. Had he done so, those who remember Bush’s September 20, 2001 address to a Joint Session of Congress would have immediately noted that Bush’s words were remarkably similar to Clinton’s. Clinton opined that (1) the terrorists were motivated by who we are, not by our policies, (2) we would not draw a distinction between terrorists and regimes that harbor them, (3) the struggle against fanaticism and terrorism would be a lengthy one, and (4) Islam had been hijacked:

    They have made the United States their adversary precisely because of what we stand for and what we stand against.

    . . . countries that persistently host terrorists have no right to be safe havens . . . There will be no sanctuary for terrorists.

    This will be a long, ongoing struggle between freedom and fanaticism, between the rule of law and terrorism. We must be prepared to do all that we can for as long as we must.

    I want the world to understand that our actions today were not aimed against Islam . . . [they were aimed] at fanatics and killers who wrap murder in the cloak of righteousness, and in so doing, profane the great religion in whose name they act.

Beyond the obvious—Clinton’s failure to “do all that we can for as long as we must”—there’s something else worth noting about his statement: neither “bin Laden” nor “al-Qaeda” are mentioned by name. The perpetrators are simply referred to as “terrorists.” Interestingly, the first mention of “al-Qaeda” in the New York Times was on August 28—three weeks after the embassies were bombed and more than four years after its first mention of “bin Laden”. It’s revealing that “al-Qaeda” first found its way into the Times when it published excerpts from the Federal District Court’s charges against a suspect in the Kenya bombing. One has to wonder whether the public was purposely being kept in the dark so as to sustain the don’t worry, be happy mood of the 1990s.

“Keeping people in the dark” brings me to an August 16 op-ed in the Times by Robert Gates, the Director of the CIA during the elder George Bush’s administration. Writing before the American retaliation, Gates averred that the greatest deficiency in American counterterrorism efforts wasn’t “strictures against assassination, nor inadequacies in intelligence and law enforcement.” Rather,

    It is in the perpetuation of myth and deception and spin by both the executive and legislative branches of our government, by both political parties, who seem unable to level with the American people.

Gates then listed some “realities” that the Government doesn’t acknowledge, the first of which is conflicting priorities:

    Our failures—for example to get the Pan Am 103 bombers out of Libya to stand trial, or to get more information out of the Saudi Government about the 1995 and 1996 bombings—[are due to the fact that] we face conflicting national priorities. The politically difficult and, indeed, unspeakable issue is whether the level of American casualties from terrorism is acceptable to our Government compared with the political, security and economic consequences of a far more militant approach to dealing with terrorism.

The second reality deals with the consequences of using military force:

    . . . a more militant approach . . . would, in virtually all cases, require us to act violently and alone. No other power will join us in a crusade against terrorism . . . No political or economic sanctions would work. Only violence. Only alone. And only if we can figure out how and against whom to retaliate.

Gates’ third reality is that violence begets violence:

    . . . retributive violence, no matter how massive, almost inevitably begets more violence against us in response . . . There is no quick, clean or conclusive end to retribution against terrorists. The war is the quintessential “long, twilight struggle,” with limited casualties on the terrorists’ side, occasional appalling casualties on our side, and countless victims caught in between . . .

The former CIA Director concludes with this appeal:

    Republicans and Democrats alike must stop hiding behind public opinion poles that purport to show that Americans don’t like foreign entanglements, especially those possibly involving sacrifice . . . It has required courageous and farsighted leadership . . . to persuade Americans of the need to lead and to protect our interests around the world, even knowing that the cost in blood and trerasure may at times be high. Such leadership has been sorely lacking in recent years at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Pretty clearly, one—if not the only—purpose of Gates’ op-ed was to put pressure on Clinton to respond militarily to the embassy bombings. Whether or not he would subsequently believe that the cruise missile attacks were sufficently “militant” isn’t known. What is known is that Clinton talked the talk but didn’t walk the walk: the 9/11 Commission Report, on page 135 of the Web version, states that

    A National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism had only briefly mentioned Bin Laden, and no subsequent national estimate would authoritatively evaluate the terrorism danger until after 9/11. [emphasis added]

Our government’s policymakers, not just the public, was kept in the dark:

    Documents at the time referred to Bin Laden “and his associates” or Bin Laden “and his network.” They did not emphasize the existence of a structured worldwide organization gearing up to train thousands of potential terrorists.

After 9/11, it was no longer possible for our Government to avoid talking about al-Qaeda and bin Laden. What could still be avoided, except for an occasional slip, is referring to the enemy as Islamic terrorists or Islamofascists. Political correctness and concerns about the consequences of unambiguously identifying those who wish to kill us has prevailed. History has indeed repeated itself.

Immediately after 9/11 and for a considerable period of time thereafter, we heard much about the paucity of human intelligence. In an op-ed published the day before our missiles were launched, James Bamford said that the NSA was losing its ability to rapidly analyze the “reams” of information to provide early warning of attacks. He even quantified the problem:

    . . . by the end of the Cold War, the agency was reportedly able to process only about 20 percent of all the intelligence it pulled in. And by the mid-1990s, that amount was estimated to have shrunk to a mere 1 percent.

All the more reason, then, to have been strenghtening our humint capability. But the trend was in the opposite direction. By 1998, the CIA’s humint resources had dwindled that Porter Goss, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee opined that “the cupboard is nearly bare in the area of human intelligence.”

Clinton had said “[w]e must be prepared to do all that we can for as long as we must.” 9/11 showed that his words weren’t translated into deeds.

An op-ed published on the same day as the missile strikes and written by John Deutch, who had served as the CIA’s Director during the first Clinton administration, reveals the frame of mind prevailing at the time. The idea of preventing terrorist attacks seems not to have crossed his mind:

    For some time, we have known that global terrorism, especially against United States targets, is on the rise and that we must deal decisively with terrorist attacks as they happen. [emphasis added]

And again:

    We must insist on tough and prompt responses to [terrorist] acts and on developing an effective capability to manage the consequences of those acts when they occur. [emphasis added]

At least in this regard, things have changed. The Bush Doctrine of pre-emption took care of that.

The New York Times was worried about over-reacting, not under-reacting, to the embassy bombings. In an editorial published the day after Clinton’s announcement, the Times said it was important to “set limits on the actions that may be taken.” As to increasing the CIA’s humint assets, the Times’ advice was “to do so under guidelines designed to avoid past abuses.” The editorial continues with these words:

    The doctrine of self-defense invoked by the Clinton Administration is valid when American citizens and embassies have been attacked or face assault. But the use of force should be commensurate with the threat and designed to limit civilian casualties . . . The temptation to authorize the assassination of terrorists will grow over time. It must be resisted, not only because it is inconsistent with American values but because it would invite a parallel effort against American leaders . . . Washington will have to be resourceful and resolute, but it has the power to prevail without abandoning its principles.

The editors didn’t say whether they thought the missile strikes were “commensurate with the threat.” This editorial, with its emphasis on the need for restraint in the use of American military power and its moralizing, was a preview of the Times’ present-day attitudes.

Numerous pundits have contrasted Bush’s unilateralism with Clinton’s multilateralism. A New York Times news analysis published two days after the American retaliation paints a different picture.

Previously, in pursuance of its policy of “aggressive multilateralism,” the Clinton Administration had, depending on the situation, either waited for law enforcement authorities to reach a conclusion or sought the broadest possible international support for its actions. Because the missile strikes were undertaken without the involvement of the UN or any other multilateral institution, they represented a “significant departure” from past practices.

According to senior American officials, there were five reasons for the policy change: (1) the long stalemate in the Middle East, (2) the lack of Saudi cooperation in the investigation of the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996, and (3) the UN Security Council’s delay in dealing with Iraq, (4) the ambivalence of Muslim allies, and (5) mounting evidence of impending attacks on more U.S. embassies. In these circumstances, Clinton was less inclined to wait and allow America “to again appear weak or irresolute.”

In other words, when the going got tough, Clinton decided to act alone. While the missile attacks were later to be correctly depicted as “pin-pricks,” the fact is that Clinton correctly concluded that it was time to shed his commitment to multilateralism. Long before 9/11, terrorism was causing America to go its separate way.

A final indication of things to come was the reaction of the Arab world:

    American credibility in the Arab world had already suffered because of Washington’s failure to secure an interim settlement in the Middle East peace negotiations. Arab countries are reluctant to provide public support for American military operations like Thursday’s, even when aimed at Mr. bin Laden, who is working to undermine the established Arab regimes.Senior Arab diplomats said that Arab ambassadors complained . . . that striking the Sudan—a member of the Arab League—was a strategic error, and noted that even Egypt had chosen to keep public silence about the strikes.

    But they did not make a point of defending Mr. bin Laden in private, though their countries refused to support the missile strikes in public, and the state-controlled newspapers in moderate Persian Gulf allies like Qatar and Abu Dhabi sharply attacked the American strikes as arrogant.