The September 12 Mentality

I think Andrew Sullivan made an effort to popularize that term at one point, and I liked it. Take, for example, Steve Hayes latest bout of enthusiasm for Dick Cheney who, he says, "has not moved on. He still awakens each day asking the same questions he asked on Sept. 12, 2001."

I mean, is that really supposed to be a good thing. I don't remember my mental state on 9/12/01 in perfect detail, but a broad-brush outline would be that I was freaking out. Nobody knew how many people had died the previous day, but the total was assumed to be way higher than the 3,000 or so it turned out to be. People (except for Dick Cheney, The Weekly Standard, and The New Republic) mostly assumed it was al-Qaeda, but nobody really knew and nobody really knew anything about al-Qaeda. Meanwhile, I was really, really, really scared that we'd just witnessed the first wave of some sustained assault on the United States. Like emergency workers were going to be deployed to New York, only to find skyscrapers in the cities they'd left tumbling down. Or maybe a masked man would just start opening fire in a crowded shopping mall and gun people down. Going to a college that doubles as a tourist attraction suddenly went from neat-but-annoying to terrifying.

It simply put, wasn't the best day to be making decisions. Obviously, the country's top leaders need to make decisions in crises. At the same time, they're bound to be fallible like everyone else. And, like everyone else, eventually they need to calm down, step back, and evaluate what's happening. But Cheney and his hagiographer see it as a virtue that he continues to make decisions based on the panicky and inaccurate vision of events we had on 9/12.

Comments

That would be the difference between you and actual leaders, wouldn't it. Thanks in advance for the warning not to ever vote you into office.

Posted by Matthew Dallman | August 15, 2007 5:50 PM

It seems trite from overuse, of course, much as Hamlet seems full of cliches, but FDR's 1st inaugural still seems relevant to me here:

"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory."

Posted by Brandon Claycomb | August 15, 2007 5:53 PM

On September 12, it was perfectly understandable to view terrorism as a significant threat to the United States. Now, it isn't. I simply cannot understand people who continue to think that terrorism represents anything close to the kind of threat that we have considered it. Using an honest definition of terrorism less than a dozen Americans have been killed by terrorism since September 11th. On American soil, the number is exactly zero. Even using the absurd, expansive definitions of terrorism that people insist on using-- the DC snipers were terrorists camp-- the threat is incredibly, incredibly small. Nuclear war is an existential threat. Global warming might be an existential threat. Terrorism is a threat on par with lightening and bees.

Posted by Freddie | August 15, 2007 5:57 PM

What an odd, odd misreading of the article by Matthew. Cheney isn't "mak[ing] decisions" based on 9/12 information. He is "asking the same questions" he asked on 9/12.

But I guess actually reading the article is unnecessary for the Reality Based Community.

Posted by Al | August 15, 2007 6:00 PM

BTW, according to the article, the two questions that Cheney asked himself on 9/12, and every day since, are the following:

"When is the next attack? And what can I do to prevent it?"

I take it from Matthew's post criticizing Cheney for asking these questions every day that Matthew thinks these two questions are not questions the President and Vice President should be asking every day.

Posted by Al | August 15, 2007 6:05 PM

What an odd, odd misreading of the article by Matthew. Cheney isn't "mak[ing] decisions" based on 9/12 information. He is "asking the same questions" he asked on 9/12.

The distinction, as made here, seems to amount to very little. If he's still "asking the same questions", it follows that he doesn't have a grasp on the information that we've gained since 9/12. Which in turn means he's not making decisions based on that information. Which in turn gets us exactly to the formulation used by MY.

Posted by strannix | August 15, 2007 6:07 PM

it follows that he doesn't have a grasp on the information that we've gained since 9/12. Which in turn means he's not making decisions based on that information. Which in turn gets us exactly to the formulation used by MY.

Really? So, according to you, based on the "information that we've gained since 9/12" Cheney should be able to answer the two specific questions he asks:

"When is the next attack? And what can I do to prevent it?"

That's pretty impressive information we've gained since 9/12!

Posted by Al | August 15, 2007 6:12 PM

On September 12, it was perfectly understandable to view terrorism as a significant threat to the United States.

The fact is that except to the the VP who was supposed to have headed some WH group on terrorism but never had a single meeting of the members, even before September 11 it was perfectly understandable to view terrorism as a significant threat to the United States.

Posted by gregor | August 15, 2007 6:25 PM

The questions Cheney really asked on 9/12 were "How soon can we use this to invade Iraq?" and "Where's the money?" I assume he's not still asking the first.

Posted by KCinDC | August 15, 2007 6:28 PM

Damn KCinDC beat me to it. Another version:

Surely the questions Cheney has been asking himself since 12 Sept. are:

"How can we exploit a national tragedy to concentrate ever more power and wealth our hands and those of our cronies?'

"How can we harness the feelings roused in our fellow citizens (soon to be subjects) behind an entirely unrelated agenda of world domination."

Posted by J | August 15, 2007 6:35 PM

it was perfectly understandable to view terrorism as a significant threat to the United States.

Okay, what is the evidence to suggest that terrorism represents a significant threat to the United States? As I have indicated, the numeric threat is tiny. You are more likely to drown in a bathtub or get mauled by a dog or hit by lightening or from eating tainted food. More people in a month are killed by car accidents in this country than were killed on September 11th. If an attack of the same size was committed every year, terrorism would not be among the 30 greatest causes of death in the country. Of course, we have not seen any terrorist attacks on the country at all since 9/11.

I know the difference between those kinds of threats, the political differences, the emotional differences, etc, from terrorism. But surely the actual, physical threat is the most important aspect. Is terrorism a problem? Sure. Is the problem anywhere near our biggest? No. Could the risk of attack grown suddenly by a huge amount? Could the number of people killed by terrorism jump suddenly? Yes. But surely it's on the person making that claim to justify it. So where's the evidence?

Posted by Freddie | August 15, 2007 6:43 PM

Al- Even if we were going to take Cheney's honorable ntentions on faith, it would be disconcerting if the White House hadn't moved on from the tactical questions of 9/12. And moved onto more strategic questions about how to forestall nuclear proliferation, eliminate loose nukes, strengthen our strategic alliances, lessen the appeal of violent extremism, and so on.

But instead we learn that Cheney and Bush are still in a panic mode similar to 9/12. A panic that lead them to invade the wrong frickin' country. Unlike many Democrats I generally assume that Bush and Cheney thought they were doing the right thing, it's just that they were (and apparentally still are) gripped by an hysterical fear, which causes the to lash out blindly at any potential enemy.

Posted by AJ | August 15, 2007 6:55 PM

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/columnist/0,1299,DRMN_86_105,00.html

Posted by Paul Campos | August 15, 2007 7:03 PM

Cheney still reacts the same way he did on 9/12: he went to ground on 9/11 like a man with other priorities always will. Then he became even more annoying, secretive, belicose, and wrong that he'd been before.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | August 15, 2007 7:16 PM

it would be disconcerting if the White House hadn't moved on from the tactical questions of 9/12. And moved onto more strategic questions about how to forestall nuclear proliferation, eliminate loose nukes, strengthen our strategic alliances, lessen the appeal of violent extremism, and so on.

There is no reason to think they haven't done so.

The fact that Cheney still asks when the next attack is doesn't mean he is ignoring those strategic questions - in fact, it seems to me that it requires him to think about those questions.

But instead we learn that Cheney and Bush are still in a panic mode similar to 9/12.

No, we don't. I mean, cite me where I can find Cheney and Bush still in "panic mode".

Posted by Al | August 15, 2007 7:19 PM

Why was Cheney so obsessed with this that he bypassed or corrupted much of the intelligence system of the U.S. to find flunkies who would feed his paranoia with lies and balderdash?

I suspect there's a connection to Cheney's recurrent role during the Reagan and first Bush Administrations in the top-secret "Continuity of Government" program. Mostly devised by Oliver North, it was a massively funded effort to ensure that someone in the official chain of command would survive a Soviet nuclear attack on Washington D.C., or as the program mutated following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a terrorist nuking of D.C.

Three teams of officials were designated, headed by a rotating Cabinet officer officially in line to become President. These various Secretaries of Agriculture and Commerce were intended to be legal figureheads who could give orders to the military. The powers behind the thrones would be their designated chiefs of staff: Cheney, then a Congressman; Donald Rumsfeld, then a business executive; and James Woolsey or at other times Kenneth Duberstein. Several times per year, Cheney would assemble with a Cabinet secretary and 40-60 federal officials in the middle of the night at Andrews Air Force Base, and be flown to various holes in the ground where they would go through a 3-4 day exercise pretending to fight a nuclear war. James Mann had all the details in the Atlantic Monthly in March 2004.

This is pure speculation, but I suspect that all of this planning for apocalypse had an indelible impact on the psyche of Cheney (and on Rumsfeld, too, although perhaps to a lesser exent, as well as on Woolsey, another Kool-Aid drinker)

Posted by Steve Sailer | August 15, 2007 7:25 PM

A lot of ink gets spilled on what 'really' separates lefties from righties in this day and age, and I wonder whether this tidbit doesn't point to an interesting piece of the answer: righties tend to be romantics, believing that our best cognition comes from a mindset that is thoroughly engaged in the relevant emotions of a situation (such as the righteous anger prompted by a terrorist attack); while lefties tend to be more rationalist, considering more affectively cool cognition to be more reliable.

Posted by philosopher | August 15, 2007 7:27 PM

A lot of ink gets spilled on what 'really' separates lefties from righties in this day and age, and I wonder whether this tidbit doesn't point to an interesting piece of the answer: righties tend to be romantics, believing that our best cognition comes from a mindset that is thoroughly engaged in the relevant emotions of a situation (such as the righteous anger prompted by a terrorist attack); while lefties tend to be more rationalist, considering more affectively cool cognition to be more reliable.

Posted by philosopher | August 15, 2007 7:27 PM

As a fellow Harvard Student on 9/11, I was glad I was at Harvard, because we're a bunch of ivory-tower liberal flag-burners and heaven knows al-Qaeda appreciates our tacit support. That's why when I got kicked out of Harvard I went to Berkeley, another well-known al-Qaeda-sympathetic institution bent on turning America gay and socialist whilst simultaneously inviting in Islamic fundamentalists with open arms (and rectums! UBL is UNBELIEVABLY BABE-A-LISCIOUS & LOVERLY!)

Posted by Gregorio | August 15, 2007 7:49 PM

Cheney kept his cool on 9/12. He and Rove had to come up with a reason why President Bush flew around the country looking for hiding spots on 9/11 instead of acting like a leader (letting Giuliani TM 9/11). They came up with a good lie and gave their friend William Safire a call. Safire then wrote a column:

A threatening message received by the Secret Service was relayed to the agents with the president that "Air Force One is next." According to the high official, American code words were used showing a knowledge of procedures that made the threat credible.
(I have a second, on-the-record source about that: Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, tells me: "When the president said 'I don't want some tinhorn terrorists keeping me out of Washington,' the Secret Service informed him that the threat contained language that was evidence that the terrorists had knowledge of his procedures and whereabouts. In light of the specific and credible threat, it was decided to get airborne with a fighter escort.")

--snip--

"It would have been irresponsible of him to come back, pounding his chest," says my source, "when hostile aircraft may have been headed our way. Any suggestion that he should have done so is ludicrous."

Confession: I made just that suggestion in yesterday's column, which stimulated two set-it-straight calls. Why didn't the V.P. make an appearance during that long afternoon in Bush's stead? The official reason is that Cheney was busy in the basement; the real reason, I think, is that he was unduly concerned it would appear presumptuous.

The most worrisome aspect of these revelations has to do with the credibility of the "Air Force One is next" message. It is described clearly as a threat, not a friendly warning -- but if so, why would the terrorists send the message? More to the point, how did they get the code-word information and transponder know-how that established their mala fides?

That knowledge of code words and presidential whereabouts and possession of secret procedures indicates that the terrorists may have a mole in the White House -- that, or informants in the Secret Service, F.B.I., F.A.A. or C.I.A. If so, the first thing our war on terror needs is an Angleton-type counterspy.

We all were worrying about the country and the victims of the 9/11 attack. Cheney was worrying about the image of the president. Cheney constructed the reality and the rest is history.

Posted by terence | August 15, 2007 7:56 PM

Freddie - I simply cannot understand people who continue to think that terrorism represents anything close to the kind of threat that we have considered it. Using an honest definition of terrorism less than a dozen Americans have been killed by terrorism since September 11th.

Bull crap. Over 1900 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan and Iraq at the hands of radical Islamists - excepting the Ba'athist killers and Sunni tribes that warred with us as not classic radical Islamist terrorists, but as nationalists.

I know it is difficult for your ilk to consider our men and women in uniform "innocent Americans", but try.

After all, Freddie, don't you "Love and support the troops sooooo much!" Aren't you just a "dissenting patriot"???

PS - The death count from radical Islam since 9/11 is in the 100s of thousands - most easier targets like black Africans and Iraqis. It is a lot harder to go after Westerners now than pre-9/11. Not that the Islamists haven't tried hard and we have busted up over 15 major plots by the combat arms of radical Islamists that would have killed hundreds, thousands...

******************************
AJ - it's just that they were (and apparentally still are) gripped by an hysterical fear, which causes the to lash out blindly at any potential enemy.

An arguement could be made that the Bushies overreacted and were too stupid to pick up on those that wished to use fear to advance their own agendas - like neocons, Iraqi exiles. Just as the Democrats listen too much to transnationalist progressive scum attempting to shield terrorists by claiming the "civil liberties of soccer moms are threatened by Gitmo and listening in on Islamist communications.

But I wouldn't call it hysterical fear. Not when radical Islam has butchered over 9 million people since 1947. Not when we face malignant Muslim nations that declared themselves enemies of America and other nations...The problem is that too few people are yet willing to say the problem is hundreds of millions within the 1.3 billion Muslims that support radical Islam and using combat teams to promote Jihad by striking at the infidel and even more, Muslims that disagree with their extreme Shiite beliefs or Sunni Salafist creed to violence...

Posted by Chris Ford | August 15, 2007 11:29 PM

Am not sure who those 9 million are, Chris, although I'm sure you'll be glad to tell me. But re the U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, dontcha think that might have been less likely to have happened if we hadn't, um, invaded those countries?

Posted by THS | August 16, 2007 1:07 AM

Thanks, Brandon Claycomb, for the passage from the FDR speech. I have to admit that I've never read the speech, so I was really struck the second sentence.

And thanks, Prof. Campos, for your editorial. I hope you are making those arguments in many forums.

Posted by THS | August 16, 2007 1:10 AM

As someone else pointed out, on 9/12 and BEFORE, Cheney's (and Bush's) only concern was: how can we get a justification to attack Afghanistan so we can get the pipeline and the heroin, and how can we get a justification to attack Iraq, so we can get the oil off the market to make the Saudis happy until we can figure out a way to cut them loose, too?

Not to mention: "How can we use this to put this country into a 'national security state' where we can do anything we want?"

Not to mention: "How can we line our pockets and the pockets of all our cronies as well?"

Worrying about the next attack? They KNEW about the FIRST attack! Maybe they didn't CAUSE it like the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, but they KNEW about it! And they prayed for it in the PNAC documents that yearned for a "terrorist Pearl Harbor"! Just like that idiot columnist is now praying for a second 9/11!

Rice says publicly that "nobody thought of terrorists flying planes into buildings." Yeah, right - in March, 2001, the "Lone Gunmen" series pilot episode on national television had EXACTLY that scenario - flying a plane into the World Trade Center - AND which, interestingly enough, was in fact a con job by a US government faction in order to stimulate the arms market!

And we're supposed to take the notion seriously that Cheney is just too, too concerned about this country's security to be rational?

Again, pardon the phrase, but bitch, please...

Cheney and Bush don't give a rat's ass about this country's "security".

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | August 16, 2007 1:33 AM

Pro Tip: The appearance of whiny trolls indicates that your "let's rethink the idiotic foreign policy assumptions we developed in response to 9/11" post has worked.

Posted by Nintendo Power | August 16, 2007 4:28 AM

I, for one, would like to know why was everyone so scared. I mean, really. If you had loved ones in the buildings, then yeah, I get it. You're afraid for them. But barring that, I don't understand why anybody would be "freaking out" or be "really, really, really scared" about it. I'd like it if someone explained to me the rationale behind a country of 300m people clutching their knees and crying because of a terrorist incident, especially since it doesn't happen anywhere else in the world.

Posted by Rohit | August 16, 2007 4:49 AM

Well, I was in NY on 9/11. I didn't freak out that day, or the day after. I watched a lot of TV. My mental state oscillated between:

"Why the hell is everyone suddenly being so reverent towards George Bush? He's still the same numpty he was last week";

"In retrospect, I'm rather glad I missed the train in to that meeting at the World Trade Center this morning";

"I hope they get the phone lines up and running soon so I can get in touch with my family and tell them I'm OK";

"I hope they take some time to find out who did this rather than just flying off the handle - I mean, look at them, they're over-reacting already";

"I wonder how long it'll be before I can get a flight out of JFK";

and "Hey, let's go to the beach!"

Posted by ajay | August 16, 2007 5:02 AM

Over 1900 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan and Iraq at the hands of radical Islamists

Either you're ignorant to what terrorism means, or you want to expand the definition of terrorism until it has no real meaning at all. Soldiers killed in battle are not the victims of terrorism. Terrorism, by definition, involves attacks on civilians. Or were the Nazis terrorists too? The British? The Confederacy?

Posted by Freddie | August 16, 2007 6:35 AM

Chris Ford, the problem with treating attacks on US military as acts of "terrorism" is that you thereby destroy all distinction between terrorism and warfare. Under you're reasoning, our troops are engaged in terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 9/11 was as legitimate an instance of military action as the Allied bombing of Germany and Japan in WW II.

9/11 wasn't warfare--9/11 was a contemptible crime. You people with your fantasies about WW IV against Islam are (to the extent you act upon them) simply the mirror image of al Qaeda.

Posted by rea | August 16, 2007 8:25 AM

'BTW, according to the article, the two questions that Cheney asked himself on 9/12, and every day since, are the following:

"When is the next attack? And what can I do to prevent it?"

I take it from Matthew's post criticizing Cheney for asking these questions every day that Matthew thinks these two questions are not questions the President and Vice President should be asking every day.'-Posted by Al

They are indeed stupid questions for the president and VP to be asking. Stopping plans in the final stage of execution is almost impossible. When it happens it is because the actors are too incompetent to pull it off. You stop terrorist plots during recruitment and procurement, when terrorists are forced to deal with those whom they can not trust. That does not entail knowing when they are going to attack. If Cheney hasn't learned even that simple lesson yet he is more of an idiot than I ever thought. Another possibility is that he just doesn't care; that he is spouting off what he thinks sounds appropriate.

Posted by Njorl | August 16, 2007 10:20 AM

Me: But instead we learn that Cheney and Bush are still in a panic mode similar to 9/12.

Al: No, we don't. I mean, cite me where I can find Cheney and Bush still in "panic mode".

Bush's denial of reality on Iran and Cheney's drum beating for war with Iran are, in my judgement, clearly a manifestation of panic. Overestimation of the immediacy of the threat, combined a reach for exteme and ill thought out responses.

Bush's refusal to withdraw our forces from Iraq due to his fear of being 'followed home' by Salafist Iraqi terrorist (out of a country that already has no border control at all) rings of either panic or BS, take your pick.

Posted by AJ | August 16, 2007 3:30 PM

'BTW, according to the article, the two questions that Cheney asked himself on 9/12, and every day since, are the following:

"When is the next attack? And what can I do to prevent it?"

Too bad those weren't the questions he was asking the 9 months he was in office before September 11. They sure were the ones Richard Clarke was asking.

Posted by Dawn | August 16, 2007 4:33 PM