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January 14, 2004
December Surprise
What if GWBush knew with certainty that he could find and capture Osama Bin Laden? Would he? Right away?
There's something a little strange about the reactions to Dean and Clark these days. What Dean has said about the Iowa Caucuses is right soudbiters be damned. If we keep getting sentences instead of paragraphs, anyone can be made to look like a genuine idiot. Dean is an idiot of opportunity and that's a good thing for everyone. Loose cannons break up sclerotic debate.
Now Slate throws its nose cautiously to Wesley Clark for saying things like:
President Bush didn't do his job as commander in chief in the early months of his administration. He was warned that the greatest threat to the United States of America was Osama Bin Laden, yet on the 11th of September in 2001, the United States had no plan for dealing with the threat posed by Osama Bin Laden. The ship of state was on autopilot. There were good CIA officers and FBI officers and everybody doing what they'd been taught to do, but the essential leadership process of putting focus on the resources of the United States, and giving these agencies a real target and a mission, it wasn't done. At least, I think that's what the evidence will show if we ever get the results of this presidential commission, and if they've asked the right questions.
Clark is correct to emphasize that it's not quite enough to say you are doing something, or that you have the right intentions. Bush has done little of late to update us on the prosecution of the search for Bin Laden. All signs point to Pakistan, we can't place troops there, and Musharref's can't do it alone. Or maybe he can but won't.
So Bush, having delivered Saddam, a handsome trophy indeed would have sealed his fate into a second term if he deliverd Bin Laden before November. But if the Democrats self-destruct, as they are likely to do by trying to outdo Republicans on foreign policy (where there are clearly no wonks to out-wonk Wolfowitz), Bush would do a hell of a lot better to deliver Osama in his second term.
The White House has got to be thinking that perhaps the duck has a 50% chance of laming up so whatever is big and controversial will have to wait until the next term, if it comes. So talk big with domestic things and get the electorate jazzed about Mars and Mexico. Sound strategy, but what about Bin Laden?
Clark is not wrong to put the pressure on.
Posted by mbowen at January 14, 2004 08:42 AM
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