No, they wouldn’t have prevented 911. And no, Ben Carson, neither would have declaring oil independence.
The frightening thing, of course, is that neither of these positions are as disconnected from geopolitical reality as Obama’s remain, almost seven years into his presidency. But now we just have to hold on and survive the next fifteen months.
“We kicked their ass in Afghan.” can be countered by, “We spent lives and treasure before doing what we should have in the first place… wait for the chance to send in the seal team.”
Donald keeps flubbing the right answer while Jeb and talking heads repeat the wrong one.
“wait for the chance to send in the seal team.”
Where did that SEAL team fly in from? How did they get to that location in Afghanistan? How did we supply that location? How did we get the intelligence to find Osama?
I don’t think you can make the argument that we could have just waited. That SEAL team had a long tail.
I don’t think you can make the argument that we could have just waited.
I’m not. Smart also involves humint. sitting on butts watching satellite feeds just doesn’t cut it.
Spies are too valuable not to have.
Yes but don’t ignore that we needed an airfield, specialized aircraft that were not based in the USA, force protection, drones and a lot of stuff I don’t know about. The logistics of supporting even a small operation require a long tail.
The mission that took out OBL relied on what we had built up over the course of the war but we did get our special forces in pretty quick in the beginning, so maybe we could have done something similar for a short duration but that mission would have been far more complex than the one that eventually took out OBL.
My recollection is the 9-11 terrorists entered the US legally, many using student visas. So just enforcing immigration law wouldn’t have helped. Background checks for visitors from certain trouble areas might have helped. But the big goof was preventing those who noticed that something was up from telling law enforcement.
What if they couldn’t get student visas?
Untold thousands (tens of thousands, perhaps far more) foreign students attend colleges and other educational establishments in the US each year. Few of them are terrorists. Many universities are experiencing declining enrollment so they love foreign students who pay full price. Several of the hijackers were attending flight school here legally. All blocking student visas would achieve is to cost a lot of Americans their jobs.
Jobs or lives? What a tough choice. Visa has a purpose. You’re saying they should not.
I can’t believe you are making this argument.
Visa is not a gift. It has a purpose even though seldom used.
It’s not as if others wouldn’t fill jobs by keeping bad actors out.
Grandma from Sweden I’m not worried about.
IIRC, there were several of the hijackers in the US taking flying lessons for quite some time before 9/11. I think they came over at least a year earlier on student visas to get their training at US flight schools. They would’ve arrived during the Clinton administration. And no, I’m not blaming Bill Clinton since they had nothing indicating their intentions. Some of that may have been due to the Jamie Gorelock wall that prevented intelligence agencies from sharing information with law enforcement agencies. That wall was created during the Clinton administration.
Sounds like your blaming Clinton and you’d be right to. No president can prevent everything. Bad guys are still responsible for their actions. However, you can make it easy by giving out visas willy nilly.
Any country with leaders calling for death to America should have more scrutiny of visas. If the FBI can’t keep up, they just don’t come in.
More to chew on.
The first time the Atlantic agrees with Trump, I imagine, and it’s only because they can stick it to Bush one more time.
Truth is truth regardless the source. I liked Bush, but that doesn’t make all his decisions right. Trump had to shake up my thoughts for me to see it. I liked that we kicked butt, but smarter is better.
But, everyone is “smart” after the test has been taken, and the answers published.
If the system design is, always be “smart” and anticipate every catastrophe before it happens, well, that is not a robust design in a causal world.
Life is not about anticipating every punch that comes your way, but learning to roll with the ones that connect, and come back up swinging.
The idea that one could have imposed draconian restrictions on visas prior to 9/11/2001 is pure fantasy. That was a different world, and a different country, than the one of today. GW did an excellent job rolling with the punch. Obama has thrown it all away, and thrust our glass jaw forward to be punched again.
That world already had terrorist attack warnings (trade center, Cole, etc.) Psychics not required. Having the strongest military and not using it just makes sense. We can always send them in when seals don’t get the job done.
Its kinda funny that leftists today think that there is no jihad threat and that any thoughts of threats are based in islamophobia but at the same time think that Bush should have done more to prevent 9/11 during a time when jihad was barely on the radar.
Can you imagine what they would have said of Bush using the military to go after Islamic militants prior to 9/11? The same people who thought we shouldn’t do anything after 9/11 or blamed us for what happened?
Once they felt safe again, they turned on the fellow who made them so, and tore him to pieces. GW was one of the finest Presidents of my lifetime, and I’ve been around since Kennedy. It is a travesty the way this country has treated him.
I find it difficult to even care anymore. The blue cities and states are the most vulnerable to future attacks. What they have sown, they will reap. It’s not my problem anymore.
I’m not inclined to defend Trump on most things, but the fact of the matter is, he has at least a partial point on 9/11 regarding immigration policy.
It’s said, accurately, that only 3 of the 19 hijackers were illegal aliens. This much is true. It’s further said that without those 3, the attacks would have happened just as they did anyway. That is false.
Fact, there were 4 planes, and 4 hijackers with pilot training (one per plane).
Fact; at least 2 of the *pilots* were among the illegal aliens. Those two planes hit WTC 1 and the Pentagon. It is thus absolutely arguable that, had those two pilots been detained (such as when arrested and/or coming through airport immigration while illegal) those two planes would not have been part of 9/11, due to there being no one to fly them.
One of those two illegal aliens was Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader. On July 19th 2001 he was allowed to reenter the USA after a trip to Madrid, in spite of his illegal status and criminal record (he’d been arrested for driving without a license and also had a warrant issued for failure to appear). He was also on a terror watch list.
I’ll also mention that his reapplication for a student visa for flight training was approved a year after he flew AA11 into WTC1.
BTW, I’ve seen it argued elsewhere (such as on the usually-reliable Power Line which has a post up on this issue) that George W. Bush couldn’t have done much regarding enforcement because the Democrats controlled congress in 2001. This is patently false on two levels. First, he could have enforced existing laws. Second, it’s a fact that the Democrats did not control congress in 2001, with the sole exception of the Senate for a few days in January until Chaney became VP and broke the 50-50 tie. After that, Republicans controlled both houses. (they’d held the house for quite some time). (though it’s of course arguable whether or not anything could have been gotten through congress).
So IMHO, Trump has at least part of a point on this one, and it’s a point well worth looking at.
Trumps position is with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Is there any record of him, or any of Bush’s other critics on this matter, making statements critical of the Visa situation prior to 9/11/01?
Personally, I rather doubt that Trump, new as he is to his current immigration position, was taking this line before 9/11.
However, some people were. I was one of them; I’ve been complaining about the lax enforcement of immigration laws, including visa overstays, since Bush, Sr, was in office, and part of my complaint was that some illegals are dangerous. I got even louder about this after the ’93 WTC attack (yet another terror attack that could have been prevented by actually applying our immigration laws and not giving amnesty).
So yes, plenty of people were aware of this problem back then, because it was glaringly obvious.
Do I blame Bush for letting 9/11 happen? Of course not. I do however think it’s apt to point out that lax enforcement of the law, coupled with government ineptitude, on his watch may have prevented 9/11 from being stopped.
The reason to point out how things could have been done differently is to learn lessons. Apparently, this is one lesson that was ignored by too many, so I’m glad Trump raised it.
I’m not a Trump fan, not by a longshot, but I do thank him for putting the immigration issue front and center, and keeping it there.