Liberals are giddy over Richard Clarke. At last, somebody to slay the Bush Monster.
But it doesn’t seem to be working. Bush’s poll numbers have actually been improving while Clarke has been testifying before the 9/11 Commission.
Could it be that the American public knows something libs and their media elites chums don’t?
John O’Sullivan puts his finger on why the hearings may be having less impact than liberals fondly predicted.
Writing about the hearings, O’Sullivan notes, “There has been relatively little interest in al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden — and, not coincidentally, very little patriotic anger directed at them — in the hearings. Almost all the emphasis has been on American failures and in particular on the Bush administration.”
He continues:
“Al-Qaida’s attacks are treated as natural catastrophes such as an earthquake. They simply happen. If they succeed in destroying our homes, then the fault belongs to us for not installing anti-earthquake technology.
“Thus former anti-terrorism adviser Richard Clarke is widely praised for apologizing for the failure to prevent 9/11. Yet 9/11 was an act committed by radical Islamist terrorists who deliberately sought out the weak links in our defenses. Clarke had sought valiantly to prevent it — that was the theme of his testimony — but he admitted that his proposals would not have succeeded.
“So the net effect of his apology was to shift the blame from al-Qaida to others in government who might have been negligent in averting the terrorist threat. And the fickle finger of suspicion pointed to — President Bush and everyone in his national security team except Clarke.
“Try to imagine hearings on Pearl Harbor in which imperial Japan’s aggression was passed over lightly and America’s anger was directed at President Roosevelt for not warding off the attack.”