The Report

I haven't read the 9/11 Commission report -- that would be quite an accomplishment considering its nearly 600-page length -- but the commentary on it is vast and often insightful. According to the WSJ, which titles its editorial "The Pre-emption Commission," the report implicitly makes the case for the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strikes to protect the nation from terrorists. The Journal writes:

"T]he Commission performs a service by defining the threat we now face in refreshing fashion. 'The enemy is not just "terrorism," ' it says. 'It is the threat posed specifically by Islamic terrorism.' Bush Administration officials say the same thing privately, but they have been reluctant to state this publicly lest they offend the broader body of peaceable Islam. But it is hard to defeat an enemy without defining who it is. And the fact that Islam has a problem with its radical factions is something that Muslims themselves have to face up to.
This failure to speak candidly has ramifications at home, too, specifically in the Transportation Department's continued failure to endorse racial profiling in airport security checks. The policy reduces the government's credibility among ordinary Americans who understand that the policy defies common sense. Commissioner John Lehman noted at one hearing that any airline that set aside more than two Middle Eastern-looking passengers for secondary security clearing at any one time still faces large anti-discrimination fines."

The Washington Post also hails the report, asking the crucial question, are we willing to bear any burden in order to defeat the terrorists?

"The spasm of policymaking energy that followed the attacks is waning, and America faces a profound choice about whether to face the great challenge of confronting terrorism -- and organizing government accordingly -- or to drift back into complacency. The commission rightly urges not only fighting a war against terrorism but aggressively combating the conditions and ideas that give rise to violent anti-American Islamism; it urges, that is, that the United States promote democratic values and liberal education in nations where Islamist radicalism now seems the only alternative to authoritarianism."

Good points all, as they deal with our willingness to seriously confront the dangers we face. Will we be politically correct, or will we do what must be done? Will the nihilists, opportunists, and appeasers thwart our efforts to win, or will stronger wills prevail?

At the same time, excellent questions about the Commission itself are being raised, as for instance by Rep. Christopher Cox in yesterday's Journal. Pointedly, he asks just what Sandy Berger was doing choosing the documents that the Commission could see? As a historian, I think that's a crucial point, since those documents, along with the papers chosen by the Republicans, form the primary sources upon which the Commission based its work. In Rep. Cox's words:

"[T]he Commission's report--released on the last day of the session before the national political conventions--been provided in time for Congress to act this year. House Speaker Dennis Hastert implored the Commission's leadership to provide their recommendations this spring, so that committees could have hearings and mark up legislation. The official position of the Commission was that they needed more time. But even when the report was finished last weekend, it was still withheld from Congress in order to orchestrate a carefully timed public relations blitz heralding its simultaneous release at bookstores across the country. It is difficult to imagine a national security rationale for providing the final text in electronic form to commercial publisher W.W. Norton & Co. but refusing to release it even to Congress, which commissioned the report."

Good questions are also raised today by John Podhoretz in the New York Post. As he says, someone who gave the Commission information is lying -- Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger, or George Bush and Condi Rice. At issue is just how much emphasis the outgoing administration placed on Al Qaeda when it briefed the new kids on national security matters. I'm with Podhoretz -- given the track records of all involved, wouldn't you believe Bush and Rice?

Much more to be said on this, of course, and I'll do so in the days ahead. But first I have some light summer reading to do.