As much as it’s appropriate to use today to reflect on the last five years, it’s equally worthwhile to imagine what the last five years could have been like had our leadership had more noble, and less partisan, goals in mind. Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter devoted his Newsweek column to an “alternate” history for the today.
Five years after 9/11, the world is surprisingly peaceful. President Bush’s pragmatic and bipartisan leadership has kept the United States not just strong but unexpectedly popular across the globe. The president himself is poised to enjoy big GOP wins in the midterm elections, a validation of his subtle understanding of the challenges facing the country. A new survey of historians puts him in the first tier of American presidents.
As Bush warned, catching terrorists wasn’t easy, but he kept at it. At the battle of Tora Bora, CIA operatives on the ground cabled Washington that Osama bin Laden was cornered, but they desperately needed troop support. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld immediately dispatched fresh forces, and the evildoer was killed. While bin Laden was seen as a martyr in a few isolated areas, the bulk of the Arab world had been in sympathy with the United States after 9/11 and shed no tears. After their capture, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terrorists were transported to the United States, where they were tried and quickly executed.
Today, Al Qaeda remains a threat but its opportunities for recruitment have been scarce, and the involvement of the entire international community has helped dramatically reduce terrorist attacks worldwide. Because Bush believes diplomacy requires talking to adversaries as well as friends, even Syria and Iraq were forced to help. By staying “humble,” as he promised in 2000, he preserved much of the post-9/11 good feeling abroad, which paid dividends when it came time to pull together a coalition to handle North Korea and Iran.
Reading this, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. Alter’s column is an almost depressing reminder of what could have been — a recitation of historic, momentous opportunities, which the president chose to discard.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, others have greatness thrust upon them — and others still abandon greatness in order to execute Karl Rove’s vision of a “permanent Republican majority.”
Again, from Alter’s alternate history:
When Karl Rove suggested that the war on terror would make a perfect wedge issue against Democrats in the 2002 midterms, Bush brought him up short. Didn’t Rove understand that bipartisanship is good politics? Lincoln and FDR had both gone bipartisan during wartime, he reminded his aide. So when evidence of torture at the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay surfaced and Rumsfeld was forced to resign, former Democratic senator Sam Nunn got the job. With post-9/11 unity still at least partially intact in 2004, Bush was re-elected in a landslide.
Taking a cue from Lincoln’s impatience with his generals, Bush was merciless about poor performance on homeland security. When the head of the FBI couldn’t fix the bureau’s computers in a year’s time to “connect the dots,” he was out. And Bush had no patience for excuse-making about leaky port security, unsecured chemical plants and first responders whose radios didn’t communicate. If someone had told him that five years after 9/11 these problems would still be unsolved, Bush would have laughed him out of the office.
If only it were so.
As disappointing as the last five years have been, it’s at least equally disappointing to think about where could be with competence, sound judgment, and wisdom.
Four months ago, Al Gore did a very funny bit for Saturday Night Live in which he had taken office in 2001 and described the nirvana that his presidency had ushered in ever since. It was meant in jest, of course, but it couldn’t help but spark questions about where the country would be right now had key decisions gone the other way. Perhaps it’s better for our collective psyche not to think about it too much.
But if we do ponder it, the questions invariably lead back to the opportunities Bush was given with the 9/11 crisis. Few presidents are ever offered a chance to rally their nation and the world behind a just cause. Better yet, fewer still are given a head-start — after 9/11, everyone stood behind Bush and asked him to lead. The president had the goodwill a leader needs to take followers almost anywhere.
Except where he chose to go. It will be a legacy of disappointment and what-ifs.