COMMENTARY:

A 9/11 Aura for Incompetence--and Worse

Ever since September 11, 2001, there has been ample reason to wonder why then-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani came out of 9/11 smelling like a rose. Giuliani seems to have been given the benefit of every doubt, to put it nicely, about the lack of detection that could have spotted some of the skyjackers’ surveillance of buildings and sites before the attacks, about the lack of emergency response coordination on the day itself, and about his and his cronies’ exploitation of the attacks afterward. But that still leaves the big question of why engineers and scientists have been prevented, by the city and state authorities, from doing adequate forensic research into the WTC site.

All this is mystifying, as mentioned. But all that, in turn, still leaves an even bigger question unanswered, because it is never asked: The key question is why Giuliani should be getting kudos just because it was on his watch that 9/11 happened in the first place. As one young person commented, it’s rather like having the principal of Columbine High School run for mayor, and campaign on the grounds that a bunch of people got shot while he was there.

That puts it in a nutshell.

In fact, it’s such a good point that we have to wonder why, or how, the media got stampeded into failing to recognize it in the first place. In any previous administration, the highest-placed officials would have been held immediately responsible for anything even remotely like the events of that fateful day. Instead, we have an administration that has most recently awarded the highest civilian honors to officials in the most tainted sectors of GWBush policy: “intelligence,” the Iraq invasion, and war profiteering. We will be fortunate indeed if the medal itself is not tainted in future by this award.

Actually, of course, Giuliani didn’t come out smelling like a rose in New York City--any more than George W. Bush did. Giuliani and Bernard Kerik, NYC’s Police Commissioner at the time of the attacks, both left office much criticized by those in the know. It is mainly a certain stratum in the big media outlets that have treated them unthinkingly or for political motivation as “heroes.” The commentators who give them undeserved credit tend not to be expert in security or policing.

Speaking of that, Bush’s remarkable nomination of Bernard Kerik to head “homeland security” is a real giveaway. Space constraints prohibit even a brief run-through of Kerik’s track record here, but stay tuned. The fact of his nomination at least unveils the extent of administration carelessness in the realm of protecting and defending.