Matt,

Good stuff. I think you get off target on falsifiability, though. As a matter of science, claims have to be falsifiable (or testable) and in that sense a lot of psychological claims (like Freudianism or Jungian analysis) don't quite reach the level of hard scence.

That doesn't mean that the claims don't have meaning or resonance, though. I'd caution you that if you look at everything through Karl Popper's eyes you're going to miss a lot.

I also really doubt that Faludi is arguing that people (either as individuals or collectively) have no responsibility for the last 7 years of our history or for the symbols and undercurrents that have long existed in American society. It's not that the archetypes control us. They do exert an influence. But so do we. We can rewrite our myths. If we couldn't Faludi wouldn't have bothered writing the book.

Which brings us back to falsifiability and Freudianism -- Freud says you have anxiety because your mother pushed you too hard as a child, made you afreaid of failure. You say, "No she didn't, that's ridiculous." The Freudian says, "Oh, that's just you covering up for the fact of it." It's annoying, because it isn't falsifiable.

But... it's effective for some patients. Even if it's not strictly true, or strictly science, some patients say "You know, I should really let those anxieties go, it's just something that happened in childhood." It can work.

Maybe what Faludi is saying is also useful -- Maybe we can rewrite our myths and archetypesin a way that will help us toward a better future. Maybe the act of trying will be effective even if it isn't hard science.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

This piece is brilliant. It tracks Krugman's thesis in "Conscience of a Liberal" that inequality in America didn't just happen but was produced by individual politicians whose goal was to produce it. In other words, it ain't fate, it's politics.

Not only do I believe that there would have been no Iraq war had Gore been inaugurated, I believe there would have been no 9/11 period.

Matt, do you get my weekly newsletter IPF Friday which is my weekly take on the I-P conflict. You'd like it and I'd be honored to have you as a subscriber.

=== Are you seriously claiming that Gore would have leaped at what insight we had, put two and two together despite the Gorelick Wall, FISA and other Clinton-era impediments to intelligence gathering and sharing ===

I think that's reasonable, except insofar as the "Gorelick Wall" did prevent sharing of precisely the intelligence that might have connected suspicious flight students (observed by the FBI) with terror networks (known to the CIA).

I'm not one of those people who blame Clinton et al. for that exclusively, or even primarily. It was the tenor of the times; history had ended, there were no real threats, at least that rated above the occasional symbolic airstrike. We saw the same attitude from Republicans during the impeachment, when they accused Clinton of wagging the dog at a particular time; everyone seemed to assume that there was no danger in letting our entire government be consumed by impeachment over piddly private matters.

Nevertheless, the attitude that led to ignoring the al-Qaeda threat was in existence, as surely as isolationism in the 30s, and I'd really like to know how anyone can claim otherwise about Gore (and what powers they assume he'd have that they get up in arms about Bush exercising).

I think he's dead right, though, that there's something so airy and insubstantial about Faludi's insights and references. When firemen doing their job is the result of sexual anxiety, it's hard to know what can't be depicted in that light. That's why I challenged her on the quotidian specifics of the 50s western genre, which she obviously has so weak and stereotypical a handle on-- claims like these need to be closely observed and solidly insightful, there's just not much solidity here.

Either Clinton or Gore would have paid attention to what the intelligence was reporting. Had Gore presided in those morning briefings, he would have sent DoD, State, CIA, etc rushing back to their HQ's to shake the trees to find out what the f--k was going on.
Bush asked no questions, ever. A President who does not ask questions and make demands allows the bureaucracy to go to sleep. And that is what it did.
9/11 would not have happened under Clinton or Gore.
Can I prove it? No. But you can be damn sure that Gore's NSC advisor would not have rebuffed Richard Clarke's insistent demands for gov't action on AQ and on the specific plots his people knew were being hatched.
Nor would he or she have ignored the memo that predicted 9/11, leaving out only the time of the attack.

Also, the Clinton administration had foiled 2 serious planned attacks by al-Qaeda in 2000. One in the USA on LAX and the other in Jordan. The Clinton Administration took al-Qaeda seriously, there is ample evidence that Bushco did not.

Google *millenium plots*

Jack

Done. Hang in there.

Yeah, that's how government worked in the 90s.

Although the National Security Agency was able to monitor calls on [Zawahiri's] satellite phone, it refused to share the raw data with the FBI or the CIA or Dick Clarke at the White House. When the CIA learned from one of its own employees, who was posted at the NSA, that al-Qaeda's phones were being monitored, it demanded the transcripts. The NSA refused to hand them over; instead, it offered narrative summaries that were often out of date. The CIA then turned to its own director of science and technology to construct a device that would monitor the transmissions of satellite phones from that portion of Afghanistan. They were able to receive only one side of the conversation, but based on one of the partial intercepts the CIA determined that bin Laden and others were going to be in Khost. --Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower, p. 321

As it turns out, Bin Laden didn't go to Khost that night anyway. But I cite the passage not because it's extraordinarily damning of Clinton but because it demonstrates all the issues this fantasy of Al Gore, Man of (Non-Sexist Western Myth Driven) Action ignores; intelligence gathering was and no doubt remains riven by bureaucratic rivalries, unnecessary duplication, confusion, and random bad luck. To conclude from the complete story that so many, merely beginning with Wright and Richard Clarke, have told that Gore would have magically fixed everything and saved everybody (in a non-sexist Western myth informed way) is simply partisan silliness.

I don't blame you for not reading Faludi's book; witholding it from publication could have been the single greatest American contribution to the abatement of global warming, as its publication has released enough hot air to threaten both polar ice caps.

However, I'm annoyed by the constant use of the collective pronoun in your post. "We" didn't turn inward as a nation, crack down on civil liberties, and invade Iraq. Bush did. Was Bush, through relentless lies, nationalist bombast, and xenophobic appeals, able to drag a bemused bare majority along with him? Sadly, yes. But the mantle of collective guilt for Bush's crimes is utterly inappropriate.

After being attacked by reactionary religious zealots, we turned inward as a nation, cracked down on civil liberties and invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attacks.

Baloney. "We" did no such thing, as Long Tom said. It was done by presidential fiat. Hail Caesar!

How can anyone disprove that "our response to 9/11 was intended in large part not to defend us against the actual threat but to repair a cherished American myth that the attacks had damaged?"

I can. The attack on Afghanistan was planned well before 9/11 because Afghanistan is in a key geographical position and its government had become unwilling to kowtow to American demands, including the need for an oil pipeline. The attack on Iraq was for power and profit. There was no national debate on either of these attacks.

The phrase "our response" is part and parcel of the neocon attempt to avoid blame and pin responsibility on the American people for the current military disasters. According to this false scenario, the American people, along with some feeble congressional moves, delivered a "stab in the back" to the valiant US military for disasters which otherwise would have been avoided. It's "our" fault because we're Americans! Faludi's book contributes to this effort. Blame the people, not the evil perpetrators in Washington, according to this new plot. (A similar effort has taken place in Iraq--blame the Iraqis, not the US government.)

Kevin Baker in Harper's:
"The stab in the back first gained currency in Germany, as a means of explaining the nation's stunning defeat in World War I. It was Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg himself, the leading German hero of the war, who told the National Assembly, “As an English general has very truly said, the German army was ‘stabbed in the back.’”

"Like everything else associated with the stab-in-the-back myth, this claim was disingenuous. The “English general” in question was one Maj. Gen. Neill Malcolm, head of the British Military Mission in Berlin after the war, who put forward this suggestion merely to politely summarize how Field Marshal Erich von Ludendorff—the force behind Hindenburg—was characterizing the German army's alleged lack of support from its civilian government.

“Ludendorff's eyes lit up, and he leapt upon the phrase like a dog on a bone,” wrote Hindenburg biographer John Wheeler-Bennett. “‘Stabbed in the back?’ he repeated. ‘Yes, that's it exactly. We were stabbed in the back.’”
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080

The idea that Al Gore could have saved us from these mistakes suggests that the 'stab in the back' thesis being aided by Faludi is wrong.

We can hold individuals responsible for certain policy choices, and the public responsible for enabling those individuals.

This is only half right. Democracy in the US is currently gasping for breath, under assault from the two branches of the War Party. The American public public (1) had little or no input to these momentous decisions which have been called "the greatest foreign policy disaster in US history" and (2) in any case the US public was fully propagandized with lies from the highest level of government.

ecotourism
WeGoEco.com

lol

sPh

I doubt that having Gore in he WH would have stopped the attack from happening, too.

Do I think that Gore would not have submerged us in another Viet Nam? No, I don't believe he would. He would not have made a false connection between Hussein and binLaden nor would he use that false connection to manipulate and lie to people.

The reason this foreign policy is such a disaster isn't because of the U.S. prediliction to resort to myths when faced with a crisis, it is a disaster because we we failed and have failed all along to listen to what these people have been saying to us - get out and quit interfering in our domestic affairs.

We can mythologize 9/11, we can analyse it, we can find esoteric and existential meaning in it, but it does not change the fundamental reason as to why they resorted to such an attention getter - we aren't listening.

Nor do I believe he would have (submerged us in another Vietnam.)

In '98 Bill Kristol wrote a letter to Clinton advising him to take military action against Iraq, which is a clue to the mind-set of the so-called neocons.

When Bush became president he, or Cheney, hired at least two dozen people out of AEI to work in government offices and/or to serve on advisory panels. It's most unlikely that Gore would have staffed so many offices with neocons from AEI.

Given Bush's 'style' of governing, not to mention his seeming disinterest in processing information, the people around him would have and did have a great deal of influence on his decisions. (And, I continue to think that Bush's Iraq caper was based on not much more than, "He tried to kill my daddy.")

Based upon his recent remarks, Al Gore seems to believe "diplomacy" is the preferred approach in dealing with terrorists.

Perhaps he would have tried "talking" to AQ?

Be careful, When Giuliani said that about Clinton and Obama, he was Keith Olbermann's worst person of the week.

So, do you consider bin Laden the representative of the “these people” that you refer to?

"He would not have made a false connection between Hussein and binLaden nor would he use that false connection to manipulate and lie to people." In fact, he spoke out against it, starting before the invasion of Iraq and not stopping. Don B. quotes in wildly out of context, as if he was advocating force in Iraq done right. He was discussing the proper place of force, and it wasn't in Iraq. 

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

I would consider bin Laden representative of Al Qaeda and they are certainly an eclectic group.

You said the we were attacked because we didn’t listen to “these people”. If you believe that bin Laden orchestrated the attach on us, should we have listened to him? Again I ask you is he a legitimate representative of “these people”?

Faludi’s thesis seems to leave little room for our own collective agency, as members of a polity, to change the direction of our culture and our politics, even when faced by the threat of terrorist attack.

I disagree with this premise, and question our "collective agency."

I mean, we're not going to pretend that our government works by the will of the people, are we?

The Way Things Work leaves very little room for collective agency. At best, we get to vote once every four years (I would say two years, but Congress has been no match for this President). And, I remember many of our Congresspeople telling us, lecturing us, really, that "elections have consequences," and therefore they voted for people like Sam Alito and Alberto Gonzales.

What are the latest polls? 60-70% of the nation is against the Iraq war?

What collective agency do we really have?

Faced down by a unitarily-powerful Executive Branch and a corporate-owned news media, you know, the people who are supposed to be helping create our "informed citizenry," who did their job so well that years after invading Iraq, half the country still believed Saddam was behind 9/11 and had WMD?

Plus, we now torture people. 

So, really, what collective agency do we end up with here?

Not much, I'd say.

If we are to believe that collective agency is seriously a reality, then I can only conclude we, as a nation, as a polity, like torturing people. 

"Thank God George Bush is our president." -Rudy Giuliani

Then why did Sandy Berger steal copies of Richard Clarke's report condemning how the Clinton administration handled the "millennium plots"?

Why would Berger filching a copy of a report on the Millenium Plots from the National Archives be in any way proof that the Clinton Admnistration didn't take terrorism seriously? Its not like he destroyed the report, and its not like he wasn't aware that the report could be retrieved by anyone with access.

-Dave Adams-

can you substantiate your apparent insinuation that the Bush administration has used it against any domestic political adversary?

There doesn't seem to be much evidence available.
Of course the fact that such information is so secret that even Congress doesn't have access to it is merely a coincidence.

-Dave Adams-

Tom, Are you suggesting that the US has ever NOT spied on UN Security Council members? If this is the case then the CIA and FBI are even less efficient than I suspected.

sPh,
I didn't even look at who gave the rating until you responded. So it was you! Well, we all make mistakes. I made one . . .was it last month? No it was probably last year. {:-)

would have paid attention . . .would have sent . . .would not have happened . . .would not have rebuffed . . . Nor would he or she have ignored

Woulda, shoulda, coulda
Woulda, shoulda, coulda
Woulda, shoulda, coulda
Woulda, shoulda, coulda

Repeat and believe.

BevD,
I quote Gore on Iraq and you say that it's not true? Say what?
And how about some quotes from his 2002 speech on your other claims? I don't see them.

Bacon,

The quote and your interpretation of it are two separate things. I think your interpretation of this quote which you've clearly cherry picked to distort, is laughable.

Gore is expressing what a lot of people felt post the Gulf War I. It didn't accomplish much other than to beat up on a two bit dictator who had been useful to us but was getting out of line. It still left a terrible humanitarian crisis. It made matters in many regards worse.

Many also felt that HW Bush had deliberately ignored signals from Hussein, such as diplomatic communications, indicating he intended to invade Kuwait and wanted the US green light. Hussein himself clearly felt betrayed and set up. So there is a case to be made HW Bush wanted war.

That's not to say it was necessarily fixable by force. Just that the previous use of force had been botched and perhaps dishonest.

Regardless of any of that, it's perfectly reasonable to say one should be cautious about war, honest about intentions, and IF one is going to war, then do it right. One could say that about ANY war.

It's a specious argument to then interpret that as Gore pledging to invade Iraq post 9/11 on the same cooked premise as Bush. That's a partisan Republican argument to apologize for Bush. Not a rational one.

Again, that's just semantic demagoguery and a straw man attack on Zeitlin. Where did he imply "we" to mean monolithic opinion?

Come on. He's 17, and you're the one acting like a child.

Whether or not events have some degree of inevitability, Mr Zeitlin makes the point that Ducat and Faludi are specifically reciting the Frankfurt school's definition of inevitability, chapter and verse. Which I think most people would agree is a lot of Freudian and Marxist sophistry, if they're familiar with it.

Ducat and Faludi piece-mealing that reheated sausage without proper disclosure... well that Frankfurter ain't Kosher, so to speak.

Which makes sense for Ducat, being a psychologist apparently of that school, but Faludi must have absorbed it by osmosis or perhaps at university. Much of radical, and especially the most militant elements of feminism were greatly influenced by the Frankfurt school, with themes of sexual repression, "phantasmogoric eruptions," repressed homosexuality, rape and repressed memories, Kinsey's theories, and such.

Following an early-on bombing of Afghanistan when 4,000 were killed, Taliban leaders offered to turn bin Laden over to a neutral nation. Mr. Bush refused with the mind-boggling explanation that the Taliban leaders "were insincere."

So, yes, an American president did order an attack on Afghanistan, but I doubt that most American presidents would then allow the reason why he bombed Afghanistan in the first place to continue living free as a bird.

Why would Berger filching a copy of a report on the Millenium Plots from the National Archives be in any way proof that the Clinton Admnistration didn't take terrorism seriously? Its not like he destroyed the report, and its not like he wasn't aware that the report could be retrieved by anyone with access.

===========================================

Apparently he was destroying copies of the report that contained marginal notations from Clinton and other high rankers that indicate they weren't "taking terrorism seriously"

kozmik,
You're wrong. He said "We turned inward as a nation", which suggests a "monolithic opinion". I didn't "turn inward", did you? If he was referring to the US, was attacking Afghanistan "turning inward"?

I'm not "acting like a child", I am a child in many ways. Acting responsibly is for bankers and such. What's your excuse?

I have no opinion as to whether bin Laden is a legitimate representative, in fact, that is my point - it is not up to us to decide those matters. Bin Laden, though, isn't the only person in the Mid-East to complain of our mischief in their domestic affairs.
============================================

I think you're running away from a legitimate question. Bin Laden and his cohorts aren't saying "stay out of our affairs, and we'll be happy." They want a return of the Caliphate and give us Spain back right now like we had it a 1000 years ago.

Are we really going to listen to that?

Hey Zeitlin, Don't know if you'll see this with all the substantive responses up there, but nice job. I'll attempt an actual response later, but wanted to give you some public props.

Sara - RHSM

Plenty of evidence that during last 1-2 yearsr of Clinton admin. Al Queda was recognized as a (the) priority threat to the U.S. And Gore and his people were a major part of this. See for example Richard Clarke's book. Remember they told incoming Bushies. And Bushes went out of their way to ignore and downgrade it.

So, yes, under a Gore presidency it Al Queda would have continued to be, or even more ramped up, as target. Just one example... Richard Clarke would have been a leader at NSC, not shunted aside and deliberately ignored. Similar priorization, instead of being dismissed off top-10 priority list, at CIA and FBI (was top a priority in DOJ under last year of Clinton; Ashcroft took it completely off list on 9/10).

So, yes, good possibility under a Gore presidency 9-11 does not happen. That they were caught or otherwise disrupted.

===========================================

Please stop this fantasy:

"Plenty of evidence that during last 1-2 yearsr of Clinton admin. Al Queda was recognized as a (the) priority threat to the U.S. And Gore and his people were a major part of this."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A59781-2004Feb21&notFound=true

Legal Disputes Over Hunt Paralyzed Clinton's Aides

Between 1998 and 2000, the CIA and President Bill Clinton's national security team were caught up in paralyzing policy disputes as they secretly debated the legal permissions for covert operations against Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan.

The debates left both White House counterterrorism analysts and CIA career operators frustrated and at times confused about what kinds of operations could be carried out, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials and lawyers who were directly involved.

Clinton had demonstrated his willingness to kill bin Laden, without any pretense of seeking his arrest, when he ordered the cruise missile strikes on an eastern Afghan camp in August 1998, after the CIA obtained intelligence that bin Laden might be there for a meeting of al Qaeda leaders.

Yet the secret legal authorizations Clinton signed after this failed missile strike required the CIA to make a good faith effort to capture bin Laden for trial, not kill him outright.

Beginning in the summer of 1998, Clinton signed a series of top secret memos authorizing the CIA or its agents to use lethal force, if necessary, in an attempt to capture bin Laden and several top lieutenants and return them to the United States to face trial.

From Director George J. Tenet on down, the CIA's senior managers wanted the White House lawyers to be crystal clear about what was permissible in the field. They were conditioned by history -- the CIA assassination scandals of the 1970s, the Iran-contra affair of the 1980s -- to be cautious about legal permissions emanating from the White House. Earlier in his career, Tenet had served as staff director of the Senate Intelligence Committee and director of intelligence issues at the White House, roles steeped in the Washington culture of oversight and careful legality.

Tenet and his senior CIA colleagues demanded that the White House lay out rules of engagement for capturing bin Laden in writing, and that they be signed by Clinton. Then, with such detailed authorizations in hand, every one of the CIA officers who handed a gun or a map to an Afghan agent could be assured that he or she was operating legally.

This was the role of the Memorandum of Notification, as it was called. It was typically seven or eight pages long, written in the form of a presidential decision memo. It began with a statement about how bin Laden and his aides had attacked the United States. The memo made clear the president was aware of the risks he was assuming as he sent the CIA into action.

Some of the most sensitive language concerned the specific authorization to use deadly force. Clinton's national security aides said they wanted to encourage the CIA to carry out an effective operation against bin Laden, not to burden the agency with constraints or doubts. Yet Clinton's aides did not want authorizations that could be interpreted by Afghan agents as an unrestricted license to kill. For one thing, the Justice Department signaled that it would oppose such language if it was proposed for Clinton's signature.

The compromise wording, in a succession of bin Laden-focused memos, always expressed some ambiguity about how and when deadly force could be used in an operation designed to take bin Laden into custody. Typical language, recalled one official involved, instructed the CIA to "apprehend with lethal force as authorized."

============================================

They were FOCUSED like a laser beam
===========================================

Some CIA managers chafed at the White House instructions. The CIA received "no written word nor verbal order to conduct a lethal action" against bin Laden before Sept. 11, one official involved recalled. "The objective was to render this guy to law enforcement." In these operations, the CIA had to recruit agents "to grab [bin Laden] and bring him to a secure place where we can turn him over to the FBI. . . . If they had said 'lethal action' it would have been a whole different kettle of fish, and much easier."

Berger later recalled his frustration about this hidden debate. Referring to the military option in the two-track policy, he said at a 2002 congressional hearing: "It was no question, the cruise missiles were not trying to capture him. They were not law enforcement techniques."

===========================================

I'm sure all of this bureaucratic to and fro would have ceased immediately if Gore had been elected. It would have been the same players playing the same games