attack important symbols of American culture.’” The CIA did not even relay
that warning to airline companies. Agents within the FBI sent memos to their
superiors about suspicious Arabs training to fly commercial jets in U.S. flying
schools, to no avail. George W. Bush received a briefing titled “Bin Laden
Determined to Strike in U.S.” more than a month before the attacks, but took no
action.^23
Prompted by the families of 9/11 victims, Congress was inspired by these
issues to call for a commission to investigate the failure of intelligence,
defense, and law enforcement agencies to cooperate, investigate, and forestall
the terrorists. The Americans makes George Bush the instigator of the resulting
9/11 Commission. In reality he opposed it, and after public opinion forced him
to agree to it, his administration cooperated only grudgingly. All the other
books omit the commission entirely.
Will it happen again? The books do not say, of course, nor can they, but their
tone is upbeat. “The President also moved quickly to combat terrorism at
home,” says Pathways to the Present. “Less than a month after the 9/11
attacks, Bush created the Office of Homeland Security.” Then follow three long
encouraging paragraphs about this governmental reorganization—paragraphs
that contain not a word of critique or query. To be sure, Pathways went to
press before the federal government’s pathetic response to Hurricane Katrina
revealed that the Bush administration had actually downsized and downgraded
FEMA—the Federal Emergency Management Agency—while merging it into
Homeland Security, in the process drastically curtailing our national ability to
cope with disasters. But authors did have available to them widespread and
expert questioning of our preparedness against terrorist materials coming in
through our ports, the waiver program that made it especially easy for Saudi
Arabians to get visas, and other problems that Homeland Security had not
addressed. Cheerful prose will reassure students only until the next attack.
Then they will feel cheated.
The initial U.S. response to 9/11 was to attack the Taliban government in
Afghanistan in October 2001. Like Hussein, this fundamentalist Muslim regime
had initially been supported by our CIA because they opposed the previous
communist regime in Afghanistan, which was backed by the Soviet Union. In
the 1980s the CIA not only supplied Afghan Muslim fundamentalists with
American advisors and anticraft missiles but also helped recruit Muslims from
other countries to fight alongside the Afghans. Unfortunately, after coming to