...Trying to understand how Sept. 11 might have been averted requires more than a post-mortem on CIA procedures and a second look at the government’s nonexistent strategy for dealing with al- Qaida. Ultimately, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are inextricably linked to U.S. foreign policy.
The Sept. 11 Commission concluded that the rising tide of anti-American Muslim hatred is fueled more by what we do — that is, by U.S. policies — than by who we are.
Our values, culture and way of life are not the problem; our actions are the problem.
Yet while the Sept. 11 Commission understood that point, it did not prescribe any real change in America’s post-Cold War foreign policy.
If we are unable to admit that some of our policy choices are wrong, how can we hope to correct them?
Certainly, al-Qaida — not Americans or American society — is solely responsible for the death and destruction of those attacks.
But the U.S. government must be held accountable for ill-conceived policies that have helped motivate terrorism.
U.S. foreign policy that results in
unnecessary military intervention — the Balkans under President Clinton and Iraq under George W. Bush — is one of the main causes of the virulent anti- American sentiment fueling terrorism.
To understand what the U.S. government could have done better to prevent Sept. 11 and to understand how we might prevent future terrorist attacks,
we need to adopt a more humble foreign policy, as candidate Bush advocated in 2000. That responsibility rests squarely in the Oval Office, not at CIA headquarters in Virginia.
Charles V. Pena is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and author of “Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy for Winning the War on Terrorism.”