The Leonard Lopate Show

Yes unfortunately there are so many things which could have prevented 9-11.

Like a president who was on vacation longer than he was in the White House.

Or a National Security Advisor who paid attention to attack warnings.

The signs this was coming was all over the place. Richard Clark was going crazy all summer long "we're going to be attacked!"

Ashcroft stopped flying commercially in August. What does that tell you?

We did not work with Bin Laden. The press needs to stop saying this.

This guy doesn't know what he's talking about on the "what might have beens." For crying out loud, Clinton was excoriated for wagging the dog when he tried to go after OBL. Anything more than that was politically impossible. The Clinton presidency certainly had its failuers, but not being more active on OBL was not one of them.

And it was Reagan, not Clinton, who teamed up with OBL, the Saudis, and the Paks.

At the end of Charlie WIlson's War, the writer indicates that Wilson tried to get US to invest in schools, some rebuilding after the Soviets withdrew. But was rebuffed... this supports your guest's thesis.

We might have prevented 9/11, but we have to be grateful it wasn't worse. The plan was for the towers to topple over and injure or kill hundreds of thousands of people, not 3,000.

And on the subject of "what might have beens:"

1. If we'd teamed up with Massoud, we'd soon have discovered his weaknesses, leading to a different disaster than the one that actually occurred.

2. Now we are pouring real resources into Afghanistan, just as your guest advocates. And it's still a failure.

Your guest hits the nail on the head. The US putting troops in Saudi Arabia after invasion of Kumait is what incited Bin Laden. What we did in Afghanistan made little difference to ultimate jihad that Bin Laden launched.

I don't know why it is constantly neglected, but Ahmed Shah Massoud was a Shia.

General Zia would never work with a Shia. And Bin Laden would never let a Shia live.

Erum

Do you have a link for that? I never heard it; just checked wiki, which does not opine on Massoud's brand of Islam.

How does this guy know what he claims to know? He can't even pronounce the name of Afghanistan's capital city...

Now we know why the W administration has supported this guys research. It is basically a rewriting of history to put the blame for 9/11 on Clinton. No credibility here. Moving on.

Americans (and most others) are clueless when it comes to South Asia. Look at the mess the British created in 1947. That said, I read that the FBI has a total of 8 Arabic speaking agents...I'm not certain what the CIA's assests are. I'm coming to the conclusion that the less the West interferes with Pakistan and Afghanistan the lower the risk of catastrophic blow-back.

refreshing to see this de-construction as a root cause analysis toward solutions. We need to do it for Iran and Israel too. In the old days of secrecy we could keep it all under-wraps and nobody had to know. But, now with media and international travel there is no hiding the dirty details from the people who can make pain in the streets and in the airports, even if here at home we are shrouded in dis-information and rhetoric. The next generation will have to dis-entangle themselves from these situations if they want to live in peace and prosperity. We can't go on building walls and tapping calls for millions forever. They need to start with Eritrea where our govt is doing the very same things they did in the Middle East and Latin America for decades, to foment hatred and anti-Americanism.

If your listeners were to read Charlie Wilson's War by (the late) George Crile, followed by The Looming Tower, by Laurence Wright, they would have come to similar conclusions as today's author. The key elements were a combination of the xenophobic myopia of U.S. foreign policy, a prosperous but polarized nation focused on navel-gazing through the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and a run of leaders besotted with their own power.

The current administration gets the booby-prize because they CHOSE to ignore the pronouncements of Osama bin Laden because he was not a nation-state, and such asymmetrical warfare was not a tactic that they viewed as a threat. This willful ignorance has cost this country and the region an yet untold amount of wasted Time, Blood, and Treasure. This doesn't even address our loss of respect and reputation in the eyes of the world. Now, our elected representatives actually argue the semantics of torture and posit that the loss of liberty in the name of "security" is a worthwhile exchange. How very sad.

Yes..The Looming Tower is another excellent resource on this subject. It should be noted that according to L.T., although Bin Laden never really liked the United States after he stopped watching Bonanza at about age 12 he really didn't "declare war" on the US, leading to the embassy bombings, USS Cole bonbing and the 9/11 "planes" operation until it became clear to him that the USA was never going to leave their bases in Saudi Arabia. More than anything else, this and the fact that the Saudi royal family was not pushing the USA to do so, enraged him. Within a year of 9/11, at the request of the Saudi goverment the US military left S.A. with little fanfare. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!! Has anyone noticed how quiet Bin Laten has been ever since?