I disagree with part two of his answer, that the country got the leaders it deserved. But I agree with part one.
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/04/kaiser072204.htmNew York, N.Y.: One aspect of this report that I have not seen mentioned in the press as of late is the fact that President Bush didn't even want this commission to exist! Only after pressure from 9/11 families did the administration cave. How can the person who was President during the worst terrorist attack in out history not want to find out why it happened?
Robert G. Kaiser : See above.
I do think the lack of curiosity--on Capitol Hill, and in the administration--about what happened, who did it, etc., is striking. I attribute it to a kind of unspoken shame, felt by all government officials when they realized what had happened: A nasty enemy had launched a successful and cruel attack against the United States and gotten away with it ON OUR WATCH. I've long felt that Bush, Congress, the CIA and FBI and others have all shared this shame, and never found a way to really speak about it, for fear the country would turn on them and say, in effect, yeah, where the heck were YOU?
In my own view, negligence at the top reflected negligence, self-indulgence and indifference at the bottom. By which I mean, American society in the '80s and '90s became fat, rich, lazy and indifferent to the world in ways we can now see did us no good. The country got a leadership that reflected itself. Which meant no one really wanted to disrupt the party to face up to what Bin Laden et al represented, and were trying to do. Indeed, we didn't even let ourselves imagine (with a few poignant exceptions) what he might pull off
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