President Bush Seeks to Reassure Americans; Define Stakes in the War
JEFF GREENFIELD, HOST: You've done enough, Aaron. Go home and rest. Compared with the task tonight, that memorable speech that President Bush gave to the Congress on September 20th was simple. Back then, Mr. Bush had one job: to rally a stunned nation and to proclaim that nation's resolve. Comb through tonight's speech, and you can see just how many different tasks the president had tonight. First, to reassure.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What we couldn't be sure then and what the terrorists never expected was that America would emerge stronger, with a renewed spirit of pride and patriotism.</s>GREENFIELD: Second, to define the stakes, and to promise victory,</s>BUSH: We wage a war to save civilization itself. We did not seek it. But we will fight it, and we will prevail.</s>GREENFIELD: Third, to rebut an undercurrent of criticism. For instance, that the new head of homeland security lacks the power to do his job.</s>BUSH: Its director, my good friend former Governor Tom Ridge reports directly to me, and works with all our federal agencies, state and local governments and the private sector on a national strategy to strengthen our homeland protections.</s>GREENFIELD: Fourth, to explain that unspecified terror alert.</s>BUSH: A terrorism alert is not a signal to stop your life. It is a call to be vigilant.</s>GREENFIELD: Fifth, to make this fight every citizen's fight.</s>BUSH: Many ask, what can I do to help in our fight? The answer is simple. All of us can become a September the 11th volunteer by making a commitment to service in our own communities.</s>GREENFIELD: And finally, to stir his listeners' spirits by invoking the last known words of one of the men who thwarted the hijackers of United Flight 93.</s>BUSH: We cannot know every turn this battle will take. Yet we know our cause is just and our ultimate victory is assured. We will no doubt face new challenges. But we have our marching orders. My fellow Americans: let's roll.</s>GREENFIELD: So let's roll through some of the implications of the president's speech. Joining me now from Washington, the former director of the CIA, James Woolsey. He's now a partner with the Shea and Gardner law firm. Full disclosure: Mr. Woolsey and I were classmates at Yale Law School 150 years ago. In Atlanta, Scott Miller. He is a corporate and political strategist, founder of the Core Strategy Group, and he is -- was consultant to three presidential campaigns. And we will also be joined shortly from Austin, Texas, by Bill Minutaglio. He is a senior writer at the "Dallas morning news" and he is the author of "First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty." Mr. Woolsey, we asked folks -- all of you -- to pick out some of your key lines. And the one you picked was, I believe, "let's roll!" So in -- what I want to ask about is the line that he talked about in defending the terror alerts. Clearly there's been a lot of doubt about whether that was a good idea to alert the country to an unspecified possible act of terror. Was it a good idea to do that?</s>JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: A lot of intelligence, Jeff, is not precise. If it were precise with respect to time and place and method of attack, we would be able to thwart attacks. Often it is rather general and all we know is that something is likely to happen. And I think we need to cut the government a fair amount of slack on these. They have tough calls to make. And sometimes all they are going to know is that something terrible may happen this weekend. And under those circumstances, they have to make a decision as to whether or not to say something or not. And I think -- I think we really need to give them the benefit of the doubt. We're not used to letting the government have the benefit of doubt in peacetime. In wartime we sort of need to.</s>GREENFIELD: I guess the question question a lot of folks are asking is if we are more alert to some unspecified danger -- and clearly if -- if beyond that the country is way more on an alert status than it was on September 10th to all sorts of things. Planes being diverted and landing on -- on things that would never have made them divert or land seven weeks ago. Is this in fact a safer nation, more protected from terrorism than it was on September 10th?</s>WOOLSEY: Well, the problem is that the home front is the front lines in this war. This is the first time we've had anything like this since the Civil War and even then normally civilians weren't targeted. So troops on the front lines are used to being generally on alert and then having someone say, "now, tonight you need to really expect something." And then they are really, really on alert. What's happened is that that attitude has been transmitted to the home front. And those of us who lead normal lives and are not in fox holes have to -- have to deal with this type of not only on alert, but really-really-on-alert attitude. And it's not easy. It's extremely stressful for a lot of people.</s>GREENFIELD: But has it made us safer?</s>WOOLSEY: Well, it's hard to say. You know, remember back at the time of the Millennium celebration at the end of '99, beginning of 2000 there were alerts. And there was a customs official up on the border at Washington State and she was told to really really be on alert and she perhaps did a more careful search than she otherwise might have and picked up a terrorist coming in who was going to blow up a bomb at the Los Angeles Airport. You know, sometimes it works. It doesn't always work. But sometimes it does.</s>GREENFIELD: I gather that Austin has rejoined us in the person of Bill Minutaglio. You -- the video gremlins are gone. Mr. Minutaglio, we asked to pick out a bite, and you picked one that we didn't pick. So let's hear that brief sound bite please.</s>BUSH: We're a different country than we were on September 10th. Sadder and less innocent. Stronger, and more united. And in the face of ongoing threats, determined and courageous.</s>GREENFIELD: Mr. Minutaglio, sadder, less innocent. You literally wrote the book on George W. Bush. Do you think he might have been talking a little bit about himself there?</s>BILL MINUTAGLIO, AUTHOR, "FIRST SON: " Yes, absolutely. I think it's always a great prism when you listen to George W. to try to factor in what he's saying about the -- the country and international affairs through -- through his own experiences, his own life. And when I heard that I remembered him sharing with me at one moment some words that his father had spoken to him that apparently have lingered with George W. His dad told him one day, "If you choose this line of work, if you choose to follow me and eventually attain the presidency, you will be like a cork in a raging river." And I think -- I think at that time George W. probably thought it would be the net result of the political game, the politics, the media, enduring all those kinds of things. I don't think he really understood what kind of raging river was waiting for him on September 11.</s>GREENFIELD: You -- you pointed out to our producers -- people have talked about the speech tonight that it was a pep talk, almost like a pep rally. And yet in your view, cheer leading is something that came -- comes very naturally to this president.</s>MINUTAGLIO: Sure, absolutely. And I think what he's doing presently is cheer leading, you know, the second inning in a sense. The excitement of the first pitch has worn off and he needs to kind of rally everyone, to let them know that this might be a game -- to extend the analogy and the metaphor again -- that will go on into infinite extra innings. But yes. He was a head cheerleader in high school. He was a cheerleader for oil ventures, in a sense. He was the guy out drumming up interest and enthusiasm for different oil adventures. He was really the head cheerleader for the Texas Rangers. And as you have noted, Jeff, during his tenure as governor he used it -- his position as a bully pulpit. He was a cheerleader. And at times the guy that was constitutionally limited by the office of governor in Texas so he did what he could only do, which is be a cheerleader.</s>GREENFIELD: Mr. Miller, the bite that you directed our attention to was the one that we played, where the president said we wage a war to save civilization itself. But I wondered -- if I can paraphrase a line from movie studios, not how will it play in Peoria but how will it play in Peshawar? I mean, can you tell other civilizations that this is a war to save civilization itself, when you come from a place that's so different?</s>SCOTT MILLER, CORE STRATEGY GROUP: I think we have to. I -- I think, you know, one of things that the president has done well is define why we're fighting and who we're fighting. Just as Osama Bin Laden is constantly defining an us versus them, the president has done that. And he's saying the terrorists are mass murderers. They are intolerant dictators. Intolerant of religion, intolerant of women's rights. Intolerant of anyone's rights, really, except their own. So he's done this good job. And when you say how does this play in Peshawar. I was interested in the visuals. You know, everything communicates. Everything communicates. The visuals tonight in that audience of 7,000: firemen and firewomen and policemen and armed forces people and postal workers and health care workers. And those people were pumped and looked resolved and they looked roused. And I got to tell you, they looked tough. And I want them to see that, the fence sitters.</s>GREENFIELD: But Mr....</s>MILLER: I want them to see that in the Muslim world.</s>GREENFIELD: Yes, but when we see people in Pakistan by the thousands demonstrating, even rioting, against the United States, they're pumped and it certainly doesn't convince those of us in the United States that those folks over there are in -- in a righteous cause. Why would the fact that Caucasian American, mostly Christians -- and African-American Christians and Jews are pumped persuade anyone in the Muslim world that our cause is just? Or is the point just to let them know we're united?</s>MILLER: We're united, we're roused and we're tough. And I think -- and we're ready. I think that that's terribly important. Yeah, it's important to say, "our cause is just." But part of that is defining their cause as unjust, defining their cause as unholy, defining their cause as a -- as a perversion of anything that's holy. We have to do that.</s>GREENFIELD: Mr. Woolsey, one of jobs of the agency you used to run is to collect information. We think of you as a bunch of, you know, James Bond types. But it's information. Was the -- was the CIA during your tenure aware of and communicating to the administration that you served the nature of this rage in part of the Muslim world, how angry part of the Muslim world was with the United States?</s>WOOLSEY: We had a counterterrorism center that had been established before I got there that was really very focused on terrorism. And I would say terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in rogue states -- particularly Iraq and Iran and North Korea -- were really the top of our priority. Bin Laden himself had only begun to surface a bit by the time I left at the beginning of '95 as a salient individual. But the general concern about Islamic extremism in the Mideast was, yes, it was very close to the top of the agenda.</s>GREENFIELD: All right. We're going to take a break. When we come back we are going to explore some of the consequences of the president's speech and ask if America really means to take on other countries harboring Afghanistan. We'll take that up right after this.