A Fistful of Kryptonite

In this season of blockbuster movies, it's useful to remember that one of the first lessons aspiring novelists and screenwriters learn is that the goodness of a hero is defined by a single quality -- the badness of his opponent. From Superman's Lex Luthor to Batman's Joker to Indiana Jones' Nazis to Luke Skywalker's Darth Vader, for a hero to be perceived as larger than life, he must have a larger than life enemy.

If Frodo, for example, hadn't been forced to do battle with the supernatural powers of the Ring and its minions, his story would have merely been a boring travelogue. But with an army of supernaturally brilliant, evil, and powerful opponents, Frodo had the opportunity to display his extraordinary inner courage and resourcefulness, qualities he didn't even realize he had until they were called forth by the peril of an awesome evil.

This is a lesson that was not lost on Karl Rove and George W. Bush. If they could recast George as the opponent of a power as great as the Ring, then the rather ordinary Dubya could become the extraordinary SuperGeorge, rising from his facileness to prevail over supernatural powers of evil.

Bill Clinton had a similar chance, but passed on it for the good of America and the world. When bin Laden attacked us in the 1990s -- several times -- in an attempt to raise his own stature in the Islamic world, Bill Clinton dealt with Osama like the criminal he was. He enlisted Interpol and the police and investigative agencies of various nations, brought in our best intelligence agents, and missed bin Laden in a missile-launched assassination attempt by a scant twenty minutes (bringing derisive howls from Republicans that he was trying to "wag the dog" and deflect attention from the Monica investigations).

As Clinton left office, he and the CIA were tightening the noose on bin Laden, and his National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, told me that when he briefed his successor, Condoleezza Rice, he told her to put bin Laden and al Qaeda at the top of her priority list and thus finish the job the Clinton administration had nearly completed.

As we know, when Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, et al. finally came up with the priorities for their new administration, al Qaeda had been replaced by tax cuts for Bush's rich donors on the "A" list, and didn't even appear on the "B" list.

Thus came 9/11, despite warnings given to the President on August 6, 2001 that in the immediate future al Qaeda intended to hijack commercial planes and use them to attack East Coast targets. (Bush apparently took the warnings seriously -- Ashcroft immediately stopped flying on commercial aircraft, and Bush moved to Texas for the longest vacation in the history of the American presidency ... and even when that was over, he preferred Florida to target-listed Washington, D.C.)

In the days after the 9/11 attacks, America had the sympathy of the world, and the police and intelligence agencies of even normally hostile nations offered to help us track down and bring to justice its perpetrators. Mullah Omar of Afghanistan offered to arrest bin Laden on our behalf and turn him over to a western nation for prosecution; Muslims all over the world were horrified at the actions of one of their own, a fundamentalist turned criminal and murderer.

It would have been so easy to accept Omar's offer, bring in bin Laden, dismantle the training camps and track down their attendees and sponsors, and launch an international effort to disassemble and render impotent al Qaeda. It probably could have been done in a year or less, given the intensity of the worldwide empathy for citizens of America and the many other nations whose people died in the World Trade Center. Over 500 American soldiers would still be alive, and thousands would not have lost arms, legs, and eyes. Over 40,000 innocent Afghans and Iraqis would still be alive.