One weird, random memory was going to a Bay Area Halloween party in '99 & seeing a dude wearing robes, dressed as "Osama Bin Laden."  Some FBI warning had gone out just a few weeks earlier and his party schtick was to run around yelling "Death to the Infidel Americans!" while his turban slipped off his head.  We all laughed and even nominated the guy for the evening's costume contest.   (In case you're wondering, I was a generic pirate and neither of us won the contest)

I think it's an interesting anecdote because in it's own utterly insignificant way, it demonstrated the zeitgeist - the world was a qualitatively different place before 9/11.   Every person who laughed - myself included - would have criticized then president Bill Clinton if he argued that we should invade Afghanistan to get ahold of a guy we held up as a random clown (Easterbrook theorizes what would happen to Bush if he'd tried it).  Most tellingly, given the crowd at this party, we're talking about a particularly educated bunch of folks and even some news junkies like myself.  

As someone who lost a friend in 9/11, I'm the first to admit that this costume & our reactions to it were unfortunate in hindsight.   But what can I say?  I'm sure there are similar threats we take in jest now which, 5 yrs from now, may turn around and seem equally & tragically insensitive.   (for ex., I recently accused a friend of mine who was wearing a weird mandarin collared khaki jacket of "Kim Jong-Il envy")

The fact of the matter is that 9/11 was a historical inflection point where perceptions changed so dramatically, that I don't entirely fault decisions that were expedient in one era and now appear damning in this one.  For example, I'm one of the many isolationist-turned-interventionists who, at the time, blamed Clinton for BlackHawk Down with an argument along the lines of "see what happens when you try to help people whose pride matters more to them than their hunger! Let 'em rot in their own fate."   Now, in hindsight, I recognize what a Bad Thing it was to disengage from this failed state - but I don't blame Clinton as viciously as many on the Right do because I see that same failing in myself.

I wish human nature didn't require such a kick in the pants to thrust some issues to the forefront and others to the rear but I fear that this is irrevocably the case.  And I, as well as my fellow overeducated partygoers, were perfect examples. 

The point?  As you can imagine, I'm pretty disturbed by much of the shenanigans going on with our 9/11 commission, the books, and the press coverage around it.   There's a wide gulf between post-mortem-ing the event and playing a massive partisan blame game.  (Who do I think really shoulders the blame?  Neither Bush nor Clinton but Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Mid East swamp in general).  I thoroughly agree with Jane Galt who criticizes the whole deal as a big exercise in Hindsight Bias and asks that anyone who got swept up in the dotcom bubble look in the mirror before expecting more from either administration -

Pointing to a non-specific memo received by the White House, which said that Al-Qaeda meant to attack something in America, sometime, and saying that George Bush or his appointees could therefore have stopped the attack, is ludicrous. First of all, you don't know how many other pieces of information the administration was inundated with, from which you are expecting them to have picked this one as the single item most worthy of action. Second of all, it's not clear whether any action could have stopped the attack at that late date; the much vaunted capture of the Millenium Bomber was the result of a suspicious customs inspector looking for drugs, not some master plan on the part of the Clinton administration. And third of all, both administrations were working under outside constraints, both institutional and political, that would have prevented them from taking the kind of action that we now urge.

...unless you're the kind of genius who manages your own small affairs with 20/20 foresight, this sort of blame game strikes me as pure partisan grandstanding. And if we cannot remove the taint of partisanship from the 9/11 commission, at least we can expect better of ourselves, and our commentariat, than to crassly exploit those tragic events for electoral advantage. Some things are just more important than scoring a win for the team.

Kim Du Toit, for ex., looks at the reactions when another inflection point was reached in history - Dec 7, 1941 -

Pearl Harbor is the only comparable historical antecedent to 9/11, and it is surprising that in the controversy now being created over 9/11 the December 7, 1941 destruction of our battle ships and aircraft has been hardly mentioned. After all, there was abundant evidence in the 1930s that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor. In fact from 1932 on the navy was apprehensive about the possibility of a Japanese sneak attack on Pearl. In that year the navy's Admiral Harry Yarnell secretly launched a mock attack on Hawaii with a carrier group from the north. Its 152 planes theoretically sank every ship in the harbor and destroyed all our planes on the ground. Can you imagine the indignation of the Democrats on the 9/11 Commission if they got wind of a precedent to 9/11 comparable to the Yarnell attack?

Other inflection points - beginning of WWII, end of WWII, end of the Cold War, and now 9/11 - mark similar turning points where the statute of limitations for judging prior behavior based on today's outcome becomes rather limited.   Does it now suck that we armed / trained the Afghani Mujaheddin in the '80s?   Well, yes, but I'm appreciative of the role Afghanistan played in toppling the Soviet ediface & I'll take the Al Qaeda threat over the Soviet one any day.  Were we too cozy with Saddam in the '80's - probably yes but it was an effective counter against a Soviet-leaning Iran.  Too many who criticize such actions now conveniently forget about the Cold War and 10,000 Nuke-tipped SSBM's pointing at Americans and Western Europe.

I'm not arguing for full license but I contend the press + the commission are in no danger of this particular extreme. 

---

UPDATE - Arnold Kling, ever the eloquent -

The left is unable to see that when civilization is confronted by barbarity that we must fight back. Hating the solution, they insist that "war is not the answer."

The current media circus, the commission looking into the 9-11 attacks, is best understood in this context. A constructive, nonpartisan commission would be looking for systemic failures, and it would propose reforms to enhance security in the future. This commission's main task appears to be assigning personal blame for what happened in the past. In theory, a commission could come up with recommendations for thwarting terror attacks. Instead, the focus is on how to thwart President Bush.

---

UPDATE 2 - Edge.org comments on hindsight bias:

The greatest flaw in the commission's mandate, regrettably, mirrors one of the greatest flaws in modern society: it does not understand risk. The focus of the investigation should not be on how to avoid any specific black swan, for we don't know where the next one is coming from. The focus should be on what general lessons can be learned from them. And the most important lesson may be that we should reward people, not ridicule them, for thinking the impossible. After a black swan like 9/11, we must look ahead, not in the rear-view mirror.

---