By late afternoon on September 11, 2001, U.S. politicians appeared to have closed ranks around the Bush administration, professing their unqualified support of the president in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. However, some Democratic lawmakers weren't entirely singing with the chorus of nonpartisan solidarity that the lawmakers' off-key rendition of "God Bless America" seemed to evoke at the end of the day.
The American Prospect caught up with Pennsylvania Democratic Representative John Murtha on the corner of First and Independence shortly after the Capitol had been evacuated at 11 AM on Tuesday. As smoke from the burning Pentagon rose in the distance, Murtha roundly criticized the Bush administration's "hands-off approach to the Middle East" and the president's turning a "blind eye" to the region. Murtha, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Defense, suggested that the attacks were the result of the "major failure of the Bush administration to address this issue."
Murtha also criticized Bush's National Missile Defense System (NMD), saying that just prior to the evacuation, he and his subcommittee colleague, Virginia Democrat Jim Moran, had discussed switching $800 million the administration was requesting for missile defnese to anti-terrorism initiatives instead. Murtha cited the recent six-week period of heightened security measures at the Pentagon and Ft. Myer as evidence that the government had been on high alert, but had not been able to pre-empt the attacks. "It takes a long time to penetrate these terrorist cells," said Murtha, "we have to continue to monitor them." According to Murtha's spokesperson, Brad Clemenson, "[Murtha] has been critical of the president for not putting enough emphasis on anti-terrorism. He perceives that terrorism is an immediate threat, and missile defense is not so urgent."
Murtha is as close as a Congressional Democrat gets to a defense hardliner, and his public lack of enthusiasm for the administration's national missile defense system raises the prospect that Congress may have priorities other than the NMD in light of Tuesday's events.
