In a recent speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Zell Miller criticized the Sept. 11 commission for politically motivated finger-pointing and said the commission's criticisms have energized terrorists. Miller, a Democrat from Georgia who often votes with the Republicans, described the investigation as "a divisive diversion" and asked, "Can you imagine handling the attack on Pearl Harbor this way?"

In fact: The nation did conduct exhaustive hearings after Pearl Harbor to determine how our leaders could have left a powerful nation so unprepared. As with Iraq, only open hearings could provide answers the public needed; they are a democracy's way of unearthing truths a dictatorship would bury.

Miller slurs at least half our nation by insisting that the war has divided us into "wimps" and "warriors," a phony division that I reject, having volunteered to serve in the Marines at virtually the same time as Miller. We are simply two groups of Americans with conflicting visions of how to defeat terrorism.

Much of the bickering over the 9-11 hearings could have been avoided had the Bush administration conceded that it, like preceding administrations, underestimated the danger of terrorism. But President Bush, despite avoiding combat duty in Vietnam, has positioned himself as the "war president," strutting on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit. So his administration first stonewalled and then insisted that it was working urgently to avoid a terrorist attack, despite Bush's previously published remarks to the contrary.

The Bush team undermined the war on terrorism by largely turning its back on Afghanistan, where we had al-Qaida on the run, to focus on Iraq. That was the "divisive diversion" that has weakened the war on terror and torn our nation apart. By invading Iraq despite the world's protests, Bush alienated our allies and vaporized the outpouring of support from other nations that followed 9-11. He has inflamed the Muslim world and provided terrorist organizations with a flood of recruits. Americans are coming to understand this: Fully 60 percent of those polled now believe that invading Iraq has actually increased the danger of terrorism.

Our troops are dying in Fallujah and Baghdad because a smug administration committed us to fight the wrong enemy. It is the administration's arrogance and its deceptions, not the 9-11 hearings, that have energized our enemies and placed our nation at increased risk.

Don Bedwell is a retiree and former Marine who lives in Madeira.

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