Long years after the 9/11 attacks occurred, the legacy of the attacks is still very much with us. And for that reason, with the 20th anniversary of 9/Long years after the 9/11 attacks occurred, the legacy of the attacks is still very much with us. And for that reason, with the 20th anniversary of 9/11 approaching, I found myself turning to Thomas L. Friedman’s Longitudes and Attitudes – a collection of the eminent New York Times columnist’s opinion articles from the time immediately before and after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and a book that was originally published on the first anniversary of the attacks.
Friedman’s opinion columns have been a fixture of the New York Times editorial page since the early 1990’s, and he has won multiple Pulitzer Prizes for his commentary on international politics. It makes sense, therefore, that many readers would turn with interest to the columns in which Friedman, back in 2001 and 2002, was Exploring the World Before and After September 11 (the book’s subtitle). Anyone who was alive at the time of the attacks can agree that going through those times changed one’s life as well as one’s perspectives.
Friedman’s columns from immediately after 9/11 show how, along with the shock, anger, and grief that he felt upon learning of the attacks – emotions that will be familiar to anyone who lived through that day and is old enough to remember it – he also felt curiosity: Who would want to carry out attacks like those of 9/11, and who could possibly support, or sympathize with, those who had done so? Therefore, he began traveling about, seeking to understand the mood in those parts of the world where there seemed to be some degree of appreciation for bin Laden’s defiance of the West.
This pursuit of answers to 9/11-related questions took Friedman to places like Peshawar, Pakistan, where Friedman offered some grim reflections on those parts of the world where support for bin Laden and al-Qaeda might be strongest:
This is not a neighborhood where we should linger. This is not Mister Rogers’ neighborhood. What makes me say that? I don’t know. Maybe it was the street vendor who asked me exactly what color Osama bin Laden T-shirt I wanted – the yellow one with his picture on it or the white one simply extolling him as the hero of the Muslim nation and vowing JIHAD IS OUR MISSION. (He was doing a brisk business among the locals.) Or maybe it was the wall poster announcing CALL THIS PHONE NUMBER IF YOU WANT TO JOIN THE ‘JIHAD AGAINST AMERICA.’…Or maybe it was the cold stares and steely eyes that greeted the obvious foreigner. Those eyes did not say “American Express accepted here.” They said, “Get lost.” (p. 100)
Friedman’s observations here lead up to his visit to the largest madrassa (Islamic religious school) in Pakistan – one that is well-known because its alumni include Mullah Muhammad Omar, who at the time of the 9/11 attacks was the leader of the Taliban. In that school, Friedman saw a telling indicator of the challenges that the United States would face in assuring the people of that part of the world that the U.S.A. is not an enemy: in that school, “[T]heir almost entirely religious curriculum was designed by the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb Alamgir, who died in 1707. There was one shelf of science books in the library – largely from the 1920’s” (p. 101).
At this time of the final U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, after a 20-year war, it is most interesting to contemplate Friedman’s words from the time of the early days of that war. In a column from March of 2002 – after Osama bin Laden had been chased out of Afghanistan and the Taliban removed from power, but before the invasion of Iraq took much U.S. focus off Afghanistan – Friedman wrote that “We don’t need to make Afghanistan into Switzerland. We just need to make the new Afghanistan into something slightly more stable, slightly more decent, and slightly more prosperous than it was under the Taliban.” He added that “If we shrink from this task, Afghanistan will revert right back to what it was before September 11, only worse. And this open sore of Afghanistan will dog us, and the U.S. anti-terror campaign, forever” (p. 208).
Two decades after Friedman wrote those words, U.S. forces have finally left Afghanistan; the Taliban are back in charge. Stability, decency, and prosperity are nowhere to be found, and Afghanistan is well-along in the process of reverting to who-knows-what. To call the current situation there “troubling” would be an understatement.
The Friedman columns from those times are interesting – though not all of them relate to 9/11, or even to U.S. relations with Arab and Muslim nations, and therefore I’m not sure it was necessary to include all of those columns in the book. But what I found to be most informative and helpful in Longitudes and Attitudes was Friedman’s further reflections, in retrospect, on what he was writing in those columns at the time. Freed from the length restrictions of a 740-word newspaper column, Friedman can and does hold forth at greater length regarding a variety of issues relating to 9/11 and its legacy.
For instance, Friedman looks back at September 11, 2001, when he was in Israel, away from his family back in the States. Unable to return to them, during the period when the airspace over the United States was closed, he traveled to Jordan, taking comfort from the messages of consolation that he received from Arab and Muslim friends all over the world. But then he received a profoundly disturbing e-mail, from a friend of his – a fellow American, who was living in the United Arab Emirates. The friend had heard, on the streets of Dubai, rumors that 4000 Jewish people had been warned by Israeli intelligence not to go to the World Trade Center, and – shockingly enough – he wanted Friedman to tell him whether the rumors were true! Friedman writes that
His message rattled me because, I thought, if such an intelligent person could even wonder aloud whether that were true, the rumor must be pervasive, and it must mean that the masses, who would never check, were thoroughly predisposed to believe such a thing. This was the first time I would meet this outrageous fabrication, but unfortunately not the last. I would meet it over and over again in every Arab or Muslim country I visited after September 11; and if you took a poll – a real poll – today, you would find that the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims still believe this terrible lie. It was the beginning of an epidemic of denial that spread throughout the Arab-Muslim world, which refused to really face how this outrage could have come from its bosom. (p. 301)
Contemporary readers may find much to take issue with, in these newspaper columns from 20 years ago. I would question, for example, whether any majority of Arabs or Muslims really believed stories, of whatever kind, claiming that al-Qaeda planners and agents were not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. And Friedman's perspectives regarding Vladimir Putin now seem absurdly over-optimistic, considering Putin’s subsequent aggression toward neighboring countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. But Friedman is certainly a well-informed observer, with many fascinating stories to tell; and Longitudes and Attitudes unquestionably puts one back in those grim, frightening days of 9/11 and its aftermath....more
The 9/11 attacks should have been treated and responded to as a crime, not an act of war, according to Noam Chomsky; and as far as he is concerned, ifThe 9/11 attacks should have been treated and responded to as a crime, not an act of war, according to Noam Chomsky; and as far as he is concerned, if the American government wants to identify a perpetrator of terrorism, it should look in the mirror. Chomsky’s book 9-11 proceeds consistently and unapologetically in that vein; many American readers will find it contrarian, and some will no doubt hate it.
Chomsky’s 9-11 consists of thirteen interviews that Chomsky granted to journalists from a variety of countries – including France, Germany, Greece, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States of America – between September 19 and October 5, 2001. As Chomsky is a well-known and respected public intellectual with a reputation for willingness to offer harsh criticisms of the policies of Western governments like that of the U.S.A., it is perhaps no surprise that journalists, particularly those from left-leaning publications, were seeking Chomsky out in the days after 9/11, for his views on the attacks. And this slim, 118-page volume offers those views, without compromise or equivocation.
What originally drew me to Chomsky’s 9-11 is that it is the first 9/11 book I ever saw. Sometime in the autumn or early winter of 2001, I visited my local Barnes & Noble bookstore in Ellicott City, Maryland – just down the street from an Army National Guard base where armed soldiers were standing guard from September 11th on – and saw this book on the shelves, with its cover showing the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center before the attacks. “My, but they got that out quickly,” I thought at the time.
What did not occur to me at the time, but did occur to me when I picked up Chomsky’s 9-11 this year, was to look at the publisher’s note at the back: “Open Media was founded in 1991 as a pamphlet publishing effort in opposition to the Gulf War, an effort which continues to this day…” That’s helpful information to have, when considering the often leading nature of the interviewers’ questions, and the sometimes strident quality of Chomsky’s answers.
It is not surprising to hear the author of Manufacturing Consent offer harsh criticisms of wealthy Western governments. Yet while I admire Chomsky’s intellect, and while I appreciated the manner in which he repeatedly referred to the attacks as “atrocities,” I immediately took issue with his assertion that “the U.S. is a leading terrorist state, as are its clients” (p. 16).
For Chomsky to speak that way, eight days after those devastating attacks, seemed to me terribly wrong. I am a liberal Democrat who would tend to agree, in ordinary times, with many of the critiques that Chomsky would offer regarding the actions of conservative American governments. Yet I found it inappropriate for Chomsky to go scoring rhetorical points in that manner at a time when the ruins of the World Trade Center were still smoking -- when not all the bodies of those slain at the Twin Towers and the Pentagon had even yet been recovered.
Much as I disagreed with so much of what Chomsky said in 9-11, there were elements of his argument that I could not gainsay. Asked about fundamentalism in the Arab world, Chomsky responds that “the U.S. and the West generally have no objection to religious fundamentalism as such. The U.S., in fact, is one of the most extreme religious fundamentalist cultures in the world; not the state, but the popular culture” (p. 21).
Much as I might have wanted to, I could not contradict Chomsky’s remarks here. After all, at this point in history, the people of the United States of America have elevated to the presidency of the republic a man who is manifestly wrong for the office: unsuited by temperament, and unqualified by experience, with not a day’s prior service in the government or the military.
Why did this happen? In part, because Donald Trump’s political base consisted largely of socially conservative evangelical Christians hoping that a President Trump would appoint conservative Supreme Court justices who would overturn prior court decisions regarding abortion and same-sex marriage. It seemed as though it did not matter to these voters how much harm Trump might do in other spheres, as long as their religious convictions with regard to sex-related social issues could be inscribed into law. The president, evidently, could preside over a ruined republic, as long as abortion and same-sex marriage would be illegal there.
Asked in a mid-September interview about the likely U.S. response to the 9/11 attacks, Chomsky sounded remarkably prescient when he suggested that “I suppose their own intelligence agencies…are warning them that a massive military response will answer bin Laden’s prayers. But there are hawkish elements who want to use the occasion to strike out at their enemies, with extreme violence, no matter how many innocent people suffer” (p. 34). Chomsky said these words on September 21, 2001. A year and a half later, in March of 2003, the George W. Bush Administration responded to the 9/11 attacks by invading – of all places – Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. As of June 2011, casualties of that war, by credible estimates, totaled about 465,000. And American soldiers are still there.
In other parts of the book, Chomsky does not seem quite as prescient. With regard to the prospect of the U.S. succeeding in killing bin Laden, Chomsky opined that “if the United States succeeds in killing him, he may become even more powerful as a martyr” (p. 61). That, fortunately, does not seem to have occurred. Since bin Laden was killed by Seal Team 6 at his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May of 2011, he has receded into history. Other Islamist leaders have seized that grotesque little corner of the media spotlight. Bin Laden dead seems much less dangerous than bin Laden alive.
I have spent a great deal of time disagreeing, often strongly, with this book. Why, then, am I giving it a five-star review? Because Chomsky is a brilliant intellectual who makes one think. His logic is strict and rigid, with his conclusions following from his premises. If I think his premises are flawed, then it falls to me to try to construct better ones. And when the man on the other side of the rhetorical chess board is Noam Chomsky, I know that that task will be formidable indeed.
And now, almost two decades after the 9/11 attacks, the closing words of Chomsky’s 9-11 echo in my mind. Asked what social-justice activists should do in the wake of 9/11, Chomsky said that “It is important not to be intimidated by hysterical ranting and lies and to keep as closely as one can to the course of truth and honesty and concern for the human consequences of what one does, or fails to do” (p. 118). He was talking about responses to 9/11, but he could just as well have been talking about the Trump administration. Hysterical ranting? Lies? Attempts at intimidation? It all sounds only too familiar to a citizen of this country in the year 2020.
Chomsky’s 9-11 was no doubt controversial in its time. It might be controversial to many readers nowadays. But Chomsky, as is his wont, will certainly get you thinking....more
One hundred and two minutes is not much time – an hour and 42 minutes, approximately the length of a typical feature film. Yet it was within that brieOne hundred and two minutes is not much time – an hour and 42 minutes, approximately the length of a typical feature film. Yet it was within that brief span of time on September 11, 2001, that the previously unthinkable happened at the World Trade Center in New York City:
8:46 am (Minute Zero) – A hijacked jet plane strikes the North Tower. 9:02 am (Minute 16) – A second plane strikes the South Tower. 9:59 am (Minute 73) – The South Tower collapses. 10:28 am (Minute 102) – The North Tower collapses.
Other books on 9/11 have sought to engage the larger issues behind the attacks; but 102 Minutes, by Jim Dwyer and Ken Flynn of the New York Times, keeps its focus squarely on the experience of the people who experienced those 102 minutes from within those doomed buildings – when “14,000 men and women fought for life at the World Trade Center” (p. xxi), and 2,749 of them died.
As technical illustrations make frighteningly clear, the manner in which the Twin Towers were constructed in 1973 doomed hundreds of people in those buildings 28 years later, when the 9/11 attacks took place. Stairwells, as permitted by New York City’s building codes in the 1970’s, were clustered together at the center of the building, trapping people above the impact zones. Moreover, early in the rescue effort the fire chiefs in charge at the North Tower “discovered that nearly all the building’s ninety-nine elevators were out of service. Many were stuck between floors with people trapped inside. At least two that had descended to the lobby were shut tight. The people inside were screaming, just a few yards from the fire command desk, but no one could hear them in the din” (p. 50).
Whether one lived or died inside the Twin Towers, it seems, could be a matter of good or bad luck as much as anything else. Characteristic in that regard was the experience of Richard Fern, a systems administrator for Euro Brokers on the 84th floor of the South Tower: “If there were lucky breaks to be had, Rich Fern caught every one of them. He had left the east side of the building just before the right wing of [United Airlines] Flight 175 raked across Euro Brokers’ trading desk, most likely killing everyone there instantly. He had gotten on an elevator a moment too late to be trapped in the shaft. And as he scrambled away from the elevator car, he turned to a door. It led to what turned out to be the only intact escape route in either of the two towers” (p. 102).
102 Minutes includes an abundance of individual stories that provide a human dimension to the vast, seemingly incomprehensible tragedy that was 9/11. The story, of these, that was most resonant for me was the story of Ed Beyea and Abe Zelmanowitz, who worked together at Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield on the 27th floor of the North Tower. Beyea had quadriplegia and used a wheelchair, and Zelmanowitz refused to leave Beyea’s side, even though he could easily have walked down 27 floors to safety as most of his co-workers had done. “One firefighter looked at Zelmanowitz as they stood together in the landing for stairway C….‘Why don’t you go?’ the fireman asked. ‘No, I’m staying with my friend,’ he replied” (p. 177).
Dwyer and Flynn also emphasize the heroism of the firefighters and police officers who rushed forward into a scene of absolute chaos and utter panic, trying to save everyone they could, calming frightened civilians with a crisp, courteous “Just doing my job.” For me, the first-responder story that resonated most was that of Battalion Chief Orio J. Palmer, whose courage, professionalism, and dedication to fitness helped him become the first firefighter to reach the South Tower impact zone on the 78th floor. One of the most starkly painful passages from the book, for me, came when Battalion Chief Palmer got his first look at the impact zone:
In radio transmissions, the Fire Department avoids the term “civilians,” referring to them as “10-45’s,” and does not describe anyone as “dead,” but as “Code One.” Then [Palmer] stammered, just slightly, perhaps from exertion, perhaps from what he, the first person from the outside, was seeing. “Radio, radio, radio that – 78th floor, numerous 10-45 Code Ones,” Palmer said. On the 78th floor, he was saying, there were many dead civilians. (p. 206)
A tough-minded epilogue looks into the factors that contributed to the high death toll in the Twin Towers. Acknowledging that “Neither New York nor the United States had any muscle memory of sustained attacks on the homeland”, and that therefore both civilians and first responders were dealing with something radically new, Dwyer and Flynn nonetheless hold that “If history is to be a tool for the living, it must be unflinchingly candid” (pp. 250-51).
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were built in accordance with the building codes of the time, but that did not end up helping the people there on 9/11. “By code, the floors were supposed to be able to withstand fire for two hours. When Chief Orio Palmer and the other firefighters reached people in the crash zone of the south tower, fifty minutes after the plane hit the building, they had every reason to believe there was another hour available for their rescue work. Instead, the tower collapsed seven minutes after they got there” (p. 254).
Problems relating to the way in which the buildings were designed and built, in Dwyer and Flynn’s analysis, were exacerbated by communications difficulties among first responders. “A cascade of lapsed communications…cost lives. The police helicopters reported the deterioriation of the two towers and specifically predicted the collapse of the north tower. The fire commanders had no link to those helicopters or reports….The interagency radios were sitting on shelves and in the trunks of cars, unused” (p. 250).
Such findings remind me of what one can read in The 9/11 Commission Report, and are thoughtfully set forth. Yet what most readers are most likely to take from 102 Minutes, as stated above, is the compelling testimony that Dwyer and Flynn have gathered – civilians and first responders; those who made it out of the Twin Towers, and those who didn’t. This book takes readers back to that terrible day in a powerful and effective way....more
The day's name alone is enough to bring back memories of the pain and grief and fear we felt at that time, enough to reopen old wounds. Tuesday, SepteThe day's name alone is enough to bring back memories of the pain and grief and fear we felt at that time, enough to reopen old wounds. Tuesday, September 11, 2001. September 11th. 9/11. For all of us who were alive that day, and are old enough to remember it, each anniversary brings back painful memories, even for those of us who were lucky enough not to lose a friend or loved one in the 9/11 attacks. The memories of 9/11 are so grim, so disheartening, that it might seem impossible that someone could write a 9/11 book that could be described as inspiring; but Jim DeFede achieves that seemingly impossible task in The Day the World Came to Town.
The main action of DeFede's book takes place in a locale that seems worlds away from Ground Zero, or the Pentagon, or Shanksville. As the book's subtitle indicates, DeFede's focus is on 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland. That small city (population 11,688, according to Statistics Canada 2016) has always been an isolated place, even amidst the vastness of the Canadian landscape; indeed, Newfoundland itself is so isolated that it did not officially become part of Canada until 1949. As DeFede tells it, Gander had come into its greatest prominence in the early years of the aviation era, when smaller fuel capacities meant that transatlantic flights used Gander as a jumping-off point for eastbound trips across the pond. But as planes and their fuel tanks grew larger, Gander became less important in aviation terms, and the city largely faded from the public consciousness -- until 9/11.
The 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by suicide hijackers using jet planes as weapons. In response, for the first time in American history, the airspace over the United States of America was closed. U.S.-bound flights from Europe therefore had to either turn back or land somewhere else in North America. The overwhelming majority of crews of those flights chose to continue their flights, and were rerouted to Gander. Over 40 planes, with more than 6,000 people, were suddenly on their way to a place that many of those people had probably never heard of.
What happened then was a not-so-small miracle -- something that remains a truly inspiring example of the goodness and kindness of ordinary people. Air traffic controllers and customs officials handled with grace and aplomb the Herculean task of accommodating all those airplanes and their passengers. Ordinary citizens of Gander opened their doors and invited passengers from the planes into their homes -- made sure the displaced travelers had a place to take a shower, a hot meal, a place to sleep. Birthday parties were thrown for children whose holiday plans had been cancelled. Stores donated food, clothing, and incidentals. Prescriptions were filled by Gander pharmacists, free of charge. Terrified pets were taken from the holds of planes, where many would no doubt have died, and were given safe shelter. Every good thing that could be done for those who were tired and frightened was done. As DeFede puts it, quite simply, "There was nothing the passengers needed that the people in town weren't prepared to provide" (169).
In response to the cruelty of the acts carried out by the hijackers on 9/11, the actions of the good people of Gander provide strong evidence that what is good in human nature will in the long run prevail. Newfoundlanders and other citizens of Canada may read this book with particular (and justifiable) pride; DeFede quotes Gander's town constable as saying, "A Newfoundlander likes to put his arm around a person and say, 'It's going to be all right. I'm here. It's going to be okay. We're your friend. We're your buddy. We've got you.' That's the way it's always been. That's the way it always will be. And that's the way it was on September eleventh" (p. 5). At the same time, its themes are universal.
Going over this review more than 20 years after the 9/11 attacks, I recall how, after September 11th, we all found ourselves waiting for the other shoe to drop -- for a September 12th, or a September 13th. Indeed, we all know that inevitably, someday, fanatics motivated by some violent ideology or other will perpetrate, somewhere in the world, some mass attack that will claim many innocent lives. We will mourn those who died, and we will try to make sure that those responsible are brought to justice.
But what I want to focus on here is the idea that something else will happen. Nice, ordinary people like the people of Gander, Newfoundland -- not rich, not famous, just good ordinary people -- will quietly, unobtrusively, gather and assemble and start offering help to the people who need it. They will not make a big deal of it; they will not ask to be thanked. They will simply act with kindness and compassion, doing good on behalf of others because it is the right thing to do.
DeFede captures this theme so well that I find The Day the World Came to Town to be one of the most important books I have ever read....more
The Looming Tower takes its title from a verse of the Koran – one that was recited by Osama bin Laden during the weeks before the terrorist attacks ofThe Looming Tower takes its title from a verse of the Koran – one that was recited by Osama bin Laden during the weeks before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In a videotaped speech that was found on an al-Qaeda member’s computer in Hamburg, bin Laden repeatedly quoted the following verse: “Wherever you are, death will find you, even if you are in looming towers” (p. 395). It is tragically clear, in retrospect, which looming towers bin Laden had in mind.
Author Lawrence Wright won a Pulitzer Prize for this compelling and meticulously researched story of Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (the book’s subtitle). Wright’s diligent work in conducting hundreds of interviews draws a clear picture of the social, political, and historical factors that led from decades-old conflicts in obscure corners of the Middle East to the death and destruction of 9/11 at the World Trade Center, at the Pentagon, and in that field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Western readers unfamiliar with the fine points of Islamic history will learn much from Wright’s recounting of the profound changes that wracked Saudi Arabia when the oil boom and the wealth it brought transformed life in a region where much had remained the same since the Muslims’ “Golden Age” of the 7th century A.D. For centuries, Wright suggests, “The essential experience of life on the Arabian Peninsula was that nothing changed. The eternal and the present were one and the same” (p. 99). But when change came, it was disorienting, and a number of Saudis sought refuge from that change in the fundamentalism of the Wahhabi school of Islam.
Islamist ideology, as first articulated by an eccentric and troubled Egyptian named Sayyid Qutb during the years after the Second World War, gradually gained adherents across the Muslim world; and as some Islamists began to target the United States of America, Wright argues, American law enforcement was not prepared to confront this new threat. When considering, for example, the 1993 World Trade Center attack carried out by followers of the blind Islamist cleric Omar Abdul Rahman, Wright assesses the American mindset on the eve of that attack as follows:
“Few Americans, even in the intelligence community, had any idea of the network of radical Islamists that had grown up inside the country. The blind sheikh may as well have been speaking in Martian as Arabic, since there were so few Middle East language specialists available to the FBI, much less to the local police. Even if his threats had been heard and understood, the perception of most Americans was dimmed by their general insulation from the world’s problems and clouded by the comfortable feeling that no one who lived in America would turn against it.” (p. 201)
Part of the drama of The Looming Tower inheres in the story of John O’Neill, an FBI counterterrorism chief who “was fascinated by [bin Laden] at a time when it was rare to meet anyone, even in the bureau, who knew who Osama bin Laden was” (p. 275). Wright captures well the frustration that O’Neill felt as he tried to warn anyone who might listen of the increasingly likely prospects of an al-Qaeda terrorist attack on the American homeland. O’Neill, knowing of bin Laden’s penchant for spectacular attacks with heavy symbolic significance, told friends that “We’re due” for an attack as early as the second half of 1999; and as celebrations of the new year and new millennium of 2000 unfolded in midtown Manhattan, O’Neill went to Times Square, telling White House national counterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke that “If they’re gonna do anything in New York, they’re gonna do it here….So I’m here” (pp. 336, 338).
O’Neill was unsuccessful in his years-long attempts to persuade his superiors to share his anxieties about Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda; he eventually retired from the FBI and took a security post at the World Trade Center. On September 10, 2001, socializing with some colleagues at the China Club in Manhattan, O’Neill “told his friends that something big was going to happen. ‘We’re overdue,’ he said again” (p. 401). The next day, he was at the Twin Towers when the planes struck.
The 2011 Vintage Books edition of The Looming Tower is particularly helpful, as Wright has a chance to reflect on new developments since the book’s original publication in 2006 – including the killing of Osama bin Laden by members of Seal Team 6 in Pakistan in 2011 – and to reflect on the changes that he has seen in the Muslim world since he taught English in his youth at the American University in Cairo.
He reflects that bin Laden failed to achieve “his central goal…to take over a Muslim country and establish a caliphate” (p. 429). Yet as of 2011, “America was sinking ever more deeply into unpromising, fantastically expensive wars in the Muslim world – following the script that had been written by bin Laden. Repeatedly, he had outlined his goal of drawing America into such conflicts with the goal of bleeding the U.S. economically and turning the War on Terror into a genuine clash of civilizations” (p. 428). How do we act against groups like al-Qaeda without taking on the role that Osama bin Laden sought to assign us?
Writing on this anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, I reflect that much of what Wright wrote back in 2006 about a 2001 terrorist attack seems strongly applicable to the world of the 2020’s. Today, of course, the Islamist group about which one hears the most is ISIS, a group that claims to have established in Iraq and Syria the caliphate of which bin Laden dreamed. The question of how to deal with this ideological conflict still looms over us; and in an election season when the two major-party candidates have put forth profoundly different policy proposals for how to deal with ISIS, Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower reminds us that the question of how to ensure that democratic values prevail in a conflict with a decidedly anti-democratic adversary is a question with no easy answers....more
The 9/11 Commission, at a difficult time in the nation’s life, achieved something that might previously have seemed impossible. The people of the UnitThe 9/11 Commission, at a difficult time in the nation’s life, achieved something that might previously have seemed impossible. The people of the United States of America were convulsed with grief, reeling with shock, after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001; but the members of the commission calmly and coolly looked at the situation that the country faced after 9/11, undistracted by the feelings of panic that had seized so many Americans. In a country that had been torn by partisan political division, Democrats and Republicans – conservatives, liberals, and moderates – worked together productively for the greater good. The 9/11 Commission Report, crafted in the wake of tragedy, stands of evidence of the great things that Americans can still do, when we trust the better angels of our nature.
For the benefit of those who are not old enough to remember those times, it may be helpful to recall just how fear-ridden the country was in the wake of those attacks. When a celebrity music telethon was held, to raise money toward relief and rebuilding in the wake of the attacks, the musicians played in an undisclosed location, as if otherwise the terrorists would surely find the location and fly a hijacked jet plane into it. When President George W. Bush threw out the first ball at a Texas Rangers baseball game, the first game played after the attacks, the crowd cheered their hearts out, as if relieved that a hijacked plane hadn’t been flown into that ballpark in Arlington, Texas. In those days, it was routine for the passengers on an airline flight anywhere in the U.S.A. to break into applause once the plane had landed safely.
And in my home state of Maryland, some politicians were seriously suggesting that Baltimore’s own World Trade Center, on the city’s waterfront, be “protected” by parking the old naval frigate U.S.S. Constellation in front of the building. Left out of those calculations, evidently, was the question of how a wooden warship from 1854, its masts reaching perhaps three stories into the air, could “protect” a 30-story building. The time after 9/11 was, in short, a time when clear thinking was often being squeezed out by fear.
Seen against that background, The 9/11 Commission Report is doubly impressive. The ten-member commission, chaired by Republican Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey, with Democratic Representative Lee Hamilton of Florida as vice-chair, conducted exhaustive research in order to present their Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the report’s subtitle). The report’s first chapter, “’We Have Some Planes,’” provides a harrowing, in medias res recounting of the events of September 11, 2001. From there, the commission looks back to the very beginnings of the ideological conflict that led to the attacks – as the commission authors put it, “The Foundation of the New Terrorism.”
From there, the commission examines the long sequence of events that led to 9/11 – counter-terrorism efforts by the U.S. intelligence agencies, al-Qaeda’s initial attacks against American targets abroad, U.S. responses to those attacks, and finally al-Qaeda’s planning and execution of the 9/11 attacks. The commission is carefully bipartisan in apportioning responsibility for the U.S. intelligence failures that led to the attacks, saying of the U.S. Congress, for example, that “Congress had a distinct tendency to push questions of emerging national security threats off its own plate, leaving them for others to consider. Congress asked outside commissions to do the work that arguably was at the heart of its own oversight responsibilities” (p. 107). There are 535 members of Congress. Would not any member of Congress from the pre-9/11 years, in his or her heart of hearts, find truth in that statement?
In the bipartisan spirit in which the commission worked, both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations come across as concerned about Islamist terrorism – but as one problem among many, and not necessarily as a priority. One of the most sympathetic figures to emerge from The 9/11 Commission Report is former counterterrorism coordinator Richard A. Clarke, who spoke for so many years about the importance of taking seriously al-Qaeda’s threats of a massive attack against the American homeland. It is a telling indicator of the frustration that Clarke felt that “In May or June [2001], Clarke asked to be moved from his counterterrorism portfolio to a new set of responsibilities for cybersecurity. He told us that he was frustrated with his role and with an administration that he considered not ‘serious about al Qaeda’” (p. 205).
A chapter that returns to the actual day of the attacks as they unfolded at the World Trade Center site in New York is appropriately titled “Heroism and Horror,” and contains plenty of both. Amid the heroism being demonstrated by members of the various public-safety agencies responding to the attacks – FDNY, NYPD, PAPD – there is the shock of learning that the sheer scope of the devastation revealed the communications difficulties within as well as among those agencies. For example, the commission reports that “To our knowledge, no FDNY chiefs outside the South Tower realized that the repeater channel was functioning and being used by units in that tower. The senior chief in the South Tower lobby was initially unable to communicate his requests for more units to chiefs either in the North Tower lobby or at his outdoor command post” (p. 300).
The 9/11 Commission Report looks forward as well as back from the events of that terrible day, providing a long list of well-considered recommendations for changes in future policy. Characteristic in that regard is the commission’s finding concerning the coordination and distribution of terrorism-related intelligence: “In each of our examples, no one was firmly in charge of managing the case and able to draw relevant intelligence from anywhere in the government, assign responsibilities across the agencies (foreign or domestic), track progress, and quickly bring obstacles up to the level where they could be resolved. Responsibility and accountability were diffuse” (p. 400).
The commission made many recommendations. Some were acted on fully and promptly; others were acted on only partially; still others were ignored altogether, notwithstanding the commission’s regular and energetic remonstrances to the government. Nonetheless, The 9/11 Commission Report stands as a powerful reminder of the good that Americans can do, even under the most difficult and tragic of circumstances, when they put aside day-to-day disagreements and work for the good of all....more
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