What a terrible anniversary we’re commemorating today. And as we remember, we are reminded that questions still surround the attacks on the World Trade Center eight years ago.
Conspiracy theories still persist, but for the most part these theories have been dismissed. No one can seriously believe that anyone in our government was complicit in these attacks.
But we know that there were advanced warnings. We know that our intelligence agencies reported to the administration that an attack on American soil was possible, and we know that Osama bin Laden himself warned that a major attack would take place. He made this warning about three weeks before 9/11.
This leaves two possibilities: one, the Bush administration was not competent to prepare or defend against a terrorism attack — or, two, that they chose to dismiss or ignore the warnings. If the latter is true, one must ask why. Again, two possibilities: either they didn’t believe them, or they did believe them but didn’t think they would be as horrific as they turned out to be. If this is the case, why? Was it true that the administration, particularly Dick Cheney, wanted an excuse to ultimately invade Iraq? Considering the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq, the hysteria over Saddam Hussein’s alleged complicity in the 9/11 attacks and the claims that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and posed an immediate threat — both proven to be false, and possibly fabricated — one cannot rule out this possibility. An invasion of Iraq seems to have been on the administration’s agenda from the moment it took office.
The other possibilities are almost as bad. If the administration was indeed incompetent, as it seems to have been, perhaps on top of any other truth, then why was it ever reelected? Why wasn’t this incompetence probed? The same goes for the remaining possibility — that it did not believe the intelligence or bin Laden’s warning were credible. Given bin Laden’s history, why not?
The other major question surrounding this act of terrorism is the nature of our response. The destruction of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, an act of terrorism, was carried out by an American citizen. It was treated as a crime. There is a distinction between an act of war and an act of terrorism. The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a crime, as were the attacks on the US Embassies in Africa and the attack on the USS Cole. Regardless of the scope of the act, terrorism, unless state sponsored, cannot be considered an act of war in the traditional sense — and as we’ve seen, responding to them in that way has proven to be ineffective.
Waging war on or in nations in order to bring terrorists to justice has had the opposite of the intended effect. It has reinforced the terrorists’ mission, and it has created more terrorists. It has squandered thousands upon thousands of lives needlessly and cost billions upon billions of dollars. What’s happening now in Afghanistan and Pakistan may be irreversible, and it’s still too soon to be sure that Iraq is a settled, stable state.
It’s easy for people to become hysterical and ready to agree to anything in times of crisis, and it’s now ingrained in the American psychology that war is the proper response to an act of terrorism. But it’s not. Had President Bush announced that every law enforcement agency in the world would coverge on Afghanistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, he would probably have had Americans’ support for this approach. But instead he whipped up public sentiment for an invasion. Granted the governing Talibans would have been unwilling to cooperate, but the mere threat of a strong military response might have changed their minds. After all, despite their radicalism, they still had to govern — and who knows… we might have captured bin Laden by now.
Bush followed this error with another — persuading the American people that an invasion of Iraq was also necessary. And now the damage has been done. Should there ever be another major terrorist attach on US soil, Americans might think the only response is a military one, and any president who tried to approach it in a more logical way would be branded a coward, soft on terrorism.
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