September 11th - 10 Years Later

September 11, 2001 is seared into the memory and consciousness of those old enough to remember and understand the significance, trauma, and importance to world geo-politics of the event.  When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said that it was a day that would live in infamy.  For the generation of the early 21st century, these words echo for the significance of 9/11.  Now, we have marked the 10th anniversary of 9/11, and the leader of Al-qaeda, Osama Bin Laden, was killed May 2nd of this year in Pakistan. 

It is scary to think that Al-qaeda members lived and worked in the United States for an extended time before they carried out their mission on September 11th.  There are probably still Al-qaeda members living in the United States as we speak.  The nature of the Al-qaeda threat changed how the U.S. military and intelligence community has to operate to protect America.  The Al-qaeda members of September 11th did have a certain profile.  All were young men of Middle Eastern background, many coming from Saudi Arabia.  Most had poor English skills.  Checking a suspected terrorist at the airport is a necessary procedure in this post-9/11 world.  Some profiling may be necessary in order to protect the safety of passengers and flight crew.  The key is to strike a balance between security and freedom for all races to not be harassed.  Yet if a person is not in Al-qaeda, then they don’t have anything to hide. 

When America was attacked on September 11th, President Bush was in an elementary classroom in Florida.  When he was told that airplanes had crashed into buildings in New York City and the Pentagon, he did not immediately react, for which he was criticized.  He responded later by saying that he did not want to scare the little kids if it seemed he panicked.  The September 11th attacks were a defining moment of Bush’s presidency.  Bush said that these acts shatter the foundations of our tallest buildings, but not the foundations of our government.  In going after Al-qaeda and Bin Laden, Bush sent troops first to Afghanistan in the fall of 2001.  American and coalition troops deposed the Taliban quickly but had trouble taming this rugged land.  By fighting in Afghanistan, many leaders in the military say, “We fight them over there, so we don’t have to fight them over here.”  Even though the Taliban was defeated and a new government was put in place, American and coalition troops are still subject to terrorist attacks. 

In the earlier generation of the 60s, people remember what they were doing when the Kennedy assassination occurred.  Similarly, people of the early 21st century generation remember what they were doing on September 11, 2001.  I was in Washington, D. C. where the Pentagon is.  I was in the National Archives building working with other government employees.  Like many others, we were thinking that a plane by accident flew into the World Trade Center.  Yet, when the second plane crashed into the towers, we knew that this was a terrorist attack on American soil.  The two overriding emotions of everyone was fear and anger.  Immediately, many wanted revenge on the perpetrators.  My co-worker said, “We’re going to shove a missile up someone’s ass.  You don’t f—k with the United States.”  I was working with other government employees and the organization I worked for was involved in government classification and declassification.  Two men started talking about how during World War II, America developed intelligence on the Japanese, so America was successful in defeating the fascists.  They had a level head in the midst of the trauma.  These men seemed to say that this was an intelligence failure on the part of the American intelligence community. 

The common phrase that Americans heard concerning the intelligence failure was that the intelligence community failed to “connect the dots.”  In my work in the government I heard people talking about Osama Bin Laden before September 11th, so people were aware of the threat.  There was chatter that intelligence experts were hearing regarding terrorist attacks, but the analysts did not make the right calculations that planes would be used as missiles to crash into buildings.  American intelligence had been operating in a Cold War mode in 2001 even though the Cold War had been over for about ten years.  Now, things have changed and the intelligence on Al-qaeda is more advanced, and America is more secure.  However, Americans will have to remain vigilant in the global fight against terror.  Know the FACTS!