Editorial: Success and excess mark the decade since 9/11
Ten years ago this Sunday, the United States
was a fearful nation, its sense of security shattered by a surprise
attack on America even more deadly and shocking than the one on Pearl Harbor 60 years earlier. In a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll taken on the afternoon and evening of 9/11, nearly three of five people were worried they or someone in their families would become a victim of terrorism.
The weeks that followed were filled with
speculation about follow-on assaults from sleeper cells inside the USA.
Air traffic plummeted. The mysterious anthrax deaths made people afraid
to open their mail or ride mass transit. Hardware stores ran out of duct
tape and plastic sheeting as Americans girded themselves against
biological, chemical or nuclear attacks.
Judged against that scary period, perhaps the
most remarkable thing about the 10th anniversary of 9/11 is what didn't
happen: another major strike on U.S. soil, something few people would
have predicted at the time. Even if there is an attack timed to the
anniversary — a threat the government ominously warned about Thursday —
it is likely to be seen in less apocalyptic terms, more the desperate
act of an overmatched enemy than a rising danger. Dire forecasts of
unending warfare and clashes of civilizations have not materialized.
How to account for this achievement?
The greatest credit goes to the relentless
campaign against al-Qaeda that destroyed the terror group's training
camps in Afghanistan, deposed its Taliban hosts, dried up its finances
and finally killed Osama bin Laden. Helpful, too, were al-Qaeda's
self-inflicted wounds in the battle for hearts and minds. The group's
brutality against fellow Muslims in Pakistan and elsewhere provoked a
backlash. In Islamic nations, opinions of al-Qaeda and bin Laden remained negative and became increasingly so, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Project.
And this spring's Arab uprisings found most Muslims far more interested
in freedom and economic opportunity than in al-Qaeda's misogynistic,
medieval death cult.
At home, the post-9/11 fear was complemented by
unity of purpose that proved all too fleeting but still beefed up the
nation's defenses against terrorism. Improved air security, vigilant
citizens and better law enforcement disrupted more than 20 plots,
including one just last November to bomb a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony
in Portland, Ore. At the same time, political and religious leaders
worked effectively to prevent generalized anti-Muslim bigotry that would
have undermined the 9/11 response.
This doesn't mean the war on terror has been an
unqualified success. By far the most costly blunder was the war in Iraq,
justified to eliminate a risk from weapons of mass destruction that
turned out not to exist. Once that war spun out of control, it drained
resources from what might have been a successful ending in Afghanistan.
Warrantless wiretapping and the waterboarding of terror suspects were
excesses that trampled traditional American values.
Less publicized, but also worrisome, is the
emergence since 9/11 of a sprawling, enormously expensive
security-industrial complex. A Washington Post series last year found 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 outside contractors devoted to counterterrorism. Surely the threat can be potently addressed in a less wasteful, more efficient way.
This 10th anniversary gives the nation an
opportunity not just to remember the victims, as it should, but also to
reassess the threat.
Today, we know a lot of things we didn't know in that frightening fall of 2001. We know the anthrax attacks came from a disturbed U.S. scientist,
not a foreign terrorist. We know al-Qaeda is on the ropes. Yet we also
know, through documents seized in bin Laden's compound, that al-Qaeda
still wants to hit the U.S., particularly this weekend. We know "lone
wolf" terrorists and self-radicalized individuals — such as the Fort Hood shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Hasan—
are capable of inflicting great damage. But as long as terrorists
don't get their hands on nuclear devices or other weapons of mass
destruction, we also know how to respond.
In foreign policy terms, this means keeping up
the pressure to destroy the leaders of al-Qaeda and its offshoots, while
avoiding unnecessary regional entanglements with groups that aren't
direct threats to U.S. security. Domestically, it means striking the
right balance between security and civil liberties, maintaining
vigilance at airports while introducing more common sense into the
screening process, and implementing recommendations from the 9/11
Commission, such as improving emergency communications and streamlining
intelligence oversight. Failure to have done so already is a monument to
congressional ineptitude.
In the Sept. 12, 2001, edition of USA TODAY, the
front page headline was "Act of War." One of the toughest questions
about this war will simply be to determine when it is over. By the 10th
anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Americans took comfort in the knowledge
that Japan and Germany had surrendered in 1945. In the battle against
the ideology and fanatics responsible for 9/11, we know we are winning,
but it will be hard to know when we have won.
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