On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was working as an
attorney for a sole practitioner (law firm with only one owner, no partners) whose
office was across Route 123 from the Fairfax County (Virginia) court
complex. The Boss himself was down in
Richmond for a bar meeting, so it was just me and one of the secretaries. Sometime in the morning, the secretary notified
me that “a plane hit the World Trade Center” (North Tower, 8:46 a.m. EST) and
set up the firm’s small TV set, with rabbit ears, to watch the events unfold. Sure enough, another plane hit the second
tower (South Tower, 9:03 a.m.), a third plane hit the Pentagon (9:37 a.m., west
side of the building), and a fourth plane crashed somewhere in rural Pennsylvania
(10:03 a.m.) once the passengers figured out what was going on and charged the
cockpit to take down the hijackers, at the cost of their own lives.
Before the second tower was hit, one of the news reporters
remarked that “maybe” [the first] collision was an accident. But you could see the plane flying directly AT
the tower – obviously the pilot was deliberately targeting the tower
itself. When the second tower was hit,
any lingering doubts should have been over.
What was really bizarre was watching the towers themselves
actually collapse. Before that point it
was more along the lines of, “well, someone hit the building and put it on
fire.” The collapses really were the
nail in the coffin. Those collapses not
only doomed the people still inside the buildings, but also the rescue crews
who had been trying to save the buildings and the people inside. The final death toll for all four attacks comes
in to just under 3,000.
Back in summer 1988 we visited NYC, and we got to visit the
World Trade Center. I found it
underwhelming, compared to the deck at the Empire State Building (eighty sixth and
one hundred and second floors), as the windows are back from the edge of the building. While I was disappointed that the rebuilt WTC
building was a single one instead of a pair, at least its observation deck is
much better.
Living in Northern Virginia, Rosslyn to be exact, I had
driven past the Pentagon too many times to count, most of them being past the
face of the Pentagon (1 out of 5) which was struck on that day. For awhile thereafter, the hole was there,
but has now long since been patched up.
The major impact, so to speak, of 9/11 was to pull
EVERYONE together. Here was a terrorist
act so brutal and compelling, our own generation’s Pearl Harbor, that even cynical
liberal Democrats – at least most of them – were bludgeoned into sincere
patriotism. When it came to chasing down
Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden, we were united.
For that matter, foreigners who were inclined to distrust us and look
down on us, now took pity on us and we had effectively a blank check to seek
revenge. We liberated Afghanistan from
the Taliban, tracked down and killed Osama Bin Laden (on Barack Obama’s watch)
and soon after took Iraq away from Saddam Hussein.
Back home, Bush Jr. pushed through the Patriot Act and set
up the Guantanamo Bay facility in Cuba to make sure Harold and Kumar weren’t
planning any attacks. Part of the danger
of the attacks was goading us into becoming a police state – which we avoided –
and overstepping our mandate, which we arguably did in Iraq.
I don’t recall being any MORE or LESS upset by 9/11 than anyone
else. My hearing was still substandard,
so volunteering for military service was no more possible than it was in 1986
when I graduated from high school and could not get into ROTC – or the National
Guard. I had no qualms or dispute about
the Afghanistan operation, nor the subsequent Iraqi operation. I suppose “liberation” still rings truer than
“invasion” because notwithstanding our subsequent ball-dropping on nation-building
in both countries, we were liberating each from a vile regime: the Taliban in
Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
Of course, the then-threatened weapons of mass destruction Saddam Hussein
supposedly had never materialized, and many would argue that we knew they did
not exist when we invaded. “Donald Rumsfeld”
is a name I hear mentioned in that context.
Did we know it would happen and let it occur? Well, there were stories that the FBI
received reports that the 19 flyers were learning to take off but not land the
planes. I don’t believe anyone has
proved, conclusively, that the administration had clear and convincing evidence
that 4 jets would be hijacked and crashed into major targets. These were innovative, unprecedented
attacks. The 1993 WTC bombing may have
lulled us into a false sense of security, writing off the terrorists as more
inspired than competent. But a slew of
other bombings overseas should have put us on notice that not all terrorists
were buffoons. Bringing back Pearl Harbor,
many accused FDR of sitting on evidence of the attack to allow it to go through,
but the actual intelligence we had was only that the Japanese were up to something-
the fleet maintained radio silence on its way to Hawaii and we had no actual
warning of the attack – until it actually occurred. Fortunately for us, our four carriers were
out at sea and escaped the attack.
The bigger picture is this: when we ARE attacked, and are legitimately
the victim of the attack, how do we respond?
After Pearl Harbor we fought back against the Japanese. Oddly, Nazi Germany declared war on US, not
the other way around. Nonetheless, we
managed to defeat both Axis countries and fight wars on both fronts simultaneously.
With our recent withdrawal from Afghanistan, obviously the
question is: did we waste our time there?
I think the real answer is not that it was a mistake to go in there to
begin with, rather the follow-through was botched. A recent article profiling various US troops
who served there from 2001 to the present shows an inconsistent approach to destroying
the Taliban. “Clear and hold” is supposedly
the optimal strategy, but that ultimately means you need to surround the enemy
completely. It seems the Pakistani
border was too porous to allow us to close it off completely, meaning the
Taliban could hide there until we lost patience and left. Sadly, the Pakistanis themselves were complicit
in harboring the Taliban. How much we
could actually accomplish without their full cooperation is a big
question. If anyone has the answer, by
all means let me know.
The biggest success story at shutting down an insurgency was
Malaysia, but there the Brits had the ability to shut off the entire country
and the rebels were ethnic Chinese, not Malayans. In Vietnam we did not have the prerogative to
shut down Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam up to the Chinese border. In Iraq, we deposed Saddam but had no plan on
what would replace his regime. Bottom
line is, FOLLOW THROUGH. Do not exceed
the moral authority we earned when those Towers collapsed.
Finally, here’s a discussion of KSM, man behind 9/11. Unfortunately it seems the FBI and CIA did NOT
coordinate effectively. My impression is
that KSM decided to taint his confession to whatever he was actually responsible
for by taking credit for many other things he probably had nothing to do
with.
