The post-9/11 world
THE CRISP pre-autumn weather in Boston last week is a heartbreaking reminder of the stark blue clarity of the sky above Manhattan on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when Islamic extremists rammed two hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center. The immediate US response after Sept. 11 was equally clear and convincing.
Time and habits of thought left over from the Cold War and the 1991 Gulf War have since muddied the strategy and produced policies that are unessential or counterproductive. On the fourth anniversary of the attacks, the nation needs to reassess its response, rethink the failures, and restore the clarity that guided Americans through the trauma of an assault on their home country.
President Bush set the mood of the country in a speech before Congress on Sept. 20, 2001, in which he declared war on Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan and told the military: ''The hour will come when America will act, and you will make us proud." He was careful to seek allies, and he told the world's Muslims that Al Qaeda was ''a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam."
Four months later, with Afghanistan cleared of the Taliban, he reported back to Congress: ''The men and women of our armed forces have delivered a message now clear to every enemy of the United States: Even 7,000 miles away, across oceans and continents, on mountaintops and in caves, you will not escape the justice of this nation."
And yet today bin Laden remains at large, along with several of his top lieutenants and Mullah Omar, leader of the Taliban -- all probably hiding in the borderlands of Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons. The Bush administration has firmed up an alliance with the military regime there, but the potential for instability is strong. Pakistani inability or unwillingness to crush Al Qaeda along the border imperils the fragile, imperfectly democratic Afghan government.
Having secured an incomplete victory in central Asia, Bush should not have turned so readily to a war in Iraq. And yet -- whether spurred by regrets from Dick Cheney and other policy advisers that they did not finish off Saddam Hussein in 1991, grandiose ambitions to remake the Middle East, a desire to secure oil supplies, or genuine fear of the phantom weapons of mass destruction -- the administration waded in.
Now that the United States has uprooted Saddam's regime and committed the Iraqis to representative government, it would be wrong to leave precipitously. But despite Bush's victory speech in May 2003, the war is not over, and it is diverting attention, money, and troops from the struggle against bin Laden. It has already inflamed opinion in much of the Muslim world, undercutting Bush's initial conciliatory language. The ill treatment of Muslim prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay camp harms the American cause abroad as well. That camp needs to be closed, and the United States once again needs to focus on crushing Al Qaeda while mending its relationship with the Islamic world.
Six weeks after Sept. 11, Congress rushed through the USA Patriot Act, intended to beef up law enforcement powers to cope with terrorists. No 342-page law passed in haste will be thoughtful, and the smartest part of the law was the provision that much of it would expire this year. The House and Senate have passed bills to reauthorize it, and must reconcile them in a conference committee. Of the two, the Senate's is better because it would allow the government less leeway to snoop in library files and other private materials.
More than new legal powers, authorities need accurate intelligence to prevent future acts of terrorism. It probably makes sense to concentrate intelligence assessment under a single Cabinet-level official, as the Bush administration has done, but analysis is only as good as the data on which it is based. Most Americans know next to nothing about Islam or the cultures and peoples sustained by that faith. A shortage of translators means the FBI cannot translate Arabic documents that are coming to its attention. The United States needs a sustained initiative to increase language skills among Americans and to gain intelligence recruits in Islamic countries. The Guantanamo prison and the war in Iraq are counterproductive to the long-term campaign to crush terrorism and to gain support for democratic values in Islamic nations.
Also, a focus on hijackings and suicide bombings -- al Qaeda's tactics of the past -- should not obscure more dangerous threats. A nuclear attack by a rogue nation or by terrorists would cause far more destruction than the Sept. 11 hijackings. The administration has maintained the momentum of a program, begin in 1992, to turn Russian weapons material into fuel for nuclear plants, but it has not displayed much urgency in policing the 100 or so sites around the world where weapons materials are used for scientific experiments, or in figuring out ways to keep weapons in Pakistan from being diverted to terrorists. The threat of another Hiroshima ought to receive far greater attention.
In his recent speeches, Bush has taken to comparing the war on terrorism to the Cold War, a linkage that is false and dangerous. The Soviet Union, with its nuclear weapons and armies occupying half of Europe, was a greater menace than Al Qaeda and its sympathizers. The Cold War lasted more than 40 years, leading to costly proxy wars and inducing anxieties about the threat of nuclear war. The nation should not have to endure another such era. Capturing or killing the Al Qaeda leadership, building bridges to the Islamic world, and protecting nuclear material ought to be among the top priorities of a tightly focused strategy against a continuing, but controllable, danger.
