The 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre shook America to its core and wrought fundamental change in the world order. Ten years on, Brian Sims considers what security lessons have been learned.
On Sunday evening, after a day spent remembering those who so tragically lost their lives on September 11 2001, US President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama attended ‘A Concert for Hope’ at the Kennedy Centre in Washington DC along with vice-president Joe Biden and his wife, Dr Jill Biden.
At the event, the President spoke eloquently – as always – about how that terrible day changed Americans as individuals and the nation as a whole. Tellingly, he also boldly described what has not changed Stateside in the past decade.
“Our character as a nation has not changed,” he stressed. “Our faith – in God and in each other – has not changed. Our belief in America, born of a timeless ideal that men and women should govern themselves, that all people are created equal and deserve the same freedom to determine their own destiny… That belief, through tests and trials, has only been strengthened.”
President Obama continued: “These past ten years have shown that America doesn’t give in to fear. The rescue workers who rushed to the scenes of devastation, the firefighters who charged up the stairs of the North and South Towers, the passengers who stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93: these patriots defined the very nature of courage.”
He went on to say: “Over the years we’ve also seen a more quiet form of heroism – in the ladder company that lost so many men and still suits up and saves lives every day, in the businesses that have been rebuilt from nothing, in the burns victims who have bounced back and the families who press on.”
Defining a generation of Americans
On Sunday, the President and the First Lady also visited each of the three memorials that have been erected on the sites where the commercial planes crashed.
In his remarks at the concert, the President spoke of how these tributes will help “define this generation” of Americans, and symbolise the lasting legacy of both those who died at the hands of the terrorists in the States and those who gave their lives since by fighting in the two wars waged in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Decades from now, Americans will visit the memorials to those who were lost on 9/11,” explained President Obama. “They’ll run their fingers over the places where the names of those we loved are carved into marble and stone, and they may wonder at the lives that they led.”
He added: “Standing before the white headstones in Arlington, and in peaceful cemeteries and small town squares in every corner of the country, they will pay their respects to those lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ll see the names of the fallen on bridges and statues, at gardens and in schools.”
In strident tones, President Obama outlined: “And they will know that nothing can break the will of a truly United States of America. They will remember that we’ve overcome slavery and Civil War. We’ve overcome bread lines and fascism, recession and riots, communism and, yes, terrorism.”
Concluding his remarks, the leader of the free world explained: “They will be reminded we are not perfect but that our democracy is durable, and that democracy – reflecting, as it does, the imperfections of man – also gives us the opportunity to perfect our union. That is what we honour on days of national commemoration: those aspects of the American experience that are enduring, and the determination to move forward as one people.”
As far as President Obama’s concerned, more than monuments it is that which will be the legacy of 9/11: a legacy of firefighters who walked into fire and soldiers who signed up to serve, of workers who raise new towers, and citizens who faced down their private fears.
“Most of all, of children who realised the dreams of their parents. It will be said that we kept the faith, that we took a painful blow and emerged stronger than before.”
Desire to slay the American people
Prior to 9/11, Osama Bin Laden – the now deceased leader of the Al-Qaeda terror movement – had expressed his desire to slay Americans. As a consequence, substantial intelligence efforts were already being focused on him and his cohorts.
Following the attacks, and despite much chatter of immediate retaliatory strikes by the might of the American military, many senior individuals across the globe came down heavily in favour of the notion that terrorism is prevented through political and economic means rather than by taking up arms and boosting intelligence (though the latter is nonetheless important for that view).
On the flip side of the coin, dozens of commentators – and, surprise, surprise, the national media here in the UK – became gripped by the so-called ‘War on Terror’.
In reference to this, Eliza Manningham-Buller – speaking recently as part of the 2011 Reith Lectures at the BBC – suggested this phrase was never apt.
“For one thing, it legitimises the terrorists as warriors,” said the former director general of MI5. “For another thing, terrorism is a technique, it’s not a state. Moreover, terrorism will continue in some form whatever the outcome – if there is one – of such a ‘war’. For me, what happened on 9/11 was a crime and needs to be thought of as such. What made it different from earlier attacks was its sheer scale and audacity, not its nature.”
Post 9-11, anything was possible as far as the terrorist factions were concerned. That was certainly my immediate thought process. Nobody in the security services could ever have imagined passenger airliners being used as guided missiles to kill, destroy and destabilise.
Bin Laden must have fully realised these audacious, chilling attacks on America – and, by extension, the Western World in general – would force a reaction. A reaction that, in turn, would render it far easier for him to persuade others of his without foundation argument that Islam was under severe attack from the West.
Put simply, it suited a wholly twisted Al-Qaeda agenda for all Muslims to be viewed with suspicion. Of course they should not be viewed as such. We must never fall into the trap of tarring any band of people with the same brush based on the actions of a perverted minority.
Economic impact of the terror threat
There was also an economic impact underpinning Bin Laden’s actions. In essence, he wanted to rack up security costs for host nations right across the Western World and disrupt – as much as humanly possible – our everyday way of life.
As Eliza Manningham-Buller rightly states: “9/11 was a cruel crime on a vast scale. It propelled Bin Laden and his supporters into the consciousness of the whole world. It altered our perception of what terrorism could achieve. It led to the recruitment of like-minded terrorists across the globe from Spain to Indonesia, from Kenya to Canada and from Pakistan to the Netherlands. It led to massive expenditure by the West as it sought to defend itself.”
The impact has certainly been massive. In the aviation sector alone, to this day the airlines are still recovering from a huge loss of business and ongoing mistrust concerning the safety of passenger flights. Thousands of jobs have been lost as a direct result.
Here in the UK, we’ve seen plenty of anti-terror legislation introduced. The all-new Prevent programme, for instance, will deal with all forms of terrorism and target not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism (which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and popularise views which terrorists then readily exploit).
Critically, as Dr Tobias Feakin of RUSI has pinpointed, that programme is designed to ensure Government funding and support cannot reach organisations with extremist views who do not support mainstream British values and challenge the ideology that supports terrorism and those who promote it.
It will support sectors and institutions – including universities and prisons – where there are risks of radicalisation and draw on existing programmes to protect vulnerable individuals from being drawn into terrorism.
However, all of this comes at a time when Army and police service resources are rocking in the face of monetary cutbacks proposed by the coalition Government to claw back the aftermath of the economic profligacy – not to say recklessness – of the previous Labour administration.
How to square those two political circles is the $64,000 question dominating Westminster’s agenda.
Not the end of the saga
Largely thanks to 9/11, the last decade’s political landscape has been dominated by the terrorism issue in much the same way that the Cold War pervaded the 1980s.
What we must always remember is that the death of Bin Laden is not the end of the saga. Yes, he was Al-Qaeda’s talisman, but there are plenty of other figures willing to carry on his philosophies as part of the new terror regime.
Indeed, some would say that finding and killing such an iconic figure might well stir the hornet’s nest still further.
Is the Western World now smothered in a proverbial security blanket? Can we really hope to answer the question: ‘Are we safer as a result of measures put in place since 9/11?’
In the States alone, according to a Congressional Research Service report an estimated $1.8 trillion has already been spent on beefing up security post-9/11. Those funds have been spent not just on airport security upgrades, but also – among other things – on police training.
Meantime, anecdotal reports suggest that America’s key crime-fighting and intelligence bodies – among them, of course, the CIA and the FBI – are now working in far greater harmony, sharing ‘Watchlists’ of suspected terrorists and other elements of vital information.
There is also far greater international co-operation on this level. That co-operation must surely have gone some way towards last year’s interception of toner cartridges packed with explosives at East Midlands Airport.
Are we really any safer today?
Perhaps in some ways we are safer as a nation and as a world, then, but certainly not in others. There remains much work to be done.
Positively, both at home and abroad we’ve seen a discernible shift away from pure disaster preparedness to what might best be termed ‘disaster management’. On the wider stage that’s such an important step forward.
On an equally positive note, it’s altogether possible that the death of Osama Bin Laden, the ‘excitement’ of the Arab Spring – which has taken Al-Qaeda by surprise and bypassed much of its ideology – and the distinct possibility of a new and more enlightened generation of Muslim leaders coming to the fore may mean that we see less Al-Qaeda related terrorism.
The investment in intelligence and its successes, the attrition the terrorists have suffered and the changing politics of the Middle East for the better all give at least some cause for optimism.
Most political, economic and business commentators refuse to give the victory to the terrorists either by being intimidated or supporting the diminution of civil liberties.
Ten years on from 9/11, then, it’s arguably fair to say the sheer scale of the fear that gripped us then has now faded.
However, in no sense can we say that it has disappeared. With the ‘biggest show on Earth’ just around the corner, it would be nothing less than crass stupidity to suggest as much.
