Five years ago, Americans’ view of the world, and our place in it, changed forever.
Any sense of security we had from being protected by broad oceans was shattered when 19 men armed with box cutters and evil hearts crashed airplanes into our symbols of economic and military power.
Suddenly, we were at war against a shadowy enemy and forced to understand a changing global landscape as we mourned the loss of nearly 3,000 Americans and others who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Cloaked in red, white and blue, we were also a nation moved to action. Across the world we had the sympathy of our allies.
Five years ago, in those unified days that followed the Sept. 11 attacks, it would have been hard to imagine that today we would feel more insecure about our safety and worried about our civil liberties eroding while still fighting an unpopular war in Iraq.
But united we stand – in those fears for homeland security, in anxiety for the havoc of Iraq, in commitment to face down the enemy and bring its leaders to justice.
As tomorrow’s anniversary approaches, President Bush has hit the stump campaign-style to tell Americans we’re safer (but not yet safe) while defending the ongoing quagmire in Iraq, secret prisons in foreign lands and domestic wire-tapping.
“Over the past five years, we have waged an unprecedented campaign against terror at home and abroad. And that campaign has succeeded in protecting the homeland,” Bush said. “We are safer because we’ve taken action to protect the homeland. We are safer because we are on the offense against our enemies overseas. … Yet, five years after 9/11, America still faces determined enemies. And we will not be safe until those enemies are finally defeated.”
Many Americans don’t feel safer. In fact, 39 percent even say they feel less safe today than they did five years ago, according to a New York Times/CBS poll released last week. It’s easy to understand why.
Five years later, Osama bin Laden remains at large and his terror network has expanded and morphed, spawning attacks from Spain to Britain to Iraq. Just last week, as if to mock America, Al-Jazeera aired previously unseen footage of bin Laden smiling as he purportedly greeted two of the Sept. 11 hijackers as they planned the attacks.
Sept. 11 exposed gaping weaknesses in U.S. defenses, including the failure of federal agencies to share intelligence and to heed warnings that an attack was imminent.
There’s some hope now that the proper authorities, such as CIA and FBI leaders, communicate and share tips and threats. Each morning, a nexus of government agencies meet for top-secret briefings. Before, they rarely spoke and played turf games.
The Sept. 11 attacks also produced legislation that diminished civil liberties as the Bush administration expanded its executive power while Congress just sat and watched. Illegal, warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency is not the way to make up for past intelligence failures. But last week Bush asked Congress to give him “additional authority” to carry out his eavesdropping program, which he says is directed against international terrorists. Because he did not follow the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, there is no way to know.
And then there’s Iraq. The administration took its eye off the prize in 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq, allowing bin Laden to continue plotting and allowing Taliban fighters once thought to be expelled from Afghanistan a chance to regroup and return.
Iraq, which Bush considers the new front for the war on terror, has actually diminished U.S. abilities to deal with terrorists and with other emerging threats, such as North Korea and Iran.
The administration last week released its list of achievements in the war on terrorism, which includes advancing democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, preventing terrorist attacks, thwarting the proliferation of banned weapons, stopping rogue states from giving sanctuary to terrorists and institutionalizing the war on terrorism.
But its to-do list is daunting. It includes “defeating the enemy, denying safe haven, combating the violent extremist ideology, protecting the homeland, securing [weapons of mass destruction] and building partnership capacity.”
It’s a list that would be easier to accomplish with the help of other nations.
In the days after Sept. 11, the country was united in ways it hadn’t been for generations. We regret the fracturing of our nation along political lines and hope that the anniversary helps unify us, if just for a moment.
Americans must see through the hatreds and hostilities to realize justice for the innocents lost on Sept. 11, but also to allow future generations to feel the security we took for granted before that fateful day.
