Originally published Sept. 12, 2001
The horrific strikes on and collapse of the World Trade Center’s twin towers and the flames spewing from the Pentagon weren’t from some Hollywood script. They were a nearly incomprehensible reality. America has been attacked in a manner that our nation has not experienced since Pearl Harbor.
Before Tuesday morning, the possibility of any terrorist group planning and implementing multiple airline hijackings and flying the jets into skyscrapers was a nightmare from the far fringes. On Tuesday, it came true.
A stunned nation is left to mourn for the dead and offer assistance and sympathy to the injured. As we face unimaginable dimensions of human loss, the nation’s thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.
We salute New York’s brave firefighters, police officers and emergency medical technicians, many of whom lost their own lives as the World Trade Center towers fell into a surreal cloud of rubble and death.
The attacks were meticulously sinister. They destroyed the twin symbols of America’s economic greatness. They blasted a hole in the heart of America’s largest city. They sent an airliner plunging to oblivion in Pennsylvania. And they literally gashed open the Pentagon, exposing the damaged innards of U.S. military might for all the world to see.
If the government had any warning that the attacks were going to occur, every federal official would have been mobilized to prevent them. Clearly, America’s intelligence and military systems failed to detect the plan. Several questions arise, including why such an appalling failure occurred.
Although the United States has the world’s most sophisticated satellite, radar and high-tech defense systems, terrorists often hatch their plots through low-tech means. Face-to-face meetings and the use of cells of sympathizers, each told only part of the plan, are designed to prevent compromising an entire scheme if any single component is exposed. We are forced to question whether the U.S. has sufficient spy capability in volatile parts of the globe.
The public assumption is that the strikes were carried out by terrorists, since it would be supremely foolish for any government to attack a nation with the military might and estructive capability of the United States.
But very little reliable information is yet available, so speculation about the attackers’ identities is not only unfair, but also risky – because it could divert attention from the search for the real enemy.
Attacks by one nation against another usually prompt a declaration of war. There are far fewer avenues open to a country under siege by terrorists.
Once the enemy is identified, America must respond – forcefully, quickly and unequivocally. When thousands of our citizens have been killed and wounded, our major cities bombed, our civilian air system hijacked, strong action is essential. The response must accurately target those thugs responsible. Missing or even misidentifying our target would only worsen matters internationally, creating new enemies where we need allies.
For at least a decade, U.S. military and intelligence officials have warned that our country was horribly vulnerable to terrorism. But the message didn’t fully sink in, despite the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center or the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Prominent security analysts, including Colorado’s former U.S. Sen. Gary Hart, long had called for a more thorough, focused and structured approach to defense of the homeland.
Those warnings weren’t enough.
Still, several of our leaders answered the crisis well. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani showed personal courage and moral leadership by getting to lower Manhattan soon after the disaster. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens was right to close some state buildings, including the Capitol, and to activate Colorado’s emergency response capabilities. Denver Mayor Wellington Webb correctly closed and evacuated Denver International Airport.
Now our leaders must continue to set partisan differences aside and support President Bush in the difficult decisions ahead. Prevention of terrorist attacks is foremost.
But as we seek answers, we cannot forget that we are a democracy, devoted to the rule of law and the viability of our Constitution. We may be in a war now, but it’s a war unlike any ever fought. Still, we must not surrender to the temptation to create scapegoats or to trample the essential freedom that defines our country.
