IN THE summer of 2001, the Bush administration received dozens of warnings that terrorists were planning a major strike against the United States. A large number of Middle Eastern men were seeking flight training in American schools, while CIA sources suggested that al Qaeda had plans to use hijacked airliners in terror attacks. The National Security Agency intercepted numerous threatening messages, while sources in Afghanistan reported widespread rumors of an impending attack. The president himself was briefed on the al Qaeda threat some 40 times, and officials in numerous federal agencies were also notified. Yet, despite its awareness of the looming threat, the administration took little action to prevent the catastrophe that finally occurred on Sept. 11.
Such are the conclusions of a congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks and the preliminary findings of the independent commission investigating the matter. But however distressing such accounts may be, they do not constitute a damning indictment of the administration's national security activities in the months prior to Sept. 11. It often takes a tragedy to change the course of government, and the administration should not be judged too harshly for its failure to prepare for the attacks of Sept. 11.
In the absence of symbolic events that focus public attention on an unmistakable threat, policymakers cannot be expected to devote their full attention to any one enemy, or even to grasp the full significance of any tip or warning. America had good reasons to fight the Axis powers in 1939, but it took a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 to bring the United States into World War II. American leaders recognized the threat of global communism in the 1940s, but it wasn't until the Korean War began in 1950 that the United States began to rearm in preparation for a drawn out struggle with the Soviet Union. Whatever our general awareness of impending threats, national security is often a reactive enterprise, requiring occasional disasters to reorient public priorities and illustrate the connections between abstract signs of danger.
The events of Sept. 11 were just such a disaster, and their role in reshaping America's national priorities cannot be overestimated. Prior to Sept. 11, it was the rare American who had heard of Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or the Taliban or who could find Afghanistan on a map. Today, all are an inescapable part of the national discourse. In a similar fashion, Sept. 11 heightened the administration's focus on terrorism, resulting in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the passage of the Patriot Act and the invasion of Afghanistan. Such measures might have prevented the attacks of Sept. 11 if taken early enough, but the political will to initiate such massive projects cannot be generated by warnings alone, however urgent or numerous.
So it was that in the summer of 2001, the Bush administration focused its national security energies on the creation of a national missile defense system, while terrorists plotted to hijack airliners by means of box cutters and plastic knives. Even the Clinton administration failed to act decisively against al Qaeda, passing up several opportunities to capture bin Laden in the months after his attack on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In the historical gray area between the fall of communism and the rise of terrorism, it was by no means obvious that stateless radicals would emerge as the greatest threat to American security, nor could it be until they struck a blow that rearranged the perceptions and priorities of America's leaders.
If the attacks of Sept. 11 were an event of serious historical significance, then we cannot judge the administration's conduct before that day by our present understanding of threat, defense and preparedness. Rather, the measure of the Bush administration must be its success or failure in meeting the terrorist threat now that bin Laden and his like have emerged as public enemy number one. It's easy to see why the administration should have paid more attention to terrorism in the months before Sept. 11, but such clarity is only possible when looking backward.
Alec Solotorovsky's column appears Tuesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com.
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