Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009 - 30

THE BIG PICTURE By Morgan Stempf The Ghosts of September 11 N SEPTEMBER 11, 2001, America’s collective consciousness was punctured by the realization of a new and unprecedented security threat. While American interests and embassies had previously been attacked abroad, the prospect of such catastrophe on U.S. soil was apparent to only a few professionals in America’s military, intelligence and diplomatic communities. The shock of our ruin and the fear for our future was compounded by the amorphous and fanatical nature of this new enemy. The extent of our confusion was revealed by the groping questions we asked, chief among them, “Why do they hate us?” Our vulnerabilities seemed limitless, our intelligence and policing powers dangerously inadequate. But what should have been clear was muted by our anxiety and our angst: the world had not changed, we had. What we believed to be a placid global order, en route to a liberal, modern consensus was in fact seething with turmoil at the tattered edges of civilization. And increasingly, these factions of discontent coalesced around anti-American agendas. The honeymoon of the post-Cold War era thereby gave way to the uncertainties of the 9/11 era. The challenge we faced from stateless terrorists was described as being commensurate to, or even greater than, the past challenges of totalitarian Germany, Japan and the USSR—empires of millions of men under arms, spanning the globe. We responded at the federal and state levels by hastily redirecting our policies and personnel to focus on this singular threat, often to the exclusion of other important agendas. Our government’s vast bureaucracy was reconstituted to serve as multiple fronts on the Global War on Terror. The Department of Homeland Security was the principle outcome of this realignment, and its ad hoc basis resulted in an unwieldy conglomeration that struggled to ﬁnd direction. The DHS’s constituent agencies were often ill at ease in their new arrangement, betraying a lack of strategic leadership, and further eroding conﬁdence in the government’s ability to prevent and respond to repeat attacks. Worse, its color-coded threat level system seemed to mirror the confusion and uncertainty of the public at large, amplifying, not diminishing, our unease. As the prosecution of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wore on, it became clear that these efforts abroad were frustrated by many of the same problems we faced at home, including inconsistent leadership and poor planning. What might have been gained by more initial scrutiny and skepticism was forgone in the rush to transform the Middle East, just as opportunities were lost in the rush to transform our governing institutions at home. The dynamic of political ambitions meeting public opinion ensured that America would respond to the attacks viscerally rather than deliberately. Though fallen seven years ago, the Twin Towers continue to cast long shadows. Our initial fears have waned somewhat, as we have not yet suffered repeat attacks and as the economic crisis has come O 28 | Homeland Defense Journal STAFF SGT. MICHAEL J. CARDEN to eclipse security as our foremost concern. But the contours of the 9/11 political legacy continue to be shaped by the memory of that ghastly day. America’s security discourse is still dominated by the absolutist terminology of “prevention,” which ﬁnds its apotheosis in the so-called “one percent doctrine”: if there is a 1 percent chance of a high impact terror event, we must respond as though it were a certainty. A critical ﬂaw of this mindset, which remains largely unremarked, is that it compels us to plug a theoretically endless number of security gaps. We have therefore entered a race to stay one step ahead of a highly adaptable enemy. This is a race we cannot win. A terrorist with minimal imaginative powers can always reapply himself to the most exploitable opportunity. If, because of our screening efforts, he decides that he can’t reliably smuggle a nuclear weapon inside Visit www.homelanddefensejournal.com

Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Homeland Defense Journal - January 2009