10 features of today's landscape that we would not have imagined on 9/11 Posted by Suzanne Nossel

It's hard to put oneself back in the mindset of that brilliantly sunny but paralyzingly dark September day four years ago, nor the surreal weeks and months right after.  But I've tried to do so today, and to consider what aspects of today's American situation could have been predicted, and what would have seemed unfathomable.  I don't think the war in Iraq would have been inconceivable, nor that it was impossible to imagine the US dead in a military conflict in the Middle East creeping up toward the number of 9/11 casualties.  It may be a little strong to say that none of the items on this list were imaginable:  truthfully we may have imagined we might see them, though fervently hoped we wouldn't. 

Osama on the Loose - Remember "dead or alive?"  First we thought Osama would be caught during the war on Afghanistan.  Then we thought that the Administration would surely find him before the 2004 elections (see this TNR article entitled "July Surprise").  It was hard to judge which imperative was more powerful:  punishing the man who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks, or decapitating al Qaeda.   I would not have guessed that neither would be accomplished by now.

Homeland security seemingly in disarray - There are two surprises here:  1) that we're so woefully ill-prepared for another major disaster on the homefront; and 2) that few realized this until the Katrina debacle two weeks ago.   In retrospect, as tragic and horrifying as it was for New York City in particular, 9/11 was nowhere near the challenge in terms of emergency response that a major hurricane or a dirty bomb would pose.

Public diplomacy effort has gone nowhere - There was an enormous amount of talk about outreach and diplomacy in the weeks and months after 9/11.  While a stack of thorough reports have been written on the topic and dozens of solid recommendations issued, progress has stalled almost completely.  This GAO report details the manifold reasons why this effort has yet to get off the ground.  Karen Hughes was sworn in the day before yesterday to the post of Under-Secretary for Public Diplomacy, a post that had been vacant for 16 months.   We'll see where we are a year from now under her stewardship.

Afghanistan having become an afterthought - In the weeks and months after 9/11, it was expected that rooting out the Taliban and transforming Afghanistan into a stable country would consume American foreign policy for years to come.  Four years later, Afghanistan rarely makes the front page.  The country has made significant progress but according to this UNDP report, remains in danger of devolving back into a failed state.  Militarily, large swaths of territory remain under hostile control.    Its no surprise that Afghanistan still needs US attention; what's amazing is that it no longer gets it.

Nowhere on non-proliferation - When President Bush famously referenced an axis of evil based comprised of known nuclear proliferators, the expectation was that his Administration would launch a focused crackdown on those weapons.  In the intervening years, apart from launching preemptive war on the only one of the three regimes in question that turned out not to have WMD, the Administration has been "stumbling and reactive" in response to the very real threats posed by North Korea and Iran.

That US policy would have resulted in the recruitment of hundreds if not thousands of potential Middle East terrorists - Here's how CIA Director Porter Goss put it in February:  "The Iraq conflict, while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.   "Those jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

No Sputnik relative to Arab world - One of the biggest obstacles to effectively fighting terror identified in the months after 9/11 was the scarcity of Americans with deep knowledge of Arab languages and cultures.  According to this report, four years later we know neither how many Arab linguists and translators the Defense Department has, nor how many it needs.  We are still busy convening task forces to look at the problem and figure out what needs to be done.

Still having detainees at Guantanamo without trial - When the military first started using Guantanamo to house detainees from the Afghanistan war in early 2002, the notion was that it would be temporary.  Nearly four years later, the facility is still being used to house more than 500 detainees who have not been tried.

Energy independence nowhere - When it was revealed that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, an outcry rose about the need to free the U.S.  from dependency on foreign oil and the unholy alliances that reliance creates.  While the White House pays lip service to this idea, the reality of his corporate-friendly proposals doesn't come close to matching the rhetoric.

No further attack on US soil - Living in Manhattan on 9/11 and ever since, I've been waiting for another attack since that day.  As of today, its impossible to know whether al Qaeda and kin are today incapable of carrying out something on the scale of the attack four years ago, or whether they are planning something even worse for, say, tomorrow.  Which brings me to my final point . . .

No clear sense of whether we're gaining ground against terror or not - I'm not sure whether anyone's to blame for this, but four years ago I sure would have thought that this long into the future, we'd have a better sense of whether our efforts to combat terror were paying off.  We know which American policies aren't working, but it seems almost impossible to answer whether we are - in sum - more or less vulnerable than we were on that horrible day.

Comments

[doc]

...umm, i think it's safe roughly half of the country is still not fond of this presidency. if you cast your thoughts back further than 9/11, you will remember why: many of us believed that a spoiled, immature, ex-alcholholic frat boy was 'appointed' to the WH. those of use who opposed him realized then he had not the witherall to do the job - we simply hoped the adults would keep him out of trouble...

that being the case, we're not at all surprised by your obeservations, [or, what you haven't noted (Son of Patriot Act)]: what we're surprised at is that anyone still believes...1)that bush has become anything but older since he entered office, and 2)his handlers have changed their agenda.

[Dan Kervick]

The absence of a Sputnik-like program would perhaps have seemed surprising just after September 11th. But it is not surprising in hidsight, what with influential figures like Martin Kramer on the case. Kramer clearly admires what he takes to have been the approach of the imperial British toward their subjects:

Actually, it's not remarkable at all. Britain's brightest students, even at the height of empire, didn't show much interest in other civilizations either. The Oxford historian D.W. Brogan wrote this in 1937: "The history of the Overseas Dominions has for many persons a very faint attraction....there may be full agreement that someone ought to know about them; but the normal attitude is that the someone is always someone else."

Those mandarins-to-be in Oxford didn't study the Bhagavad Gita or immerse themelves in Persian and Arabic poetry. They read Aristotle's Ethics and studied Greek and Latin history, philosophy, and literature ("the Greats"). These were the firm foundations of their own civilization, and this was the education that sustained them as they trudged through jungles and across deserts. Empire is about defending and disseminating your own civilization. If you aren't fully persuaded of its manifest superiority, you won't bear up under the rigors of governing hostile peoples in unfriendly places.

Forty years ago, the Oxford orientalist Sir Hamilton Gibb (who also spent a few futile years trying to bring Harvard up to speed) complained of how the British government "dismissed any proficiency in Oriental Studies, or even the knowledge of an oriental language, as irrelevant to its interests and useless, or worse than useless, as a qualification for the recruitment of its officers." Worse than useless? Gibb alluded here to an attitude in the halls of power that rested on no little experience: persons too knowledgeable in their ways and languages might see things rather too readily from their point of view. And knowledge, turned into sympathy, could paralyze.

You wouldn't want to confuse the minds of impressionable young Americans with knowledge of languages like Arabic and Persian. You start with a little linguistic competence and reading of Middle East authors, and then, before you know it, the pups start to, you know, admire Arabic culture and stuff. If we are going to rule over the filthy wogs, we don't want our steely chauvinistic resolve softened by empathy, understanding, admiration or insight.

And if lots of us could read Arabic, we could find out for ourselves what all those newspapers, news broadcasts and web sites are saying. We wouldn't want that now, would we? Telling us what the subhuman enemy is thinking, saying and doing is the government's job. How else would we have found out about the Nigerian uranium, and all those Iraqi factories making "gases and poisons".

If I were a young aspiring academic in the current environment, I wouldn't go near Arabic Studies with a ten-foot pole. There are plenty of stimulating fields of study available that would expose me to investigations of the thought police from Campus Watch and its ilk.

[Dan Kervick]

Italics off......Now, I'll try again:

The absence of a Sputnik-like program would perhaps have seemed surprising just after September 11th. But it is not surprising in hidsight, what with influential figures like Martin Kramer on the case. Kramer clearly admires what he takes to have been the approach of the imperial British toward their subjects:

Actually, it's not remarkable at all. Britain's brightest students, even at the height of empire, didn't show much interest in other civilizations either. The Oxford historian D.W. Brogan wrote this in 1937: "The history of the Overseas Dominions has for many persons a very faint attraction....there may be full agreement that someone ought to know about them; but the normal attitude is that the someone is always someone else."

Those mandarins-to-be in Oxford didn't study the Bhagavad Gita or immerse themelves in Persian and Arabic poetry. They read Aristotle's Ethics and studied Greek and Latin history, philosophy, and literature ("the Greats"). These were the firm foundations of their own civilization, and this was the education that sustained them as they trudged through jungles and across deserts. Empire is about defending and disseminating your own civilization. If you aren't fully persuaded of its manifest superiority, you won't bear up under the rigors of governing hostile peoples in unfriendly places.

Forty years ago, the Oxford orientalist Sir Hamilton Gibb (who also spent a few futile years trying to bring Harvard up to speed) complained of how the British government "dismissed any proficiency in Oriental Studies, or even the knowledge of an oriental language, as irrelevant to its interests and useless, or worse than useless, as a qualification for the recruitment of its officers." Worse than useless? Gibb alluded here to an attitude in the halls of power that rested on no little experience: persons too knowledgeable in their ways and languages might see things rather too readily from their point of view. And knowledge, turned into sympathy, could paralyze.

You wouldn't want to confuse the minds of impressionable young Americans with knowledge of languages like Arabic and Persian. You start with a little linguistic competence and reading of Middle East authors, and then, before you know it, the pups start to, you know, admire Arabic culture and stuff. If we are going to rule over the filthy wogs, we don't want our steely chauvinistic resolve softened by empathy, understanding, admiration or insight.

And if lots of us could read Arabic, we could find out for ourselves what all those newspapers, news broadcasts and web sites are saying. We wouldn't want that now, would we? Telling us what the subhuman enemy is thinking, saying and doing is the government's job. How else would we have found out about the Nigerian uranium, and all those Iraqi factories making "gases and poisons".

If I were a young aspiring academic in the current environment, I wouldn't go near Arabic Studies with a ten-foot pole. There are plenty of stimulating fields of study available that would expose me to investigations of the thought police from Campus Watch and its ilk.

[doc]

forgot to close something: sorry...

[Dave Bennion]

Agreed on most of Suzanne's points--we are not where we thought we would be after 9/11. But I don't quite understand the emphasis on public diplomacy—what good, exactly, would cranking up the administration's propaganda machine for international use do? I would actually prefer that Rove & Co. not attempt to work its p.r. magic on the rest of the world. It's not as if the message would change. Misinformation at home does not suddenly convert to truth when it crosses the border. It's possible that a better, more truthful message, combined with genuine attention to international public opinion, would produce better results. But my instinct, when faced with the Bush spin juggernaut and Kerry's string of misjudgments in '04, is to question the benefit of public diplomacy as it's currently understood by politicians/diplomats/public relations people on the left and the right. It doesn't seem to work very well--as in producing tangible results. Having a good foreign policy would be a good start to being thought well of by the international community.

[libertarian soldier]

Re the Sputnik program
DoD knows exactly how many personnel have tested and demonstrated proficiency in Arabic--and many other languages. It has called out through the personnnel system for untapped linguists. But if you would rather pull a trigger or turn a wrench than spend your career repeating conversations as you translate it from one tongue to another, than you don't become a linguist. Those are the only people DoD "doesn't know about" now (as opposed to four years ago). And as far as the requirements go, you and the article are absolutely right, DoD does not know how many it needs. And if it did know today, it won't know how many it needs 18 months from now when they finish training. In fact, DoD doesn't know how many SOLDIERS it is going to need anywhere in the world 18 months from now. It is event driven. As the article pointed out, in the last ten years the nature of high priority language requirements has changed--from Serbo-Croat to Georgian to Dari to Arabic, along with the hardy perennials such as Russian and Chinese. Do we require (as opposed to find useful for a short period of time) an Arabic speaker for every squad, or is it platoon, or is it checkpoint, or is it patrol or what? And what do do with them three years from now (i.e. after training and one one year tour in Iraq) if the requirements shift again?
There is no doubt that language training--when coupled with cultural exposure--is very valuable. It is proportionately expensive and time consuming, so a "prepare for all possible contingencies" approach does not compute.
Sorry for being passionate about this, but collectively in my little team we can speak Arabic, Russian, French, German, Khmer, Vietnamese and Dari and I am thus very cognizent of the costs and difficulties DoD faces.

[J Thomas]

I don't see any of this as surprising. Some of those goals are *hard*. And even the ones that look like they might be relatively easy have to assume a basic competence in the Bush administration.

[amcmurrey]

What I can not get my head around is the way in which our nation's leaders had "better things to do" while one of our cultural capitols dies screaming for it's life. In a post 9-11 America, a giant Hurricane which we can see,and should be prepared for,takes out a major industrial/economic zone not to mention the human costs and ecological hazards. Just how in the hell are we going to deal with terrorists that are not as likely to warn us? Where was Homeland defense? Where is all of the money that should have gone towards preparing us for this? This administration is all about accountability, well then account for something! Letting this happen to so many Americans is nothing short of treason.

[besieged by bush]

This is an excellent piece which makes sense throughout as to what should distress us about failures over the past four years but I am not sure that it should 'surprise' us.

* Despite major calls for moving forward re energy issues, did you honestly expect W, Dick Cheney, and Turd Blossom (W's term of endearment for Rove) to walk away from the oil industry and embrace alternatives and conservation?

* With all of the critiques of nation building, did you really expect them to wake up and smell the roses to work for a robust Afghani civil society? To move beyond their traditional attention deficit to have a continued focus on the problem?

* Re Public Diplomacy, they have worked this focused on the American electorate (their part of it) from within a cocoon of people fundamentally ignorant of the world -- and fundamentally with lack of concern that they are ignorant. Public Diplomacy suffers as it is not "hard power" and these are people who -- to paraphrase a Republican President who I admire -- believe that you should speak loudly and wield a big stick indiscriminately.

About the only thing that is surprising / amazing is that it is now "Osama bin Forgotten" and that the American public has led this bunch of incompetents get away with that.

In any event, thank for an excellent and thought-provoking diary.

[owen]

I am surprised at Zaqarwi's willingness to adopt bin Laden's role as enemy #1.

Four years ago, I would have guessed that bin Laden would have been dealt with so decisively that other terrorists would want a lower profile.