Sunday Discussion Group

September 16, 2007

With the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks having just passed, there was quite a bit of talk this week about why we haven’t been attacked again since.

Truth be told, the claim, on its face, is rather misleading. We were attacked, about a month after 9/11, when someone sent weaponized anthrax to two Democratic senators and several news outlets. Five Americans were killed and 17 more suffered serious illnesses. Moreover, over the last six years, there have been far too many instances of domestic terrorism, such as attacks on abortion clinics.

But when we hear about a terrorism-free six years, I know what people mean. They’re describing a sitution in which foreign bad guys come to the United States and execute some kind of horrific, deadly attack. That, thankfully, hasn’t happened since September 2001.

But why do you suppose that is? Amy Zegart had a good item the other day on the subject.

Just because we haven’t experienced tragedy does not prove we are doing things right. This is causality 101, and it’s something we drum into UCLA MPP students in their first year. Causal connections have to be examined, not assumed, or you’ll get into trouble.

My 92 year-old grandmother, whom I love dearly, still drives a car in Miami. Incredibly, she’s had no accidents since 9/11. But I’d never conclude that her driving acumen is responsible for her traffic record, or that she’s become a better driver over the past 6 years.

The “we haven’t been attacked” argument suffers from the same logical weaknesses. Why haven’t we seen another 9/11 since 9/11? A million possible reasons. Many it’s al Qaeda’s long planning cycles. Maybe it’s the disruption of al Qaeda Central in Afghanistan. Maybe it’s sheer dumb luck. Maybe it’s those ziploc bags at the airport. But the most dangerous explanation is the one that works backwards, inferring causes from outcomes and suggesting success when there may be none.

Fair enough. But maybe some of those “million possible reasons” deserve a closer look. Or, at least four or five of them.

Here are a few possible explanations:

* We’ve been lucky. It’s certainly plausible.

* We’ve been fighting them there, so we don’t have to fight them here. (Zegart explained, “This argument takes the prize for being both misleading and stupid, suggesting that Iraq’s civil war and regional instability are offset by that invisible fence in Anbar province that magically corrals the world’s terrorists and keeps them right where we want them.”)

* We’re fighting the clock. Terrorist attacks apparently take a while to plan and execute, and the bad guys are still planning.

* We’re getting better at domestic security. DHS has struggled, but maybe they’re having some successes? (Though, if the administration had prevented some major terrorist attack, I suppose they would have bragged about it by now.)

So, what do you think? It’s been six years. What’s the explanation for our good fortune?

Al Qaeda has always operated using a long-term clock. Six years is a blink of an eye to them and, regardless, 9/11 is still paying big dividends. Bush responded by giving them everything they asked for by attacking Iraq and subverting the Constitution.

So what’s the hurry?

  • It’s not like there have been no al Qaeda attacks in the last 6 years, we still see a steady stream of them in Europe and SE Asia. They have a useful idiot in the White House who has done everything possible to advance their cause in the 5 years since al Qaeda was forced out of Afghanistan, why damage his credibility at home when there are so many targets available in other countries? As depressing as it is to contemplate, I expect a major attack on the United States within the first year of our next President’s term.

  • I read this question and it became another one: Why didn’t we have a 9/11 (foreign terrorist attacks) before 9/11? Al Quaida didn’t pop out of a hole in the 90’s and AQ isn’t the first terrorist group that would have loved to launch an attack on American soil.

    So one answer to your question is 9/11 was a fluke and I seem to recall reading that even the planners (who weren’t on the planes) were surprised at how much destruction the attack wrought.

    Another, more interesting answer I have to borrow from an author (sorry, I can’t remember his name) who posits that AQ set the bar too high and so all hard-core terrorists groups afraid that a less spectacular attack on US soil will affect their cred. So, unless or until they come up with something that is more devastating, they won’t be back. I’m putting it rather flippantly and if I can find the name of the book (came out sometime this year), I’ll pass it along.

  • I think executing spectacular attacks in the U.S. is actually pretty difficult for an overseas-based organization like al Qaeda. It means finding people willing to surmount the not inconsiderable difficulties required in traveling to the U.S., and then to throw away both their own lives and any U.S. contacts they used to get here and arrange their attack (since police work here tends to be much more thorough than it is in, say, Baghdad). If doing this sort of thing were easy, I imagine we would have started seeing smaller-scale attacks like car bombings and sniper attacks (a la the DC sniper).

    This isn’t to suggest we are safe and we can go back to being complacent – I expect that 9/11 isn’t the last major attack that will be mounted against the mainland U.S. But it does suggest the singular emphasis on terrorism in misplaced.

  • The very question “why haven’t we had another 9/11?” is insulting, because it assumes that such terrorist attacks are supposed to occur at regular intervals. The vast majority of people — even those who hate us for occupying the middle east — don’t want war, don’t attack people for no reason, and are not inherently violent. Look at Iraq: sunnis, shiites, and kurds were living in relative stability until we went in and shattered their country.

  • Maybe the answer is that they don’t need to. By virtue of America’s foreign policy and all the speeches given by your Lindsey Graham’s, etc., America has been terrorized. Our military has been weakened by a protracted war in the wrong country; that war has driven up AQ’s recruitment efforts and fund-raising; America is discredited internationally. Why would they want to mess that up?

    What’s the line from Speed?: “Remember. Crazy, not stupid.

    Homer

  • foiled by luck and by good police work.

    [jimBOB]

    Silence blasphemer! We’ll have none of that pre-Sept. 11th talk around here. Sure, police may have been able to stop terrorists before 9/11 but now they can’t be stopped unless we surrender our Constitutional rights and submit to huge, intrusive monitoring systems run at the federal level.

  • I have to go with the discarded American contacts theory. It’s harder to hold the door open for Al Qaeda here in the U.S. than it was before, and it’s less of a necessary risk, too (as much as there’s bragging about there being future attacks, and as much as our own experts/officials want us to be warned of the possibility, the fact is they already got their 9/11, will reap the rewards of it for a while, and can set us off-kilter merely by claiming more attacks are coming).

    If you think that the legions of insane people David Neiwert (Orcinus) documents on his blog and/or that consume Bill O’Reilly’s and Ann Coulter’s, products include some who were in our national security infrastructure, and they would have wanted to leave the door open for their own political reasons, they might have been caught (and it’s kept under the rug) or they might not feel they have an incentive to be so insane anymore (after all, we have the whole US mil. in Iraq, are as close to fighting Iran as ever- all that’s missing is American civilians starting the new SA and local skinhead groups in every town).

  • Sometimes I see comments that suggest that Al Qaeda isn’t real or that bin Laden isn’t real. Just for your information, I do not agree with those ideas and I think it’s pretty clear that Al Qaeda is real and independent even though it’s always possible people working for the U.S. could have been traitors and helped them, just like England had that scandal where a bunch of their civil service workers were selling info to the USSR.

  • I bet there are a lot of people in the US from the west and south who think that a lot of dead New Yorkers would be a small price to pay to get this country to turn more against racial minorities, or to pursue a more militaristic foreign policy agenda.

  • Why do the reasons you list have to be mutually exclusive?

    For my money, the lack of a major attack has been:

    30 percent: AQ has been disrupted and has lost communications, the success of 9/11 has lost them some support (which the Bush admin is trying to stoke back up).

    30 percent: better intelligence and deterrence, mostly due to public awareness.

    30 percent: Plenty to do elsewhere — why take the risks to come here when you can do it over there? Please note: thousands of Americans dead in Iraq, many times that terribly injured.

    10 percent: they want and need something that will top 9/11. Not an easy job, it will take a long time.

  • Al Qaeda is real. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were real.

    The purpose of terrorism is to create terror. The American response to 9/11, under the “leadership” of George W. Bush, must have exceeded the wildest dreams of al Qaeda:

    1) If al Qaeda really “hates our freedom,” as our Dear Leader tells us that they do, then gutting our Constitution is certainly a big step in complying with al Qaeda’s demands.

    2) Al Qaeda must be enjoying the spectacle of the USA being rope-a-doped in Iraq, destabilizing the Middle East, stretching our military forces to the breaking point and burdening our economy for generations to come, all in the name of fighting terrorism.

    3) Al Qaeda must be delighted watching us isolate ourselves from our historical allies. Al Qaeda understands “divide and conquer,” even if our “leaders” do not.

    Contrast our response to 9/11 with the British response to the various terrorist attacks they have experienced. The British pick up the pieces, learn what they can, and go on with their lives. Our national response was more like that of frightened children worried about the monster under the bed. This is exactly what al Qaeda must have dreamed of, and exactly what George “The Pet Goat” Bush (too frightened on 9/11 to respond to news of the attacks) has given us.

    Why no more attacks? Why bother when everything is already going so well for al Qaeda?

  • Because so far the first attack is working quite well, thank you. We are constantly reminded to be afraid, hence terrorized. We gave them more just cause to want to terrorize us again when they’re ready…Iraq. And no one seems to care that the main terrorist, OSL, is doing quite well.

  • Let’s review. Prior to 9/11 the only other attack on US soil by Islamic extremists was the 1993 WTC truck bombing. So far as I know the only other  attempt at a US attack by Islamic extremists between 1993 and 9/11 was the disrupted  2000 Millennium Plot against LAX. There were two attacks on US interests overseas between 1993 and 9/11 the the 2000 USS Cole bombing, which was part of the Millennium Plot, and the 1998 African embassy bombings, but such attacks are not what we are considering today. The time between the first WTC bombing and the foiled LAX bombing was seven years and there was eight years between the two successful attacks. Why then is it that surprising that we have gone six years without an attack, particularly given that the Afghan war had to disrupt the Al-Qaeda planning cycle.

  • I have one question for people claim that Bush has kept us safe since 9/11. How many attacks have we suffered in our entire history? Statistically speaking, they’re so rare as to be freak occurrences.
    I’m not arguing that it’s an issue that doesn’t need to be taken seriously. But, 9/11 changed absolutely nothing in terms of the threats we face. They were there before, but cheerfully ignored – which is how we got 9/11 in the first place.

    The only thing 9/11 changed was the far right’s willingness to openly celebrate their lust for blood and absolute power.

  • Asking why we haven’t been attacked since 2001 seems as useful as asking why I haven’t been struck by lightning — or won the lotto — since then. A more relevant question would be, ‘have we reduced or increased the odds of such an occurrence’ given what we know of the causes and conditions that favor such events? The follow-up would be, ‘how can we do better to shift the odds more in our favor?’

    Instead of conducting a rational discussion of risk and the cost/benefits of reducing risk, America has reacted emotionally, allowing the most paranoid among us to drive the discussion for fear that they might be right. In essence, we’re following the most cowardly elements of our society rather than the strongest and bravest. The first rule in a crisis used to be ‘don’t panic,’ but since 2001 it’s been ‘get hysterical’ and ‘be afraid.’

    One of the problems with being hysterical and fearful is that it’s exhausting and after a time, one becomes complacent out of fatigue. So, not only does hysteria fail to meet the challenge, it may well increase the odds of a recurrence.

    Compounding our present situation is that we’ve had an administration who saw our moment of national crisis as an opportunity. Throw in an unprecedented hunger for power, gross incompetence, the arrogance that it could bend reality to suit it’s delusional ideology and the outright rejection of evidence to the contrary, and you have the recipe for disaster.

    In all the presidential hopefuls, the quality I find most lacking is a cool, rational head to tackle the risks we face in a realistic manner while undoing the mess we’ve created by listening to cowards.

  • The first time was a fluke. We were caught napping. Nobody really believed that there were actually people out there who wanted to attack us. We thought everyone loved us . After all, we were Americans.

    Now we find out there has been a whole history of covert activity and economic invasions of other countries in our relentless pursuit of oil. And people had good reason to hate us. Now we are awake and extremely vigilant even more so than our own government would like us to be because we have our eyes on all enemies, foreign and domestic, and our own government wants us focused on foreign enemies only.
    Our ports are wide open to attack but it’s not a government that seeks to attack us. It is a relatively small group of fanatics that are now being watched world wide. Since 9/11 the whole world is more vigilant. Al Qaeda can barely find a place to hide.
    9/11 brought us to a different state of awareness, that there are those who want to harms us because of our actions abroad, and this disaster has made the entire world more vigilant, especially the USA.. We know our government can’t protect us entirely and so we have become more responsible for our personal safety. Our government inadvertently let the first attack happen by ignoring the intel. Now we are attentive to such details like Bin Ladden to attack inside the US.

    Irag has nothing to do with it except as to increase the number of those who want to do us harm. In no way is Iraq preventing another attack…that’s for certain.

  • I was about to reply, when I saw that bjobotts pretty much covered my thoughts. We were caught napping. Even then, a few agents in the FBI had strong suspicions, but were told to either drop it or gather more evidence simply because it was easier for their bosses to believe it was nothing that try to elevate the issue in the face of inevitable skepticism on the part of their bosses. Why haven’t there been more attacks… because we are paying attention now. It doesn’t make us invulnerable, but the first attacks were planned in plain sight (Flight schools, wire transfers, trips to and from Afghanistan). That option is no longer open.

    However, the way to win “the war” is simply to deny the other side the people to carry out their missions. We will not do that as long as the US is perceived to be the cause of death, oppression and misery in their countries. Documents uncovered in Afghanistan show it was Bin Laden’s goal to get the US bogged down in a long-term war in Afghanistan (like the Soviets) where he could, once again, appeal to all Muslims to come fight the Infidels while simultaneously draining America’s financial and military strength (he believes he brought on the collapse of the Soviet Union this way). The war in Afghanistan didn’t work out the way he planned, but then Bush handed him a second chance by invading Iraq. In a sense, Bush won and then lost the war.

  • First of all, 9/11 is still having huge impact on the U.S. It did the trick for their cause for now. In order to be effective, they would have to stage another attack at least as brutal, if not even on a larger scale. And they’re probably not that organized, at least not yet. There would be no point in staging a smaller attack, because 9/11 is still fresh on everyone’s mind.

  • 9/11 wasn’t a shock to the system but the response has been and the incomprehensible stupidity of that “response” is still bouncing around almost as fresh as the day it was pooped out.

    Trying hard to assume for a moment that it was OBL/AQ that really did the deed start to finish, how freaked out must they be in their caves at how blundering and incoherent the Great Satan has been in it’s effort to mete out revenge and a shut down of their operations.

    OBL/AQ has taken a page from Rudy’s book and declared every day 9/11 day. From their perspective it’s the gift that keeps on giving. They had no idea that 9/11 was such a beginning. Not an end in itself. The U.S. of A. is in an ongoing state of upset, directionless anger, fear, suspicion and frustrated apathy. And all they did was pull the trigger. We’ve taken care of the rest and they’ve sat back and watched in wonder.

    There were a lot of illusions that came crashing down with the twin towers. The underpinnings for those illusions are gone but not the desire to keep believing in them. Or for certain amoral entities to work to keep us believing in them. As long as that dissonance exists, there will be no need for more attacks. We’re still tearing ourselves down and there’s no reason for OBL/AQ not to relax and watch the show.

    We’re bleeding just fine, thank you very much. Time for OBL to start working on next years video.

  • It’s an understatement to say that 9/11 wasn’t a shock to the system. It certainly was. But I guess I just see the utterly horrendous and misleading reaction as being so outsized in it’s own disastrous way as to make the event itself less significant.

    It was a shocking event. But it’s been used, misused and abused ever since.

  • Why haven’t they attacked us again? Because they don’t need to. Their long-term goal of destroying America is practically in the bag. We’ve got a blundering idiot in charge, the rest of the world hates us, our economy is nosediving faster than the 767s that hit the WTC, our military is stretched beyond the breaking point, and a large and powerful segment of our society are busting their asses to create a Christian theocracy (undermining our Constitution and our system of government in the process) in order to bring about Armageddon. All Osama bin Laden had to do was get the ball rolling. Why should he spend any more time, effort and money to do what we have so willingly done to ourselves?

  • You missed what I perceive as the simplest explanation – AQ have softer, more accessible targets in Europe, and logically enough, have been concentrating on those – to some considerable effect.

    Why spend X dollars and hours attacking the US directly, when you can spend 10% of that knocking out one of their allies?

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