September 11 Attacks

A

War on Terrorism

In the same speech to Congress, Bush suggested that the top priority of his administration would be a campaign to end terrorism. He affirmed that all the evidence collected at that point indicated that al-Qaeda was the organization responsible for the September 11 attacks, and he promised that a U.S.-led war on terrorism would begin with a drive to eliminate that organization. But in a key expansion of U.S. antiterrorism efforts, Bush said the United States would not only target the terrorist organizations themselves, but also those governments that support them. “Every nation in every region now has a decision to make,” Bush said. “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.”

That warning, new in U.S. foreign policy, came to be known as the Bush Doctrine. The administration of previous U.S. president Bill Clinton had launched cruise missiles against al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan after the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, but did not hold the Taliban regime itself responsible for al-Qaeda’s activities. Bush, on the other hand, said the Taliban leaders must “hand over the terrorists or they will share in their fate.” The Taliban authorities ignored the warning. On October 7, 2001, a U.S.-led international coalition launched military operations in Afghanistan intended to dislodge the Taliban regime from power and eliminate al-Qaeda activities there.

Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld advised that the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces would be unconventional and partly covert. However, it started as a typical modern military operation, with heavy U.S. air strikes aimed at eliminating the enemy’s air defense system. There was widespread skepticism about the prospects for early success, given the difficulties the USSR encountered in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the supposed fanaticism of Taliban and al-Qaeda followers. Indeed, progress in the war was slow at first, but by mid-November the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces were in trouble.

After some hesitation, U.S. commanders decided to work closely with the Northern Alliance, an anti-Taliban rebel force in northern Afghanistan. CIA operatives and elite Special Operations troops secretly entered the country and worked in close coordination with Northern Alliance troops. The U.S. military advisers helped the rebels with their military tactics and arranged U.S. air strikes in support of rebel offensives on the ground. The advisers included trained “forward air controllers” who carried with them technological devices that enabled them to pinpoint enemy troop positions or military equipment and then guide U.S. pilots to drop bombs precisely on those targets. United States bombs were subsequently dropped with greater accuracy than in any previous military operation.

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The combination of anti-Taliban rebel forces, acting under the advice and counsel of U.S. advisers, and precision U.S. bombing proved decisive. Taliban and al-Qaeda forces were routed across the country, and by December 2001 the Taliban regime had been driven from power. Hundreds of al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters were taken prisoner.

However, Osama bin Laden himself and other top al-Qaeda leaders evaded capture, as did the leader of the Taliban, Mullah Mohammed Omar. Hundreds of al-Qaeda fighters scattered into the mountains of eastern Afghanistan or crossed into Pakistan, where they continued to pose a security threat. The remaining pockets of al-Qaeda strength prompted renewed fighting in Afghanistan in March 2002, but by then the war on terrorism was already shifting elsewhere. United States Special Operations forces had been deployed in support of antiterrorism operations in the Philippines. United States officials reported that al-Qaeda cells were active in more than 50 countries, and Bush cautioned the United States that the war on terrorism would be a long one. Some success in that war came in early 2003 when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, was arrested in Pakistan and taken into U.S. custody.

Some of the war on terrorism would consist of military action, but as the hunt for al-Qaeda spread to other countries, it became more of a law enforcement operation. Success depended on tracking the finances and communication network of al-Qaeda, and these efforts required close cooperation with other governments. At times, however, the war on terrorism was a lonely path for the United States. Bush’s admonition that countries must decide whether they are “with us” or “with the terrorists” sounded to some governments as if the United States were dividing the world into zones of good and evil, much as it had during the Cold War. And Bush administration officials made it clear that other countries should defer to U.S. leadership in the worldwide war on terrorism. “The United States and only the United States can see this effort through to victory,” said Vice President Dick Cheney in February 2002. This unilateral stance displeased some U.S. allies in Europe, who felt they should be treated as partners.

B

The Home Front

United States domestic policy was also transformed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Local governments around the country, seeing how the New York City police and fire departments had been burdened, realized they needed to improve their own preparations for a terrorist attack. Of particular concern was the prospect of an attack involving chemical or biological weapons. Several letters containing potent anthrax spores were mailed to the offices of prominent media figures and politicians in October 2001, and five people died of inhalation anthrax, apparently after being exposed to the spores. The rash of anthrax cases sparked fears that terrorists were carrying out a biological attack. No link between terrorists and the anthrax mailings was found, but the fear prompted renewed efforts by public health organizations to prepare for such a calamity.

For some in the U.S. government, the lesson of the September 11 attacks was that authorities needed greater ability to identify potential terrorists within American society and take whatever actions were necessary to stop them from carrying out attacks. In October 2001 the U.S. Congress passed a bill known as the Patriot Act that expanded police powers, allowing for more wiretapping of conversations and for the surveillance of computers and electronic mail. Civil libertarians expressed concern that the law could be misused, leading to the infringement of constitutional rights to privacy and liberty. Advocates of the law, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, argued that the need to be able to track down and intercept terrorists and prevent future attacks outweighed such concerns.

United States officials were especially alarmed that the September 11 terrorists had been able to live, work, and freely move in the United States without anyone realizing what their plans were. The new antiterrorism law included a provision that would allow immigrants suspected of terrorist activities to be detained for seven days without charges and in some cases held for an additional six months. In November Ashcroft announced additional measures designed to keep terrorists out of the United States. It would henceforth be harder for foreign visitors to obtain U.S. visas, and U.S. authorities would have greater latitude to bar entry to people suspected of having links to terrorist organizations.

The daily living and working patterns of Americans changed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Identity checks became more common. Air travel grew more complicated, as security personnel tightened screening procedures. Another legislative product of the attacks was the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, signed into law in November. As of January 18, 2002, all checked luggage had to be either screened by explosive detection machines or bomb-sniffing dogs, searched by hand, or at a minimum, only loaded onto a plane if the passenger who checked the bag was confirmed to be on board. In airports across the country, armed National Guard troops were stationed at security checkpoints. Armed federal marshals flew on many flights, especially those considered to be at a higher risk of hijacking.

President Bush strengthened the domestic side of his counterterrorism program by signing a law in 2002 that created a new Cabinet-level department, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The mission of the DHS was to prevent terrorist attacks in the United States, reduce the country’s vulnerability to terrorism, and plan responses and recovery in case of an attack. Bush chose Tom Ridge, previously head of the Office of Homeland Security, to be secretary of the new department. The DHS combined dozens of federal agencies, representing the largest reorganization in the federal government since the present-day Department of Defense was created in 1947.

As the government worked to strengthen its defenses against terrorism, it also looked back at its failure to prevent the September 11 attacks. Two investigations of the circumstances surrounding the attacks began in 2002. The first, a joint inquiry of the intelligence committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, examined the activities of the FBI, CIA, and other intelligence agencies prior to and after the attacks. Its report, publicly released in 2003, detailed systemic problems among these agencies, including poor organization, inadequate staffing and training, and, above all, a failure to share crucial information with one another that might have led to detection of the September 11 plot.

A second and larger investigation, by a bipartisan, independent commission chaired by former New Jersey governor Thomas H. Kean and formally known as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, released its findings in July 2004. The commission echoed many of the findings of the congressional inquiry, particularly regarding the failure of the CIA and FBI to share information. However, the commission’s report differed from the congressional inquiry on the issue of Saudi Arabia’s role in the attacks. The joint inquiry by Congress raised questions about whether members of the Saudi Arabian government helped finance the hijackers and provided them with intelligence, but the commission found no basis for these allegations.

The commission also found that Iraq played no role in the attacks, saying there was no evidence of a “collaborative relationship” between the regime of Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, a finding that was also made by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee. Those findings challenged a major reason given by the Bush administration for its invasion of Iraq in 2003, and both President Bush and Vice President Cheney disputed the findings. See also U.S.-Iraq War.

After the September 11 attacks, life in the United States slowly returned to normal. Much of the physical evidence of the attacks was removed. The section of the Pentagon destroyed by American Airlines Flight 77 was rebuilt, and the site of the World Trade Center towers was cleared of debris. An international design competition was held to decide how to rebuild the World Trade Center site. However, New York City, and the country in general, remained scarred by the September 11 attacks. Fear and uncertainty were newly important characteristics of the U.S. way of life.