If you ask, "What are the freedoms that we've given up as a consequence of 9/11 thus far?" it's actually not that easy to identify specific things that are egregious. It's not like the Civil War, where there was a suspension of habeas corpus throughout most of the United States. Or World War I, where there were prosecutions of anyone who criticised the war or the draft. Or World War II, where we had the Japanese internment. In our days, Guantanamo is a serious concern, and the temptations we fell into both with respect to torture and with respect to detention even of American citizens were very dangerous. But those practices were abandoned pretty quickly. http://venitism.blogspot.com
Policymakers should shift from a military-driven global war on terror to a policy built more on diplomacy, outreach, and persuasion. Nicholas Burns of Harvard points out the United States has spent the last decade fighting two land wars, at a cost of $4 trillion, with more than 130,000 dead in Iraq and Afghanistan, and nearly 8 million refugees. We've got to end both wars. There is no conventional victory available to us in Afghanistan, and there certainly isn't in Iraq.
Burns wants to see the return of diplomacy as the major way that we interact with the rest of the world. The military was asked to do too much. We can't fight everybody. After 9/11, we got into a defensive crouch. We said it's our way or the highway; it's us against them; it's black and white. And you can't do that indefinitely.
Juliette Kayyem of Harvard points out the United States is far safer thanks to vastly improved security and the campaign against al-Qaida, culminating in the killing of leader Osama bin Laden. Kayyem thinks if we don't pivot away from this notion of the war on terror now, there aren't going to be many better opportunities. If we don't recognize that we have limited the threat, and begin to look at this as not a war, then we are in this indefinitely.
Graham Allison of Harvard notes the many ways in which the 9/11 attacks left vivid memories. Two of the hijackers of United Airlines Flight 175, for example, had stayed in the Charles Hotel next door to the Kennedy School. Allison said his wife had been booked on Flight 11 from Logan International Airport that day but changed the booking at the last minute to the following day. They still have her boarding pass.
Allison said one consequence of the 9/11 attacks is that certainly we are now aware, in a way that pre-9/11 we weren't, that we are vulnerable. The security bubble in which many Americans imagined we lived, somehow apart from the rest of the world, wasn't real. So the consciousness of it makes us all more alert, aware.
Michael Leiter points out technology makes it easier and easier to kill people. So dumber and dumber people are going to be able to make weapons with technology. But Leiter has zero doubt that we are safer today. While another attack that could kill 3,000 people is still possible, it is vastly less likely to occur today than it was on September 11, either domestically or overseas.
Leiter agrees with Burns that the security and counterterrorism efforts of the last decade have not been matched in what Burns calls the vital fourth pillar of national security: a strong State Department and Agency for International Development.
Kayyem can't agree more how weak the fourth pillar is in funding. And it could get worse. That is the area where we've done worst in counterterrorism in the last 10 years. That is in combating the ideology, and convincing people that the United States is a force for good.
Burns asserts that instead of fighting land wars in the Mideast and South Asia, the United States should shift its diplomatic focus to East Asia, and concentrate on managing China's rise and the resulting security tensions in the Pacific. And that initiative will need a new strategic approach.
We need a strong military to defend ourselves. But Burns is suggesting that the diplomats, the economists, the aid workers, and the journalists should be on the front line of American foreign policy, with the military in reserve. We've got it the other way around at the moment.
